From Climate Finance to the 'Most Important Policy Documents' of the Century: An Update from COP29

World leaders, business delegations, NGOs and activists are meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, for a second week at the United Nations' annual climate conference (COP29). Leaders are challenged to adopt a new climate finance target to fund projects that help developing countries reduce emissions and cope with the impacts of climate change. 

“As Jerry McGuire says, ‘Show me the money,'" Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, global climate and energy lead at WWF, said of the importance of climate finance at the talks. "The amount of climate finance, along with who pays and who receives it, are central to unlocking negotiations and securing a strong outcome at COP29." 

Groups such as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), an intergovernmental organization representing small island nations from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia that are especially vulnerable to rising sea levels, are central to the push for a strong climate finance target at the talks. “[The] top-level priority is minimum allocation floors for small island developing states of $39 billion a year, and $220 billion a year for least developed countries, both in grant-equivalent terms. Any [outcome] texts that do not include these aspects will not be acceptable for these groups," Cedric Schuster, chair of AOSIS, said this week, the U.N. Environment Program reports.

In a sign of positive direction, a group of multilateral development banks — including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and Council of Europe Development Bank — said they expect to cumulatively deliver $120 billion in climate finance to low- and middle-income countries by 2030 and mobilize an additional $65 billion annually from the private sector. Meanwhile, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage — a long debated fund to help countries deal with the fallout from natural disasters — is ready to accept contributions after the signing of key documents, and COP29 leaders say it is expected to start financing projects next year. About $770 million has been pledged to the fund so far, including a $50 million pledge from Australia earlier today.  

Along with financing progress globally, countries are required to submit updated plans to reduce their own emissions by February of next year. Under the global Paris Agreement on climate change, countries must submit revised plans — formally known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs — every five years. Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, called the next round of NDCs "the most important policy documents of this century" in a speech in Baku today. 

"They will be the final barricade for every nation in its fight-to-the-death against climate impacts getting more brutal each year," Stiell said. "And let's be clear: No nation is winning this fight. Every economy is being besieged by climate disasters, ripping up to 5 percent off GDP in some countries. And it’s people and businesses that are paying the heaviest price."

Still, only two countries — COP30 host Brazil and the United Arab Emirates — submitted updated NDCs during COP29. Climate justice advocates from around the world made their presence clearly known across the conference as they call for global governments to break the cycle of unsatisfying COP outcomes and make definitive commitments to reduce emissions and finance the low-carbon transition in the developing world. 

Hundreds of activists occupied a meeting room on Saturday before moving into a nearby corridor for a silent protest. "I’m here because I am trying to enhance my voice to talk about our people, our communities and why climate change is needed to be treated urgently," Juliana Melisa Asprilla Cabezas, an activist from Colombia, told Democracy Now. "We need the money. We need it now." Demonstrations continued today, as groups including the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice kept the pressure on world leaders to keep their promises to developing countries around emissions reductions and climate finance. 

Though John Podesta represented the United States at the talks, the recent presidential election left most assuming the U.S. will be largely absent for future negotiations as it was during Donald Trump's last term. Whether it will matter much in the grand scheme of things remains to be determined. In his commentary on the "America-sized hole" in the global negotiation landscape, climate action trailblazer Bill McKibben argued that climate solutions such as renewable energy have already been proven to such an extent that walking the U.S. back toward fossil fuels is unlikely. The market, he argues, is already taking over as it searches for the lowest price — which is now more likely to be wind or solar than it is oil, coal and gas. 

"That Trump lost in 2020 was, it turns out, of great importance: It gave the U.S. four years to help break renewable energy out of its 'alternative energy' niche," McKibben wrote in his Substack newsletter The Crucial Years. "In those years the price of solar power and wind power dropped below the price of energy from coal and gas and oil, and as a result everything has begun to change ... It took humanity 68 years from the invention of the solar cell in 1954 to reach one terawatt of installed solar capacity. We passed that mark in 2022 — and then we installed the second terawatt in two years since." 

Advances like this make the shift toward cleaner forms of energy and other proven climate solutions a fast-moving train that one man, or even one nation, would be hard pressed to stop. The question is whether it's moving fast enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.