Activists Say COP29 Finance Deal “a Drop in the Ocean” Compared to What’s Needed

After wealthy countries refused to agree to a $1 trillion proposal from developing countries facing the brunt of climate change’s impacts, the COP29 U.N. climate summit concluded with a $300 billion climate finance deal that is “a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed.” For more, we hear from two climate activists who attended the conference and were among those calling for wealthier countries to contribute more to a global green energy transition. Brandon Wu, the director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, says the U.S. in particular owes “a climate debt to the rest of the world,” yet has spent years performing a “great escape from [its] obligations” by avoiding and reneging on promises to commit its vast financial resources to fighting the climate crisis. We’re then joined by Asad Rehman of War on Want and the Climate Justice Coalition, who further discusses the deal’s shortcomings and what to expect from next year’s conference in Brazil.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, has ended with wealthy, polluting nations pledging to pay a total of $300 billion a year to help developing nations cope with the climate crisis until 2035. Climate justice activists and Global South nations slammed the final finance deal.

In a minute, we’ll speak with War on Want’s Asad Rehman in London, just back from COP29 in Baku. But first, as Democracy Now! broadcast from COP29 last week, I spoke Friday to Brandon Wu, the director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA. I asked about his thoughts on the deal. At the time, it stood at $250 billion a year at that point, and it caused the talks to stall.

BRANDON WU: We are in a very bad place. Earlier today, we called for developing countries not to accept a bad deal, to say no deal is better than a bad deal. What we have right now is a very, very bad deal. Remember, our baseline, what we have right now, which is not working, it’s not enough, is $100 billion a year. That pledge was made in 2009. So we’re barely getting any increase at all. And what’s actually worse is that it could include private investment, market rate loans. It’s not an actual transfer of resources from rich to poor countries, which is what we need to solve this crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what private is. What does that mean?

BRANDON WU: So, that is a very good question. You know, in theory, it means, oh, this country might have spent a little bit of money to enable private investment to flow into a country, and then they’ll say, “For every dollar of money we put in, we leverage $7 of private investment.” Who is defining those leverage ratios? Like, there’s very little evidence base for how we actually count this reliably. And private investment only flows to certain places where investors think they can make a profit, right? So, many of the communities that are suffering worse from this crisis are not a place where anybody is going to make a profit, or at least not in this sense, and so they’re not going to see any of that money. What we need, and what developing countries have asked for, is a core of money that is public, grant-based money. And that is not here. We’re not seeing any of that.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re from the United States, the most powerful country on Earth, the historically largest greenhouse gas emitter.

BRANDON WU: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What role has the U.S. played here?

BRANDON WU: The U.S., at every turn, has undermined the climate regime from the beginning. So, what we’re seeing now is actually the end of a 10-year strategy to exit from our obligations to provide climate finance. The Paris Agreement itself was the end of the U.S. strategy to exit from having any obligations to reduce our own emissions. Remember, we moved from the Kyoto Protocol, which had binding obligations, to the Paris Agreement, which is 100% voluntary. It was the U.S. that was behind that.

And now what we’re seeing is, in the U.N. Convention on Climate Change, there’s a binding obligation for developed countries to provide finance. Then, again, that could mean mobilizing private investment. It doesn’t actually mean moving public money from the Global North to the Global South. And so, it’s an exit. It’s a great escape, is what we’re calling it, a great escape from their obligations to the rest of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: What would the U.S. taking the lead on true climate crisis reform look like?

BRANDON WU: So, it would mean cutting our emissions at home, so implementing something that looks like a Green New Deal, for example, right? We can quibble about the exact policies and then what that would look like, but a massive transformation, a just transition of our own economy towards a more sustainable economy.

And we know that’s not enough, because the climate crisis is global, and so it also means providing massive amounts of climate finance to enable action in other parts of the world where we know it has to happen. We know all the poorest countries in the world have to transition their economies, and we also know they don’t have the resources for it. And so, a country like the United States, where we’ve built our economy on pollution — right? — we’ve built our economy on greenhouse gas emissions, we owe climate finance, or a climate debt, to the rest of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re talking about the Biden administration right now. That’s who’s represented. That’s who is the climate envoy, John Podesta, and his delegation. What about President Trump, next president, past president, who pulled us out of the Paris Agreement and promises to do it again? What will that look like?

BRANDON WU: So, that’s our fight at home, right? That’s our fight at home. And I think the thing that President Trump does is his extremism mobilizes people, right? We got a Green New Deal, a vision for a Green New Deal, because people realized we’re in a really bad place here under the Trump administration, we need a radical vision for a better world, and we’re going to create that vision, and we’re going to fight for it.

And so, it’s really unfortunate that we have to go back to that place, but that’s where we are. And, you know, I hate to say it’s an opportunity, because, you know, the Trump administration is going to cause untold damage at home and abroad. But at the same time, that is an opportunity for us to develop the radical vision that we need, because right now we’re just rearranging the deck chairs.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, speaking Friday at the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

As talks at COP29 went into overtime on Saturday, frustrated representatives from poorer Global South countries and small island nations walked out of a negotiating room but said they remained committed to finding a fair deal. Ultimately, a $1.3 trillion climate finance deal was announced Sunday morning, $300 billion a year for 10 years. It was $50 billion more than when I talked to Brandon Wu on Friday.

For more on the latest developments, we’re joined by Asad Rehman, executive director of War on Want, lead spokesperson for the Climate Justice Coalition. It seemed like he was everywhere at these U.N. climate talks, but, I guess, not in the negotiating rooms.

Asad, you’re back in London. If you can start off by just unpacking what this amount of money means?

