The COP29 Climate Summit has closed, after a chaotic extension, an agreement that saves the face of climate diplomacy: rich countries have admitted to contributing 300 billion annually from 2035 so that poor countries cut CO2 emissions and adapt to the climate crisis. They are 50,000 million more than the initial proposal. The text recognizes that these countries need 1.3 trillion dollars annually.
The summit has threatened ruin this Saturday. Island states such as the Marshall Islands and the group of least developed countries have left the negotiating table when they saw that the amount of that fund did not change from the first version. The increase of that quantum and the inclusion of a vague mention that a plan will be developed to reach 1.3 trillion: they have called it Roadmap to 1.3 trillion. That sheet should contain, they express, “transfers and instruments that do not generate more debt,” one of the capital concerns of the countries of the global south.
How close the abyss came was underlined by the long applause in plenary. However, India has shown its absolute rejection of this way of adopting the agreement.
Irene Rubiera, from the legal area of Ecologistas en Acción, considers that “the move that we have seen in the latest text of the quantum economic, is another example of the absolute lack of respect for the process, for multilateralism and for international climate law as a whole. The COP is the only legal space in which the South and those most affected can look the North in the face and demand responsibilities and responses for their actions.”
Other crucial texts of this agreement, those that touched on how to cut fossil fuel emissions (mitigation), have finally not included the taboo words, again, in the COP: fossil fuels. The guidelines for implementing last year’s conclusions on how the Paris Agreement is going (the Global Stocktaking) “reaffirm” what was achieved in Dubai, (transitioning away from fossil fuels), but do not mention oil, coal or gas: the fuels that cause the majority of CO2 emissions, that is, the cause of climate change.
These guidelines should guide the new national climate plans that countries must present next year. These plans are the commitments that states make to meet the objective of limiting global warming to less than 2ºC,
During the two weeks in Baku, the Saudi Arabian delegation has made it clear that they will not accept any more mentions of fossil fuels. At the COP they have been called the “wrecking ball” of the talks. The president of the host country himself, Azeri Ilham Aliyev, made the tone that the summit would take on the first day quite clear: in his opening speech he called these fuels a “gift from god.”
The COP was due to end this Friday, but President Babayev’s proposals for an agreement sparked a stampede of complaints. Many delegations from impoverished states asked if the text was “a joke.” In his opinion the quantum of 250 billion euros from 2030 was totally insufficient taking into account that economic experts have calculated that they need one trillion dollars.
But rich countries don’t really like making direct money transfers because they prefer to have some control over where the funds go. The director of the Spanish Office of Climate Change, Valvanera Ulargui, said this when she said that this “public money is useful for developing countries and our commitment is to increase that contribution”, that is, that it is used in the deployment of renewables against fossil fuels or adaptation programs to the effects of climate change.
That has been the push and pull of the entire summit. And this has been the result.
Source: www.eldiario.es
