BAKU, Azerbaijan — In the wee hours Sunday during the United Nations climate talks, countries around the world reached an agreement on how rich countries can cough up the funds to support poor countries in the face of climate change.
It’s a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still deeply unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction.
World Resources Institute President and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.”
The summit was supposed to end Friday evening, but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday. With countries on opposite ends of a massive chasm, tensions ran high as delegations tried to close the gap in expectations.
$300B per year agreed to; $1.3T had been sought
Rich countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for and that experts said was needed. But delegations more optimistic about the agreement said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
The text included a call for all parties to work together using “all public and private sources” to get closer to the goal of $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. That means also pushing for international mega-banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, to help foot the bill. And it means, in theory, that companies and private investors will follow suit on channeling cash toward climate action.
The agreement is also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, to which the world agreed during the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as a way to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) above those levels, and carbon emissions keep rising.
The deal decided in Baku replaces a previous agreement from 15 years ago that charged rich nations $100 billion a year to help the developing world with climate finance.
The new number has similar aims: It will go toward the developing world’s long to-do list to prepare for a warming world and keep it from getting hotter. That includes paying for the transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels. Countries need funds to build up the infrastructure needed to deploy technologies like wind and solar power on a large scale.
Communities hard-hit by extreme weather also want money to adapt and prepare for events like floods, typhoons and fires. Funds could go toward improving farming practices to make them more resilient to weather extremes, building houses differently with storms in mind, helping people move from the hardest-hit areas, and helping leaders improve emergency plans and aid in the wake of disasters.
