COP29: Did developing countries ask for more climate funding in vain?

Under the deal, the developed countries would offer $300 billion to the poor, developing countries to meet their climate targets. India and some developing countries from Africa and Latin America like Nigeria and Panama rejected the deal as pittance.

Actually, the developing countries had pitched their bargain high at $1.3 trillion. Later, after very hard negotiations, 134 nations including India scaled down their demands to $500 billion per year.

Also read: India rejects $300 billion climate finance package for Global South 

Points of disagreement

But the American and German delegations put their foot down. There were also some other points of disagreement too.

The developed countries tried to drive a wedge within the Global South by demanding that not only developed countries but even the emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and South Africa should contribute to the climate fund to assist mitigation measures of the developing countries.

These emerging countries firmly opposed this demand, with China stating that they would make some contribution but only voluntarily on their own terms and not accept any target. There is no indication yet that these differences have been ironed out.

The developing countries rejected the inclusion of loan and private investment components in the total amount and insisted in unison that the bulk of the amount should be in the form of grants. But this demand too has not been agreed to. 

Also read: COP29 | Remove IPR barrier on technology transfer, India tells rich nations 

Not unrealistic

Did the developing countries pitch their bargain too high? What do experts have to say?

On the truncated proposal of $300 billion, Nagraj Adve, author of Global Warming in India: Science, Impacts and Politics, and who is a founding member of Teachers against the Climate Crisis, told The Federal, “The developing countries have no choice but to accept it. If the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) 

doesn’t formalise the deal the developed countries would wriggle out of these limited commitments even."

Adve felt the $1.3 trillion demand by the developing world is not unrealistic because a single nation — China — alone has spent $90 billion to increase the solar energy capacity to progress towards net-zero green energy transition. There is a sound rationale for this seemingly high figure because collectively all the developing countries will have to mobilise even a bigger sum to move towards the climate goals, he said.

Criticising the intransigence of developed countries, Adve proposed that the developing world should also explore measures suggested by economist Thomas Piketty like levying carbon tax, green tax on capital flows from the developed world, wealth tax on the rich and transaction tax.

Even a moderate rate of 0.05 per cent universal financial transaction tax would fetch $650 billion annually for climate finance.

Also read: Amid worsening pollution in Delhi, COP29 experts urge India to address short-lived climate pollutants

Demand justified

Amarendra Das, an associate professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), Bhubaneswar, also felt the demand of the developing countries at COP29 is fully justified.

Talking to The Federal, Das said, “Even the previous COP28 operationalised a 'loss and damage fund’ to mitigate the ravages of climate-induced natural disasters and vast resources had to be mobilised for this purpose. The Loss and Damage Collaboration, a non-profit outfit, has estimated that this fund would require $671 billion annually. So, the demand for a climate finance of $1 trillion annually is not an inflated one. The climate-driven disaster losses are mounting and if this much money is not spent on climate mitigation then many Pacific islands would vanish entirely.” 

Further, Das said, “There should be easier transfer of climate-related technologies from the developed countries to the developing world like the advance technologies for carbon capture and new generation of solar panel technologies as the existing technologies would soon get outdated. The technologies for early warning systems and for beefing up disaster-resistant infrastructure are badly needed in developing countries. Besides climate finance, COP29 should have had greater focus on this issue of technology transfer as well.”

Also read: COP29: Host Azerbaijan urges nations to urgently bridge climate finance differences

Huge expenses

Professor V Jagannatha, an alumnus of the International Space University in France, who has spent 32 years as a scientist in ISRO, told The Federal: “A single state alone in India like Karnataka has calculated the total annual loss due to the deadly cycle of drought and floods was to the tune of ₹31,000 crore. Compensating for lakhs of damaged houses, hundreds of bridges and thousands of kms of roads, for the damaged crops in lakhs of hectares etc, involves huge expenses. Imagine similar expenditures in all regions of the world and then the demand for $1 trillion or more by deprived countries is fully justified."

Further, he added, “The developing countries are not really spending the money they commit in international meets. The COP29 climate meet should have devoted greater efforts to document the climate-related best practices scattered across the world and disseminate them in a more systematic manner. For instance, India has achieved good progress in promoting renewable energy and this can be widely replicated in poorer countries if necessary funds from the developed countries were forthcoming. Despite their share of problems, the 5,000 urban local bodies in India have developed a fairly good waste water disposal network. This can offer valuable lessons for storm and flood water drainage systems as well across the world to tackle climate-related floods.”

Jagannatha also believed that individual countries like India should work out detailed carbon footprint for every produce and event, institution and process, measured in carbon dioxide equivalents and introduce carbon trading to bring down emission levels.

Also read: COP29: After 3 days, new climate finance package draft still too lengthy

Carbon credits

Industries, power plants and other major emitters should compensate for their emission with carbon credits, which can be monetised and added to the national climate fund.

"Rather, it is the developed countries like US which are trying to impose carbon tax on Indian exports which has to be countered," he said.

