COP29 pledges $300 billion annually climate finance by 2035; India calls it ‘paltry sum’

Baku: The world leaders have agreed a new climate deal at the COP29 on Saturday, with developed nations committing to provide $300 billion annually by 2035 to assist poorer nations in addressing the growing impacts of the climate crisis.

This includes a core annual target of 300 billion dollars, tripling the previous 100 billion dollars goal. Despite the progress, developing nations, including India, criticized the agreement as “insufficient” calling for greater ambition to address urgent climate needs.

India’s Secretary of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Leena Nandan, said, the goal is too little and too distant. She said, our estimate tells us we need to do 1.3 trillion dollars by 2030, yet we have only 300 billion dollars a year. She said, it does not address the needs and priorities of developing countries.

The major key outcomes of the “Baku Finance Goal” included, Finalization of Article 6 on carbon markets, potentially channeling 1 trillion dollars annually by 2050 and Steps to operationalize the Loss and Damage Fund, with distribution set to begin in 2025 with Commitments to enhanced transparency and adaptation measures.

Immediately after the gavel came down, India’s representative, Chandni Raina, also condemned the $300 billion pledge as a “paltry sum.”

She described the agreement as “nothing more than an optical illusion” and argued that it failed to “address the enormity of the challenge we all face”.

“This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document” she added.

The Global South had been demanding $1.3 trillion in the talks from the last three years and $300 billion is a far cry.

Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary in the Closing Plenary of COP29, said that the countries would secure efforts of all actors to work together to scale up finance to developing countries, from public and private sources, to the amount of USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035.

“This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country. But like any insurance policy, it only works if premiums are paid in full and on time. Promises must be kept to protect billions of lives,” Stiell stated.

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev said, “When the world came to Baku, people doubted that Azerbaijan could deliver. They doubted that everyone could agree. They were wrong on both counts. With this breakthrough, the Baku Finance Goal will turn billions into trillions over the next decade. We have secured a trebling of the core climate finance target for developing countries each year.”

“The Baku Finance Goal represents the best possible deal we could reach, and we have pushed the donor countries as far as possible. We have forever changed the global financial architecture and taken a significant step towards delivering the means to deliver a pathway to 1.5C.” he said.

The consensus which reached at the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will see the developed countries helping the developing countries to tackle climate change via $300 billion per year by 2035 and the new amount will replace the $100 billion figure pledged in 2009.

Rich countries, which are primarily responsible for historical climate change, committed in 2009 to providing $100 billion annually by 2020 to developing countries. This pledge, already seen as grossly inadequate, was only fulfilled in 2022, two years after the deadline.