COP29: Push for agreement on a new climate finance deal ‘right from the start’

Following another year of record-high global heat and extreme weather events, UN climate chief Simon Stiell told negotiators at COP29 in Baku that setting an ambitious new climate finance target is crucial for the well-being of all nations, including the wealthiest and most powerful.

“Let’s dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity;” runaway climate change is impacting “every single individual in the world one way or another,” Mr. Stiell said.

His strong call to action kicked off the latest round of UN climate talks, which will run in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku through 22 November.

Officially the 29th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), COP29 will see countries seek to establish a new annual climate financing target to replace the $100 billion pledge set in 2009, which expires at the end of the year and which many say is far less than what is required to cope with fast-rising air and sea temperatures.

Mr. Stiell underscored that the UNFCCC process “is the only place where we can address the rampant climate crisis, and to credibly hold each other to account to act on it. And we know this process is working. Because without it, humanity would be headed towards five degrees of global warming.”

‘No country is immune’

He gave stark examples of why a new deal on climate finance is so critical, saying that every country pays a terrible price if at least two-thirds of the world’s countries cannot afford to rapidly reduce their emissions. Moreover, the entire world economy could collapse if countries are unable to strengthen their supply chains.

“I’m as frustrated as anyone that one single COP can’t deliver the full transformation that every nation needs… [but] it is here that Parties need to agree a way out of this mess. That’s why here in Baku, we must agree a new global climate finance goal.”

Mr. Stiell, who is the Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, hails from Grenada, where his home island of Carriacou was nearly flattened by Hurricane Beryl this past July.

Speaking against a backdrop with images of the devastation, he told COP29 delegates that he was inspired by his neighbors, like an 85-year-old woman named Florence – and millions of others worldwide – who become victims of climate change “but get up over and over again”.

More than ‘a goal’

“But we cannot afford to continue up-ending lives and livelihoods in every nation – so let’s make this real,” he said, posing a series of simple questions to the delegates: Did they want their grocery and energy bills to rise even more; their countries to become economically uncompetitive? Did they want even further global instability, costing precious lives?

If the answer to any of those questions was ‘no’, then making a new climate finance deal was all the more important.