With talks teetering, climate negotiators struck a controversial $300 billion deal

Negotiators at a global climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, struck a last-minute deal for wealthy countries to help their poorer neighbors deal with global warming, saving the annual meeting as it verged on collapse.

From the outset, the focus of the United Nations’ COP29 climate conference was raising money to help developing nations cut their climate pollution and prepare for threats they face from extreme weather. Developing nations have contributed far less of the pollution heating the planet, but suffer the harms of extreme weather disproportionately.

Those countries had pushed for climate funding of $1.3 trillion a year. But the final agreement set a goal of $300 billion annually. Some representatives of developing countries were furious at the outcome, saying $300 billion a year from industrialized countries is far short of what vulnerable nations need.

“It’s a paltry sum,” said Chandni Raina, a member of India’s delegation, during the conference’s closing meeting. “It is not something that will enable conducive climate action that is necessary for the survival of our country and for the growth of our people, their livelihoods.”

Announced more than a day after the talks were scheduled to end, the funding deal was brokered after world leaders and climate activists leveled sharp criticism at industrialized nations, as well as the Azerbaijani officials who hosted the two-week meeting.

Raina criticized the meeting’s president, Mukhtar Babayev, for passing the financing agreement before he gave countries a chance to comment.

“Trust is the basis for all action, and this incident is indicative of a lack of trust, a lack of collaboration on an issue which is a global challenge, which is faced by all of us, and most of all by the developing countries that are not responsible for it,” Raina said. “But, we’ve seen what you have done.”

Mohamed Adow, director of the Kenyan think tank Power Shift Africa, said at a press conference on Friday that this was “the worst COP in recent memory.”

Taking aim at wealthy countries that built their economies over centuries using fossil fuels, Adow added, “You can’t have a negotiation if only one side is actually engaging in good faith and putting forward proposals that [respond] to the needs on the ground.”

The climate talks were held at the end of what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record. Global temperatures are rising mainly because of heat-trapping pollution that’s created when people burn fossil fuels like coal and oil. Global emissions rose to a new record in 2023, and the world is nowhere close to meeting a goal countries set to limit warming in order to reduce the risks of worsening disasters from extreme weather like floods and heat waves.

The leaders of some developing countries briefly walked out of negotiations on Saturday. Cedric Schuster, Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment, said in a statement that developing countries were treated with “contempt.”

“What is happening here is highlighting what a different boat our vulnerable countries are in, compared to the developed countries,” said Schuster, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States, which represents dozens of low-lying nations from the Caribbean to the South China Sea. “After this COP29 ends, we cannot just sail off into the sunset. We are literally sinking.”

President Biden said in a statement that the COP29 climate-funding agreement was “ambitious.” “It will help mobilize the level of finance – from all sources – that developing countries need to accelerate the transition to clean, sustainable economies, while opening up new markets for American-made electric vehicles, batteries, and other products,” Biden said.

However, the recent U.S. presidential election hung over the conference. Voters’ decision to send Donald Trump back to the White House raises questions about whether the country will continue working on global climate initiatives. Trump, who has promised to pursue policies in his second term to support the country’s oil and gas industry, is expected to again pull the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Here’s what else did — and didn’t — happen at COP29.

A sign displays an unofficial temperature as jets taxi at Sky Harbor International Airport at dusk, July 12, 2023, in Phoenix.

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Deal calls for at least $300 billion annually for developing countries

Negotiators agreed that wealthy countries will provide developing nations at least $300 billion a year in climate funding by 2035.

That’s triple what poorer nations were promised under a previous commitment, but it’s a fraction of what researchers say is required. A report released during the conference shows developing nations other than China — which boasts the world’s second-largest economy and is the second-biggest contributor of climate pollution historically — will need about $1.3 trillion in climate funding annually.

The final COP29 agreement includes a vague goal for “all actors to work together” to provide $1.3 trillion to developing nations by 2035.

“The poorest and most vulnerable nations are rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake,” Ani Dasgupta, chief executive of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement.

The debate over climate funding traces back more than a decade. In 2009, industrialized countries set a goal to give developing nations $100 billion a year by 2020 to help them deal with climate change. In 2015, countries extended the pledge to 2025. They also said they’d set a new goal that reflects the “needs and priorities of developing countries” before the old one expires. That’s what negotiators fought over in Azerbaijan.

Heading into this year’s meeting, it was clear developing countries are in a bind. They need help, but whatever money wealthy nations pledged was certain to be just a portion of what’s required to cope with climate change. And industrialized countries were slow to deliver on their original commitment, so poorer nations are relying on unreliable neighbors.

