Negotiators at this year’s United Nations climate summit struck an agreement early on Sunday in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple the flow of money to help developing countries adopt cleaner energy and cope with the effects of climate change. Under the deal, wealthy nations pledged to reach $300 billion per year in support by 2035, up from a current target of $100 billion.
Independent experts, however, have placed the needs of developing countries much higher, at $1.3 trillion per year. That is the amount they say must be invested in the energy transitions of lower-income countries, in addition to what those countries already spend, to keep the planet’s average temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, global warming will become more dangerous and harder to reverse.
The deal struck at the annual U.N.-sponsored climate talks calls on private companies and international lenders like the World Bank to cover the hundreds of billions in the shortfall. That was seen by some as a kind of escape clause for rich countries.
As soon as the Azerbaijani hosts banged the gavel and declared the deal done, Chandni Raina, the representative from India, the world’s most populous country, tore into them, saying the process had been “stage managed.”
“It is a paltry sum,” Ms. Raina said. “I am sorry to say that we cannot accept it. We seek a much higher ambition from developed countries.” She called the agreement “nothing more than an optical illusion.”
Speakers from one developing country after another, from Bolivia to Nigeria to Fiji, echoed Ms. Raina’s remarks and assailed the document in furious statements.
“Let me be crystal clear,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, Panama’s special envoy for climate. “This process was chaotic, poorly managed, and a complete failure in terms of delivering the ambition required.”
The financing negotiations were complicated by the election of Donald J. Trump less than a week before the summit’s opening day. As the world’s biggest economy, with significant sway over global financial institutions, the United States has been essential to meeting climate finance pledges.
Mr. Trump is widely expected to renege on any commitments negotiated in Baku and has said he will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 climate accord that aims to curb global greenhouse gas emissions.
Another difficulty was the expectation that the Republican-led Congress would curtail funding for Ukraine, placing a greater burden on that country’s European allies and leaving less money available for climate efforts.
Many negotiators and diplomats said, however, that Mr. Trump’s election had also created a sense of urgency around the need to speed the transformation of increasingly interconnected economies around the world, many of which are still largely dependent on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
“I think when we came in here the question was, ‘Does the U.S. have no juice?’” said John Podesta, President Biden’s climate envoy. He said his team had been “extremely active in the negotiations” and that, “notwithstanding the president-elect’s rhetoric around calling climate change a hoax,” the United States would continue reducing its emissions over Mr. Trump’s term in office.
The agreement, which is not legally binding and functions largely through diplomatic peer pressure, came after two weeks of divisive debate over who should pay and how much.
Under U.N. rules written in 1992, certain wealthy countries, mostly in the West, are considered developed, while other nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, are considered developing. Countries in the developing group are “invited” to provide financial aid but not expected to do so.
Today, however, many wealthy nations say the distinction no longer makes sense and that China, Saudi Arabia and others should be compelled to provide a share of climate financing. Western efforts to move those countries into the developed category were met with fierce resistance and were ultimately unsuccessful.
Developing countries have also accused Western nations of betraying their past commitments by failing to hit the previous $100 billion target until years after the deadline set under that agreement. They also accused rich countries of using domestic politics as an excuse to contribute less.
The negotiations, which had been scheduled to end on Friday but wrapped up just before dawn on Sunday morning, took place near the end of another year of record-breaking heat. Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year, and they are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, according to a U.N. report issued just before the summit, which is known as COP29.
Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of fossil fuels that many scientists regard the 1.5 degree Celsius goal as practically unattainable. If nations were to follow through on their current pledges to reduce their domestic emissions, according to the U.N. report, the world would still be on track for around 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming.
Countries are expected to submit updated emissions-reduction pledges in the coming months, before a February deadline. All eyes are on China and the United States, the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters, though for different reasons.
China is responsible for 30 percent of global emissions and for nearly all of the world’s growth in emissions over the past decade. The U.S. pledge will signal the extent to which President Biden’s administration thinks its signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, can withstand environmental rollbacks promised by Mr. Trump.
At last year’s climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, nations acknowledged for the first time the link between fossil fuels and global warming, and agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels by midcentury.
In Dubai, the Saudi delegation in particular worked hard to prevent the summit’s final declaration from mentioning fossil fuels at all. Reporting by The New York Times found that the Saudis had continued those efforts, in particular by working at five U.N. forums this year to kill any language that affirms the pledge. Several Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with diplomatic protocol, said Saudi negotiators did the same in Baku, in essence trying to reverse last year’s agreement. Saudi officials at the summit declined to comment.
The agreement on finance ultimately affirmed a commitment to last year’s consensus on transitioning away from fossil fuels. But delegates rejected a separate document that, in theory, focused on the transition away from fossil fuels, but that after many rounds of editing ended up not even mentioning them.
In theory, decisions at COP summits must be reached by unanimous consent. That means geopolitical blocs, or even individual countries, can drive hard bargains that threaten to derail talks. In practice, summit leaders can bend that general rule, as they did in Baku.
In Baku, the Azerbaijani hosts were responsible for building that consensus, and throughout the summit negotiators expressed frustration with a process that, for the two weeks leading up to Friday’s deadline, seemed either deliberately slow or simply disorganized.
The conference was rancorous from its outset. Azerbaijan’s authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, used his opening speech to upbraid Western governments and news media, whom he accused of hypocrisy. He pointed out that Europe bought much of Azerbaijan’s gas and still wanted more, while “lecturing” Azerbaijan on transitioning away from the fuel.
Next year, Brazil will host. Delegates from developing nations, especially smaller, poorer ones, vowed to take forward fights on both finance and fossil fuels.
“Anything less will condemn the developing world to continued suffering and instability,” Mr. Monterrey, the Panamanian envoy, said.
The post Climate Talks End With a Deal on Money After a Bitter Fight appeared first on New York Times.
