A contentious climate summit agrees a new finance deal
COP29 in Azerbaijan ended with a pledge to boost funding for developing nations, though many called it inadequate.
The COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan concluded this November with a hard-fought agreement to boost financial support for developing countries to cope with climate change, though the deal left many of the nations it was meant to help deeply dissatisfied, calling the sums inadequate.
The summit, dubbed the "finance COP," had been tasked with agreeing a new goal for climate finance — the money that wealthy, high-emitting nations provide to help poorer countries cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. After tense negotiations that ran well past their deadline, delegates agreed to a figure in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year by the following decade.
Wealthy nations framed the agreement as a significant increase and a realistic outcome given fiscal and political constraints. But representatives of developing and climate-vulnerable countries expressed anger and disappointment, arguing that the amount fell far short of the trillions they said were needed, and criticising the terms and the process.
The acrimony reflected the deep and persistent divides over money and responsibility that run through climate negotiations, between the nations most responsible for the crisis and those most harmed by it and least able to afford the response.
The summit, held in a major oil and gas producer, also struggled to build on the previous year's call to transition away from fossil fuels. The outcome underscored the difficulty of translating the scale of the climate challenge into the political and financial commitments required, and left the crucial question of how to fund the global response only partly resolved.