COP 29: Rich Nations Have Their Say

It is like a drop in a bucket, if not an ocean. After years of painstaking efforts, all that the COP at its 29th summit in Baku achieved was a paltry $300 billion assistance from rich countries, as against the demands to pour in trillions to halt climate change, which is set to make 2024 the warmest year in human history. The Baku commitment merely sounds like an inflation-adjusted amount.

Adopting a myopic attitude, the developed nations, deploringly, continue to ignore that no nation, however rich, is safe from climate change which is truly global. Even ignoring science and evidence, they seem to adopt an ostrich-like attitude that their countrymen are completely immune to its consequences. The outcome has shocked climate activists and more climate-vulnerable nations, particularly the poor and the low middle income, at the insensitivity as well as the inability of the capitalist countries to help stem the steady rise in greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the ecological crises being brought on global warming.

While trillions are needed to finance the greening of industries and step up sustainability measures, all that the summit agreed on was $300 billion a year by 2035, and scale it up to $1.35 trillion - using public and private sources. Whatever they committed should have been done decades ago, which would not brought the earth to such a hapless stage. Even the previous goal of $100billion commitment per year was met only two years late in 2022. Many reports in recent years have suggested that the annual temperature in 2024 will be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level and will likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius warmer.

As against natural weather variability, climate change denotes significant variations in average weather conditions, causing warmer, wetter, or drier climates. Climate change is a reality and its shocking impacts are all happening around us, for everyone to see. Increasingly high temperatures, severe and frequent storms (a ‘bomb cyclone’ just hit California), flooding and landslides, rise in sea levels, wildfires, heat-related illnesses, droughts, glacial bursts, etc., are costing nations billions and billions of dollars. It was fervently hoped that at least now, the rich nations would take cognisance of reports causing inflationary trends and income reduction globally. A report in Nature this year forecast that income decline due to climate change would touch $10 trillion a year by 2035.

Tiny islands like Marshall Islands face the threat of sinking should global warming increase to 2 degrees Celsius. They will disappear from the world map. Yet, there was no sense of urgency at Baku summit, which prominent heads of governments avoided. There was no major leader to force the rich nations that are historically responsible for the vast majority of all greenhouse gas emissions to bear the costs. Hence, the poor nations will have to bear the brunt, to start with. It is just a matter of time.

African negotiators were right to dub the deal “too little, too late”. India which championed the cause of Global South, i.e., poor nations, strongly objected to the measly commitment from the first world, but in vain. It did not mince words: “We are extremely hurt by this action of the Presidency and the UNFCCC Secretariat.” India’s rejection of the deal got the backing of other developing countries.

If any good tiding from Baku is there, it is a deal that allows for trading of carbon credits which have the potential to offset carbon emissions. In the end, we can say the rich world prevailed and left “no real money on the table” even as the clock was ticking.