ASAD REHMAN: Well, first of all, let’s just clarify: It’s not $300 billion a year. It’s $300 billion by 2035. And so there’s no clarity about how much money will be provided each and every year. I mean, could be $100 billion every year and $300 billion in 2035. Secondly, we don’t know how much of that is going to be in grant-based finance and how much is in either debt-creating loans or other financial instruments. And just to also put it into perspective, $300 billion, if you take into inflation — count inflation, by 2035, it will be worth about $175 billion. Currently, Africa, the continent Africa, pays in unjust debt repayments about $170 billion. So, not only is it a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed, but it is a figure that masks the lack of responsibility by developed countries to put up the finance that is necessary, critical finance that is needed for developing countries to be able to deal with the crisis that they haven’t caused.

AMY GOODMAN: Pick up on that last point, that they haven’t caused, because so many these days, especially in the most polluting countries — look at the United States, where we have President Trump coming up again — say, “Why should we give charities to these poor countries?” But explain why this is not charity, but debt.

ASAD REHMAN: So, if you take the carbon budgets, the amount of pollution you can put into the atmosphere before temperatures begin to rise, you can — that’s calculated. The calculated, there’s this much carbon budget for preventing, for example, a breach of the critical guardrail of 1.5 degrees, after which we begin to start spiraling out of control. At two degrees, it becomes very, very difficult for anybody to be able to adapt. At three degrees, really the notion of society as we know it, as it’s currently constructed, would be very hard to realize or recognize that that could function in the same way.

We’re currently heading towards that three-degree target. We’re going to — often we say that 1.5 degrees is on life support. Four-fifths of the carbon budget for 1.5 has already been used. And that’s been used over the last 150, 200 years, overwhelmingly by the rich, developed countries in the Global North, way more than they are entitled to. So, most of the Global North countries have consumed three times to five times more than would be equitable. So, if you shared the carbon budget equally amongst all countries, the Global North has overconsumed.

What they’ve done, therefore, they owe a debt to the Global South, first for overconsumption of that carbon budget, which is now denied to developing countries, so they are not able to use it to develop, but also the consequence of overconsuming. And, of course, we see that on a daily basis with [inaudible] floods, drought, famine, storms, devastating so many people’s lives and livelihoods. That is quantified as the climate debt.

AMY GOODMAN: What happens now, Asad Rehman? How does this money — how is it transferred, however low it is?

ASAD REHMAN: Well, I mean, again, now there will be lots of ongoing fights and struggle about what that $300 billion actually constitutes. When we began COP29 in Baku, the presidency gaveled through another important motion, which was the creation of a global carbon market. Now, a global carbon market basically says, you know, you can buy permits to pollute. So, rich countries don’t have to cut their own emissions, but they could buy a permit, which would reduce emissions in another place, and they would, you know, carry on as business as usual. Now, clearly, there’s no carbon budget for those permits to be able to work. But often rich, developed countries say, “Well, that is climate finance. That is the flow of money.” Now, in 20 years of different carbon markets operating, none of that money has actually flowed, in the figures and in the way that it’s needed, to developing countries.

So, now we’re really going to get into the meat of it. What is this $300 billion? How much will be public finance? How much will be debt-creating loans? How much is it going to be actually asking developing countries to contribute to themselves, for themselves? And, of course, many of the developing countries are already being overwhelmed, not just by the climate crisis but about ongoing issues of inequality and being trapped into unjust caps and trade and debt burdens.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Asad Rehman, next year, COP30 will be in Brazil, the first time next to the rainforest. The significance of this, what it means? And do you think, as all of the climate justice groups were saying on Friday, no deal is better than a bad deal?

ASAD REHMAN: Yes. The reason why we were saying no deal is better than a bad deal is because, you know, we wanted, rather than a deal which was going to be deadly for people and planet, which was going to be insufficient, inadequate and, of course, in the words of many developing countries, was an insult and a joke, it would be better to delay that to Brazil, so that we could actually continue to negotiate and work. As you know, for two weeks, rich, developed countries didn’t put a figure on the table until the final day. That meant there was very, very little opportunity to be able to interrogate that figure or to find out more detail. Now with Brazil coming up, there is an opportunity, not only because of the Lula presidency, which has said that it’s committed to tackling climate, but that also we as civil society, you know, have social movements in Brazil. And, of course, we’re able to exert pressure both on the outside and on the inside.

And there are some fundamental, big debates going to take place over this year, which will shape that. What happens with the U.N. tax convention? Will rich countries continue to block that, which is the opportunity to tax corporations fairly in the places they do business and do damage? Will there be a global wealth tax, so that the richest 1%, who are responsible for about 16% of global emissions and seize most of the world’s wealth, actually pay fairly? Those are places where new money can be made available. Will we shift away from the subsidies and handouts to fossil fuel and the industry of agribusiness? That will liberate money.

But there’s also a very big debate going to take place in Brazil, which will be around a just transition. That’s a vision of what comes next to the world. Will it be fair? Will we be able to guarantee people’s lives and livelihoods through things like public services, making food and energy available to everybody? Will we reform our global financial architecture? All of that will be on the table in Brazil. And we hope that that is an opportunity, through building our power at both national and global level, that we can move the dial towards an outcome which actually is in the interests of people.

AMY GOODMAN: Baku to the future. Asad Rehman, we want to thank you so much for being with us, executive director of War on Want, lead spokesperson for the Climate Justice Coalition, today speaking to us from London, last week from Baku. The U.N. climate summit has ended, but, of course, we will continue to cover all of these climate issues.

Next up, we’ll speak with someone who, unlike Asad, was denied a visa, could not attend the U.N. climate talks in Baku. Armenian Arshak Makichyan led global calls to boycott the talks. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Tell Us Who” by Climate Action Network International, written for the climate justice activists as they danced to the song at the U.N. climate summit, COP29.