The recent COP29 barely reached a new climate finance target that leaves all parties wholeheartedly satisfied. However, even without perfect agreement, climate actions should not be delayed.
On Sunday 24 November, 33 hours later than originally scheduled and very close to collapse, negotiators at Baku, Azerbaijan, finally reached an agreement that richer countries should raise the funding target to US$300 billion per year to help poorer countries address the climate change crisis by 2035. The deal was far from a happy consensus, and the target is far below what developing countries were pushing for, which is US$1.3 trillion a year.
Even with the numbers agreed, there are still potential disagreements embedded in the accounting and implementation. For instance, some developing countries have criticized that even for the reduced target, much of the funding will come from multilateral development banks rather than from direct investment from the developed countries themselves. Meanwhile, various studies have shown that the previous 2009 pledge to mobilize US$100 billion a year by 2020 has in fact failed1, which raises the question of whether the new, already insufficient, target can actually be met meaningfully.
Apart from the new financing target, which was the main focus of COP29, other disputes also exist: the inclusion of outcomes from COP28 of the first global stocktake, especially the key pledge on the “transition away from fossil fuels”; implementation of the newly agreed Article 6 regarding the global carbon market; and discussions of national adaptation plans and the global goal on adaptation. For such agreements to come together, the discussions should not only occur at Baku, or at other international climate negotiation platforms, but also at the national and subnational levels2, as well as across different sectors that all target mitigation.
Even with the unavoidable disagreements, actions addressing the climate crisis should not be delayed or even discontinued. This decade will be a critical window to mitigate the potential catastrophic outcomes, and delayed action is never a plausible option. Collective actions with coordinated efforts are of course ideal, but improbable in the real world. Under a highly divided environment, decentralized but continued efforts are, in particular, essential to push forward the high-level climate agenda.
All the relevant stakeholders, who sincerely hope to contribute to the climate actions, should make efforts to mobilize the resources available and dedicate them to feasible actions. This is not to say that international climate-related events such as COPs are not relevant. They play an irreplaceable role and are the centre stage of international climate actions. However, we cannot invest all our attention only on these two-week events. Governments should make the best use of every possible opportunity, including, for instance, multilateral platforms, bilateral discussions and regional organization conferences, even if they are not fully climate themed. Non-state actors, with different bottom-up approaches, could also generate critical force that pressures governments to take more ambitious actions. Given the specific context of different nations, non-state actors could facilitate state actions, make states accountable and play a proactive or even offensive role to push for a way forward.
Nowadays, there are various kinds of politics risks that could undermine the efforts in climate action, and COP29 did not really deliver the most promising results. However, we should not be discouraged. Looking back, when COP15 at Copenhagen failed to contain binding commitments to emissions reductions, there were widespread concerns that climate actions will be largely stalled. However, six years later, the Paris Agreement was reached, which opened a new page for international efforts. A recent study shows that there is a much higher level of awareness across the world of the emergency of climate change than ever before. Disagreement will always exist, but climate action should continue and be even stronger, the momentum of which will drive more ambitious targets for future agreements.
Article by Springer Nature. Picture by MJO.
