Developing countries call COP29 climate agreement a “disgrace”

Developing countries expressed their disappointment this Sunday and called the agreement reached at COP29 in Baku a “disgrace”, saying that rich countries contribute $300 billion annually to combat climate change, which they consider insufficient. Are.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he expected “a more ambitious outcome” and called on “governments to see this agreement as a foundation and build on it.”

“This objective is not what we had hoped to achieve. After years of discussion, this is not ambitious for us,” said Evans Nzewa, Malawi’s diplomat and head of the Least Developed Countries.

Bolivia’s chief negotiator Diego Pacheco said, “The agreed contribution is an insult to the demands of developing countries.” “Paying the climate debt is the right of the countries of the global South,” he defended, prompting a standing ovation in the room where the plenary session was being held.

Kenyan Ali Mohammed, who leads the group of African countries, said he was “extremely disappointed” by an agreement that was “too little, too late.”

“It will not be enough,” Panama’s chief negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey warned AFP.

According to the final draft agreement, rich countries have committed to contribute “at least” $300 billion annually by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with the consequences of global warming.

But developing countries estimate that with inflation, the actual financial effort of the countries providing this aid (European, United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) will be much lower, with efforts already planned even higher. by multilateral development banks.

«No country got everything it wanted, and we are leaving Baku with still a lot of work to do. “So now is not the time to take a lap of honour,” Simon Still, head of the UN climate agency, said in a statement.

The agreement is “disappointing” and “not up to the challenges,” lamented Agnès Pannier-Rancher, the French ecological transition minister.

On the other hand, the European Union welcomed the agreement. The agreement “marks a new era” in climate cooperation and financing, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen celebrated at the X.

The agreement sets aside an ambitious target for developing countries to achieve a total of $1.3 trillion per year by 2035, which would include contributions from rich countries and other sources of financing, such as private funds or new tariffs.

The decision came more than a day after the conference officially ended and after “painful” discussions, in the words of Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva, who blamed a lack of “central leadership” for the ongoing blockade.

Next year the Brazilian city of Belem will host COP30.

People doubted that Azerbaijan could achieve it, they doubted that everyone could agree. They were wrong about both things,” COP29 President Muztar Babayev, minister and former director of the national oil company, SOCAR, said in conclusion.

– Troubled day –

For Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator at the Brazilian Climate Observatory, following the adoption of the agreement, the South American giant “now faces an even more challenging task for COP30: increasing financing and rebuilding trust between countries. “

Saturday was a turbulent day: negotiators from the coalition of small island states AOSIS and the planet’s poorest countries, dissatisfied with the draft agreement presented behind closed doors, abruptly left the meeting with the Azerbaijani presidency in the afternoon.

He demanded an annual contribution of at least $500,000 million.

The conference was due to end on Friday, but talks dragged on in a stadium in the Azerbaijani capital due to a lack of consensus.

During the final plenary session, participants also adopted a series of previously validated points, such as rules that will regulate carbon transactions between states.

For countries such as the Gulf, China and Singapore, which are not included in the UN list of states responsible for financing the climate fund drawn up in 1992, their contributions will be “voluntary” despite demands from Western countries. , which show that these countries have become richer in recent decades.

The agreement does not include any direct reference to the transition away from fossil fuels, which was included in the agreement reached at COP28 in Dubai last year. On the other hand, “transition fuel”, a term the gas industry uses for natural gas, is explicitly mentioned.

“Last year it was mentioned less and less, now exit has been practically erased from the text,” Eduardo Giesen, Latin America coordinator of the DCJ campaign, told AFP. “This agreement and this COP is one of the worst agreements ever,” he lamented.

BUR-JVB-SAG/ZM