COP29 and climate geopolitics

BY NNIMMO BASSEY 

As COP29 dragged into overtime, the expected climate finance target of at least $1.3 trillion shrunk to an offer of $250 billion per year from 2035. After much bickering, the rich countries decided to raise its offer from $250 billion to $300 billion.  This does not indicate that there is a consensus about the urgency for developed nations to pay up for squandering the carbon budget and bringing the world to the brink of climate change catastrophe.

Additionally, by pushing the date for providing needed funds a decade down the road, it does appear that there is no consideration of what the scale of the climate disasters may be by 2035 and what the value of $250 or $300 billion would be then. Developing, vulnerable, and poor nations have rightly insisted that whatever funds are made available must not come as loans or instruments that would increase their already huge debt burdens.

Another sad fact is that any offer made is nothing more than an offer as the pledges are not enforceable by law. In 2009, the pledge was to pay $10bn dollars yearly from 2010 to 2020 and raise that to $100bn from 2020. Those targets never materialised. The polluters never want to accept responsibility for the climate crisis or to support the poor vulnerable nations financially at scale.

The COP is an arena for geopolitical games, with polluters arrogantly making it seem they are doling out charity to climate victims. When negotiators throw out statistics and speak of temperature and finance targets, we tend to forget that climate change affects real people and not mere numbers. Little consideration is given to the victims and the billions of dollars they are already investing on their own in their desperate struggles to survive the onslaught of floods, droughts and destruction. 

COP29 ended on a whimper and as a big disappointment on many fronts. It had opened with a broad acceptance of Article 6.4, thus literally opening the floodgates for carbon markets and other elements of carbon market environmentalism. Rather than cutting emissions at source, nations and carbon speculators had a field day raising the banners of false solutions including those promoting carbon colonialism through carbon trading and geoengineering. Some even projected nuclear and fossil gas as clean energy pathways. 

Whereas at COP28 there was a decision to transition away from fossil fuels for energy, at this COP that reference is completely off the table except by merely referencing “article 28” of the UAE outcome document. That must have ranked as a huge success for the petrostates and the over 1750 fossil fuels lobbyists at the COP who do not mind burning down the planet if there is a chance of inheriting the ashes. However, there was a strong presence of civil society and indigenous activists calling for a Yasunizationof the world. Their cry, Yasunize the World, echoed the decisive vote of Ecuadorians to keep crude oil in the soil at Yasuni ITT oil field.

The COP, labelled a Climate COP, crawled on divergent tracks towards achieving a level of climate finance with parties marching without moving, regarding levels of climate action ambition. Talks of loss and damage and other instruments of climate finance became largely muted. In their place emerged a contentious concept of New Collective Quantified Goals (NCQG) — a phantom possibly aimed at erasing the justice base of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) by requiring that everyone contributes to the finance pot in the same thought pattern that birthed the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), the hallmark of voluntary emissions reduction according to convenience.

Perhaps an extension of the NCQG logic made a Nigerian minister to contentiously claim that China and India are not developing countries. This claim aligns with the assertions of some developed nations intent on breaking the solidarity within developing nations and thereby avoiding doing their fair share regarding climate finance and other actions.

The truth is that China and India remain squarely within the geopolitical and economic grouping of developing nations because “developing” cannot be a tag reserved for nations in economic stagnation or regression. Now is a critical moment for vulnerable nations and allies to stand together in the determination that justice must remain the bedrock of climate negotiations and action. Historical responsibility must align with commensurate action and everyone should humbly accept this fact because, although huge investments are being made in intergalactic pursuits, we have only one Earth.

Bassey, the director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation, was at COP29.