Countries have agreed to a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually into humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping poor countries cope with the ravages of global warming. United Nations climate talks in the city where the industry first tapped oil.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries that need the money to get rid of the coal, oil and gas that are causing the world to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by extreme weather of climate change. It is not close to the full $1.3 trillion that developing countries requested, but it is three times the 2009 expiring $100 billion per year amount. Delegates said this deal is moving in the right direction, with hopes of more money flowing in the future.
“Everyone is committed to reaching an agreement,” said Biman Prasad, head of the Fijian delegation, as the deal was finalized. “They’re not necessarily happy with everything, but the bottom line is that everyone wants a good deal.”
It is also a crucial step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, expected early next year. It is part of the plan to continue reducing pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to during the UN negotiations in Paris in 2015.
The Paris Agreement sets out the system of regularly increasing climate action ambitions to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius and CO2 emissions continue to rise.
Countries also expect this deal to send signals that will help boost financing from other sources, such as multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion during these talks – the rich countries did not think it was realistic to rely solely on public sources of financing – but the poor countries feared that if the money came in the form of loans instead of grants, it would hurt them. would cause it to slide further backwards. in the debt they are already struggling with.
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment for a safer, more equitable future,” he said. World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, requiring the entire financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
It is more than the $250 billion that was on the table in the first version of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and delay in the final hours of the summit. After an initial proposal of $250 billion per year was firmly rejected, the Azerbaijani presidency came up with a new rough proposal of $300 billion, which was never formally presented, but was also rejected outright by African countries and small island states, according to reports from were passed on from within. .
The various texts adopted early on Sunday morning included a vague but non-specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake, which was approved in Dubai last year. Last year there was a fight over first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of oil, coal and natural gas, but instead called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest conversations only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
Countries also agreed to adopt Article 6, which created markets for trading carbon pollution allowances, an idea set up as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement to help countries work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of this included a system of carbon credits, which allowed countries to release planet-warming gases into the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Advocates said a U.N.-backed market could generate up to $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite their adoption, carbon markets remain a controversial plan as many experts say the new rules do not prevent abuse, do not work and give big polluters an excuse to continue emitting emissions.
“What they’ve essentially done is undermine the mandate to try to get to 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator at the Indigenous Environmental Network. An Lambrechts of Greenpeace called it a ‘climate scam’ with many loopholes.
With this deal completed as crews dismantle the temporary site, many have their eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
