Outrage as Climate Finance Fails at COP29’s Critical Final Hours!

As the United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan approaches its final moments, environmental organizations are expressing deep concern. This Thursday, they criticized a preliminary agreement on climate finance, claiming it fails to meet the necessary support for countries most vulnerable to climate change and does not adequately address the global environmental crisis.

“The final countdown at COP29 has begun,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday, with the conference set to wrap up after two weeks.

Financial commitments have been a central theme at this year’s summit. According to the Paris Agreement of 20125, nations should establish a “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) that dictates the financial contributions from wealthy nations to developing countries. This funding is intended to help these nations reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.

Although there has been a general consensus at the summit that wealthier countries, responsible for the majority of historical CO2 emissions, should assist poorer and more climate-sensitive nations in coping with natural disasters and transitioning to sustainable energy, no specific prior agreement on climate finance has been reached.

The initial draft of the finance text, released early Thursday, was met with disappointment.

Safa’ Al Jayoussi, the head of climate justice at Oxfam International, criticized the draft, stating, “COP29 needs to offer more than the same worn-out promises. Wealthy nations have been delaying and obstructing real progress on climate finance for decades. This has left the Global South to face the most severe impacts of a climate crisis they did not cause. The draft text outrageously lacks a vital public commitment to a new climate finance goal.”

Instead of defining a specific annual amount for climate finance to developing countries, the NCQG draft simply included a placeholder “X” for figures or financial commitments.

Oscar Soria, a director at the Common Initiative think tank, commented to the Guardian, “The placeholder ‘X’ for climate finance symbolizes the incompetence of wealthy and emerging economies to devise a feasible solution for all involved.”

“By the conclusion of the UN climate negotiations, we need to see at least a trillion dollars in public finance on the table,” insisted Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org. Economists have indicated that developing countries require at least $1 trillion annually by 2030 to effectively address climate change.

A major concern among activists is the draft text’s endorsement of carbon market schemes as a method to “scale up” climate finance. The draft promotes “high-integrity voluntary carbon markets” and other “instruments that mobilize new sources of climate finance and private finance.” However, critics argue that these market-based approaches are merely deceptive strategies that primarily benefit corporate investors, wealthier countries, and the fossil fuel industry.

“Identifying carbon credits as climate finance, which they categorically are not, should be removed from the text to prevent providing a loophole for polluters. The same applies to allowing investments in fossil fuel infrastructure, which is fundamentally at odds with the objectives of the Paris Agreement,” stated Laurie van der Burg, global public finance manager at Oil Change International.

Despite the allowance of international transfer of carbon credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, groups warned that the changes in the COP29 draft would significantly enhance the role of such schemes.

“It’s appalling that COP29 is set to endorse carbon markets that are even less effective than the current voluntary carbon markets,” said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth International. “These markets are plagued by fraud and do not reduce emissions or provide actual finance. The stakes are incredibly high—not just for local communities but for the planet as a whole.”

Without addressing these critical issues, advocates believe the conference is on track to end in failure.

As argued by 350.org’s Sieber, “Paying the historical debt that rich countries owe will empower all nations to act on climate domestically and achieve the collective goal set last year at COP28—to triple renewable energy use and move away from fossil fuels. Currently, we only witness cowardice and a lack of leadership, ignoring the clear science that we cannot continue to pollute our planet with dirty oil, gas, and coal.”

“Now is the time to correct our course—the European Union and other affluent nations must cease gambling with the planet and the future of humanity,” Sieber concluded. “It’s time they laid their cards on the table and committed to real, transformative funding—no more excuses, no more delays, it’s time.”