An agreement on climate finance was reached at the Cop29 summit in Baku early on Sunday morning, but it has been met with widespread anger from developing countries. The deal pledges $300bn per year from developed countries and public finance institutions by 2035, far short of the $1.3tn annually that experts say is needed to help poorer nations transition to low-carbon economies and adapt to extreme weather.
Representatives of the least developed countries described the outcome as a betrayal. “We are outraged and deeply hurt by the outcome of Cop29. Once again, the countries most responsible for the climate crisis have failed us,” they said in a statement. Panama’s climate envoy, Juan Carlos Monterrey, warned that the low level of finance “means death and misery for our countries”.
The deal is heavily hedged, with much of the $300bn expected to come from grants and low-interest loans, but loose wording allows contributions from “a wide variety of sources”. The remaining $1tn must come largely from private sector investment and potential new levies on shipping, aviation and fossil fuels, which have yet to be agreed. Mariana Paoli of Christian Aid said: “People of the global south came to these talks needing a lifeboat out of the climate crisis. But all they got was a plank of wood to cling to.”
Rich countries defended the deal, noting that public finances are stretched. UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said developed countries had “gone quite a long way” to find a solution. The summit was also overshadowed by Donald Trump’s re-election as US president, which raised fears of a US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and a renewed focus on fossil fuel extraction.
This was the first Cop to deal properly with climate finance, but many delegates lacked expertise in financial matters, leading to an overreliance on the Azerbaijani presidency. Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas producer where fossil fuels account for 90% of exports, hosted the talks in Baku, a city built on oil wealth. Critics argue that the deal fails to address the urgency of limiting global heating to 1.5C, with one observer likening the goal to a hospital bed that has broken.
