Empowering the Global South at COP29 by amplifying voices, fostering collaboration, and driving sustainable development for a more equitable future.
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Global South: Push For Ambitious Climate Finance At COP 29
It is believed that the high-level UN climate meeting is expected to take place in Baku. Climate experts from their countries in the Global South this week called for a manifold increase in climate financing to address the ever-growing needs of developing nations with just a few days before government officials globally make their way to the industrial city. What is called for is a New Collective Quantified Goal that calls for trillions of dollars, as per demand by developing countries. An estimation by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance pegs these nations, except for China, that would need an incremental USD 2.4 trillion on an annual basis by 2030, for a future that is low on carbon.
How Far Behind Past Commitments
This happens at a time when there are apprehensions that the past commitments made by developed countries remain inadequate. It fell short of the USD 100 billion target, which was already too low and too late for climate finance, as sketched above. A new collective quantified goal to be established at a minimum of $100 billion for the post-2025 period can never be sufficient to provide cogent reasons for maintaining developing countries in the fight against climate change. The warning, therefore, is that without a super-strong commitment, developing nations will fail to achieve climate goals.
Tensions Between Rich and Developing Nations
Sharp differences between rich and poor countries over the issue of finance have deadlocked the current climate talks in Bonn, supposed to be the pre-COP29 discussions in June. The most controversial of these was an Annex 1 country proposal that rich nations, basically led by the USA, would extend the donor pool for climate finance to cover emerging economies like China, India, and Middle Eastern countries while at the same time limiting its recipients only to the least developed and island states. The proposal has met fierce resistance from developing countries, which insist that responsibility for delivering climate finance squarely remains with those who can be held responsible for the lion’s share of GHG emissions.
India’s Stand on Climate Finance
It has been categorical on this: India asserts the induction of climate action into the overall development agenda. The February submission by India to the UNFCCC read that NCQG should be purposed towards real needs as expressed by developing countries and further offered that developed country contributions shall at least be $1 trillion per annum over some years in the form of grants and concessional loans. Whereas the sums provided by developed countries have been small hitherto, according to Indian representatives, there is a basic principle of “polluter pays” within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
One of the nagging questions for ages has been that there has been no agreed definition of climate finance. After which, this point is bound to prove a firm bone of contention at COP29. What India and other developing countries have been seeking is a bottom-up approach to climate finance-meaning criteria for quality and quantity of the pool of funds, public and private, new designs in forms of finance for the climate matter.
Low GHG emissions by the Global South
“Noted one climate scientist who was part of the Indian negotiating team at the just-concluded climate negotiations: ‘Almost 24 per cent of the world’s population was emitting less than 4 per cent of the world’s GHGs.’ That in itself brings out the injustice of asking developing countries to accept added climate burdens when their contribution to the global problem is very little, argues Kolb. They contribute very little, and money these nations commit to meeting their climate targets is money taken away from other pressing local issues.
Deepening Climate Impacts in the Global South
The impacts of climate change have now started getting a foothold in the Global South, more noticeably in the tropics of India. Trends include increasing frequencies of heavy rainfall events, that is, on the order of 15–20 cm per day, and growing trends of dry days, thus placing more severe stresses on the climate of this region. Attending experts in a closed-door meeting recently quoted, “COP29 is going to be very tough. Normally, it is led by the Global North, and past experiences show a low expectation about finance transfers from these negotiations.”. It is a situation rife with basic urgency for more climate finance pouring.
Centrally, COP29 comes at a time when commitments on climate finance have rapidly grown but are recognized to be far from where they needed to come in. The fund for loss and damage only stands at USD 700 million in pledges. It is only unless drastically improved that such inequities in global climate action will persist, assert experts, due to climate finance—adding otherwise to the crisis burden that ought to be borne by developing nations without much help from those parties who contributed the most toward global warming in the past.
