$300 billion a year to help the poorest countries deal with climate change

2024-11-24 09:12:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The world agreed on a new climate deal at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Saturday, with rich countries pledging to provide $300 billion a year by 2035 to poorer countries to help them cope with the increasingly catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis, a figure many developing countries have criticized as insufficient.

The agreement came after more than two weeks of fierce debate and negotiations, chaos from boycotts and political strife.

At some points there were fears that the talks would break down, after groups representing small vulnerable island states and least developed countries walked out of the negotiations on Saturday. But at 2:40 a.m. local time on Sunday, more than 30 hours after the deadline, it finally collapsed in agreement among nearly 200 countries.

The $300 billion will go to vulnerable and poorest countries to help them deal with increasingly devastating extreme weather and transition their economies to clean energy.

COP29 focused heavily on finance, a vital climate issue but one of the sharpest politically.

Rich countries, which are largely responsible for historic climate change, agreed in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries. This promise, already considered insufficient, was fulfilled only in 2022, two years behind schedule.

The new deal agreed on Saturday calls for rich countries, including the United States and European countries, to provide $300 billion annually until 2035, made up of public and private finance.

While the agreement also refers to a broader ambition of reaching up to $1.3 trillion, developing countries wanted rich countries to commit to taking a much larger share of this, and for the money to come mainly in the form of grants rather than loans, which they fear will trap them even more in debt.

The G77 group of developing countries had requested an amount of 500 billion dollars. But wealthier nations dismissed the higher figures as unrealistic given the current economic circumstances.

There was also a push for richer developing economies like China and Saudi Arabia to contribute to the climate finance package, but the agreement only "encourages" developing countries to make voluntary contributions and places no obligation on them./ CNA