The dollar figure wasn’t the only point of contention. Leaders of vulnerable states say they need a lot more assistance to come in the form of grants — not loans — in order to avoid increasing the debt burden on poorer countries.

The final agreement doesn’t guarantee poorer countries the grant funding they say they need. The document says the $300 billion annually from wealthy countries can come from “a wide variety of sources,” including private investors.

Developing countries have also pushed for compensation for the damages from climate-related disasters, like more intense storms and droughts. Last year, richer countries agreed to create a “loss and damage” fund to fill that need, housed at the World Bank. So far, more than $720 million has been pledged and at COP29, countries officially opened the fund for donations.

A small number of countries have received payments already, part of pilot projects organized by Scotland.

A call to phase out fossil fuels faces pushback

At last year’s meeting in Dubai, negotiators for the first time agreed countries should transition away from fossil fuels. This time, calls to reiterate that agreement faced pushback.

The world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, was identified as a primary force behind that effort.

“Their blatant obstruction has ensured there’s no clear commitment to phase out fossil fuels — an outrageous betrayal of humanity and the urgent fight against climate catastrophe,” Maria Ron Balsera, executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights said in a statement.

The host country for COP29 also came in for criticism.

Oil and gas dominate Azerbaijan’s economy, representing 90% of the country’s exports and finance about 60% of the government’s budget. An official with the COP29 host country, Azerbaijan, was recorded by the human rights group Global Witness arranging a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals.

At COP29, Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, said natural resources like oil and gas are a “gift of the god.”

“And countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market,” Aliyev said. “Because the market needs them. The people need them.”

A portion of Amazon rainforest deforested by illegal fire in Brazil this August. 

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Some countries unveiled new climate targets

As part of the Paris climate treaty, countries have to announce plans to make deeper cuts to their own climate pollution by 2035. The hope is that all the pollution cuts combined will limit the world’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to temperatures from the 1800s.

Targets are due in February, and with a looming deadline, some countries announced their targets in Baku.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a speech early in the summit, announcing the country would slash emissions 81% by 2035, compared with 1990 levels. “It’s very important to establish ambition, and that’s exactly what the UK [target] did,” says Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.

Brazil, whose climate emissions come mostly from rampant deforestation in the Amazon, also announced its target. It plans to cut climate pollution by as much as two-thirds by 2035 compared to 2005 levels. While Brazil says its cuts align with the 1.5 degree goal, climate policy experts say that’s still unclear.

Deal over carbon markets draws criticism

One of the goals at this year’s summit was to finally agree on rules for a global system for trading carbon offsets, or carbon credits.

Carbon credits are basically a promise. A promise that when a country or business purchases a credit, that money is going toward an action that reduces or removes planet-heating pollution.

At the summit, negotiators concluded negotiations over parts of “Article 6”, a part of the Paris Agreement that allows countries to cooperate to reach their climate targets, including by trading carbon credits.

A leading company in the carbon credit sector, Verra, called it “a historic step.”

But many carbon market researchers voiced concerns. Research has repeatedly shown that many carbon credits don’t reduce emissions. In fact, a new research paper looking at thousands of carbon credit projects found less than 16% of the carbon credits are actually reducing climate pollution.

The new rules “could end up undermining our efforts to rein in emissions rather than advancing them,” said the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch in a statement.

Funding for health initiatives falls short

At last year’s COP28 in Dubai, advocacy organizations made the case that future climate negotiations should include a new priority: protecting human health. Climate change, they said, is now one of the biggest threats to health worldwide. It is amplifying health risks from extreme weather, such as dangerous heat waves like those in Europe or India that killed tens of thousands of people in recent years. It also spurs the spread of infectious disease, worsens air quality, and stresses people’s mental well-being.

“Climate change itself is an overarching issue that influences health,” said Florence Ngala, chief environmental officer at the Ministry of Health in Zambia, at the meeting this year.

In her country this year, a climate-worsened flood lasted for two months and led to thousands of cases of cholera and 800 deaths. But the impacts didn’t end when the flood receded: the disruption to health services lasted for months, and some health facilities postponed upgrades that might have helped them become more resilient.

Advocates hoped at COP29, developed countries would commit to increasing the amount of money flowing to threatened countries like Zambia. Those would be critical to shoring up health services that protect people from climate-worsened risks and to developing climate-resilient health facilities. But the final commitments fall short of what many developing countries were demanding—and what organizations like the World Bank have suggested is needed.

“It is deeply discouraging to yet again see governments of wealthy countries that claim to be leaders kick the can on climate down the road, at the cost of the lives and health of their populations, and of everyone around the world” says Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.