Jagannatha, who has worked with several UN agencies like the UNDP, pointed out that the UNFCCC has only 300 employees with whose efforts it brings out all these reports and undertakes studies.

Hence, he argued that climate mitigation measures and studies should become more broad-based, decentralised and community-based and climate adaptation should not remain top-heavy.

Act local

Science has already clarified the pitfalls of climate change. The time is for climate action now, and that too locally guided action.

Dr Jaya Khanna, climatologist at NISER, succinctly summed up the issue for The Federal: “There is not much time left for the Global South to keep waiting for such international conventions to strike the optimum deal, considering how remarkably the latter have been failing year-after-year and not meeting their agreed-upon goals. In this situation, bottom-up approaches seem to be the only saviors for developing countries, travesty being that they are the ones in urgent need for external support."

"Some welcome bottom-up approaches have found space at COP29 — like the declaration on promoting sustainable tourism and agriculture and the declaration on water for climate. Similar issues that can possibly be resolved at the local level — like regulating the usage of plastics, localised sourcing of food, incentivizing usage of public transport, promoting agriculture as a viable career option, learning environment friendly practices from aboriginal and old cultures and how these should be prioritized for discussions at such forums," said Khanna, adding that only time will tell if the COP global partners can deliver to this year’s bottom-up resolutions.

"But such approaches may emerge as saviors while the developed world continues its blame-game and responsibility-shove-off," she pointed out.

India’s role at COP29

Prime Minister Narendra Modi aspired to be in the global limelight through his government’s relatively better climate measures. He himself personally participated in the COP26 meet in Glasgow and declared ambitious climate targets that are controversial and whose achievements are in doubt.

The next two COP meetings were attended by Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav. But, India’s participation in COP29 has been further downgraded and the Indian delegation this time was led by Kirti Vardhan Singh, Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

However, India’s official intervention at COP29, of course, reiterated that the developed countries need to provide at least 1.3 trillion dollars every year till 2030, through grants, concessional finance and non-debt-inducing support that cater to the evolving needs and priorities of developing countries. But it remains to be seen whether India’s crusade expressing the global south’s concerns would further weaken in the days to come given Modi’s personal proximity to Trump, the known climate sceptic.

The rejection of the deal by India doesn’t have much relevance beyond adopting a stance to facilitate its future negotiations. India should continue to work with the UNFCCC though bilateral and multilateral fora for easier transfer of climate control technologies from the West.

The ironies at Azerbaijan

The COP29 was not without its share of ironies.

This meet for global climate justice and democracy seeking to eliminate the use of fossil fuels was taking place in Azerbaijan, which produces 33 million tonnes of crude oil and 35 million tonnes of gas which account for 48 per cent of the country’s GDP and 92.5 per cent of its exports!

It was preceded by COP28 in Dubai, part of UAE, in 2023, which thrives on fossil fuel economy with petroleum exports to the tune of 3.2 million barrels. COP27 was held in Egypt in 2022, another fossil fuel state which produces nearly 6 million barrels of petroleum.

The Baku meet would be followed by COP30 in Brazil, the tenth major oil producer in the world.

This irony is probably because the decisions and resolutions of the COP conferences are not binding on member countries. The member countries are free to set their own targets and the UNFCCC can at best only monitor their adherence to their targets but have no powers to enforce them.

Still, the COP meets go a long way in enhancing the global awareness on the urgency of climate measures.

Further, even as the Azerbaijan authorities were pontificating about global climate justice and democracy, the climate activists and environmentalists in Azerbaijan, who were opposing the country’s hypocritical decision to hold COP29 without making any serious efforts to reduce its dependence on the fossil fuel economy, were brutally suppressed with an authoritarian streak reminiscent of the Soviet era eastern bloc despotism.

COP29: A jamboree at Azerbaijan

In practical terms, COP29 was a huge jamboree, estimated to be the second largest ever event. That is primarily because COP meets are open platforms.

Besides member governments of the UN, any climate campaign outfit, individual climate scientist and activist, and NGO or other civil society organisation etc., can participate in it simply by registering.

Over 77,000 people had reportedly registered for COP29 and the New York Times reported that over 50,000 delegates were actually participating. As per the official UNFCC website, more than 4,000 organisations also participated with observer status.

In the massive meet spread over 12 days, individual countries, climate outfits and even corporations have organised their own pavilions on diverse climate-related themes.

Other than climate finance, which was the central theme, the COP29 conference also had on its agenda the timetable for green energy transition, transfer of emission control technologies to the developing world, and in social terms, enhancing the role in the climate movement of youth, who are very active on climate issues, and indigenous peoples, who are among the worst affected by climate change.

Opinion is divided about the ability of such huge jamborees in promoting climate control and mitigation.

Some activists fely that that these meets increase global awareness about the climate challenges. Others feel that such open-for-all jamborees at best act as climate melas for NGOs and contribute pretty little to advance real climate action.