COP29: Developed nations will be judged harshly by history – African climate activist

After what seemed like a long wait in perpetuity, a new draft on the new climate finance goal was released on Friday at the UN global climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The draft proposes the provision of $250 billion annually from developed countries to developing nations to help them combat the climate change crisis.

The new funding goal is barely 19 per cent of the $1.3 trillion demanded by developing countries. Before the latest draft, a previous draft released on Thursday had proposed at least USD 220 Billion for least developed countries (LDCs) and at least USD 39 Billion for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) — a situation described by African climate change advocates and activists as a veiled attempt to “use money to fragment poor countries based on their vulnerabilities.”

Mithika Mwenda, Executive Director of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), described the new proposal as a “bad deal” for Africans who are disproportionately affected by climate change.

“A bad deal is a bad deal. We are not going to accept it as Africans. We are going to declare COP29 as a failure,” Mr Mwenda said. “The $1.3 trillion [we demanded] is not coming from the sky, it is backed by scientific studies and analysis. We cannot go below this. They are going to be judged harshly by history.”

Martha Bekele, a development finance expert and Lead at think-tank Development Initiatives called for the rejection of the new proposal by the Global South, especially the African bloc.

“This is way lower than the single ask; and not from a specific year, disregarding the essence of urgency,” Ms Bekele said. She added that the arrangement conferred too much power on multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank, running the risk of them wrongly misrepresenting poverty and inequality financing as climate financing.

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Meanwhile, the COP29 presidency has said that the new proposal is a “balanced and streamlined package” and a product of an “extensive and inclusive consultation.”

Dubbed the “finance COP”, this year’s global climate summit has been fraught with frustrations, and a display of power imbalance between developed countries and least developed countries.