Climate finance's 'new era' shows new political realities

BAKU

Rich countries' promise of $300 billion a year in climate finance brought fury at talks in Baku from poor nations that found it too paltry, but it also shows a shift in global political realities.

The two-week marathon COP29 climate conference opened days after the decisive victory in the U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump, a skeptic both of climate change and foreign aid.

In the new year, Germany, Canada, and Australia all hold elections in which conservatives less supportive of green policies stand chances of victory.

Britain is an exception, with the new Labour government putting climate high back on the agenda, but in much of the West, concerns about inflation and budgetary shocks from Russia's invasion of Ukraine have dented enthusiasm for aggressive climate measures.

At COP29, Germany and the European Union maintained their roles championing climate but also advocated a noticeably practical approach on how much money historical polluters should give poorer countries.

"We live in a time of truly challenging geopolitics, and we should simply not have the illusion" otherwise, European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told delegates at COP29's pre-dawn closing session Sunday.

But he vowed leadership by Europe, hailing COP29 as "the start of a new era for climate finance."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, a Green Party member and longtime climate advocate, called for flexibility on ways to provide funding.

Europe should "live up to its responsibilities, but in a way that it doesn't make promises it can't keep," she said.

Activists say that climate funding is a duty, not a choice, for wealthy nations whose decades of greenhouse gas emissions most contributed to the crisis that most hits the poorest.

This year is again set to be the hottest on record on the planet. Just since COP29, deadly storms have battered the Philippines and Honduras, and Ecuador declared a national emergency due to drought and forest fires.

Wealthy historic emitters' promise of $300 billion a year by 2035 is a step up from an expiring commitment of $100 billion annually, but all sides acknowledge it is not enough.

The COP29 agreement cites the need for $1.3 trillion per year, meaning a whopping $1 trillion a year needs to come from elsewhere.

Even within the $300 billion commitment, some activists see too much wiggle room.

In one closely scrutinized part of the Baku deal, countries will be able to count climate finance through international financial institutions toward the $300 billion goal.

The text states that it is "voluntary"—potentially opening the way to include China, which is the world's largest emitter but refuses to have requirements like long-developed countries.

Countries also clashed bitterly over how to build on a landmark pledge at last year's climate talks to "transition away" from fossil fuels.

A text that was supposed to push for ways to put that promise into practice was ultimately not adopted at the close of COP29, with countries lamenting that it had been emptied of substance.

Observers said this meant the meeting in Baku made virtually no progress on tackling the source of global warming.