Participants at the 29th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP29) reached an agreement worth US$300 billion per year that rich countries must donate to developing countries, until 2035, to combat and mitigate the climate crisis. The announcement was made this Sunday morning (24) in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the meeting took place.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), António Guterres, stated that he “expected a more ambitious result”, asked that the agreement be “honored in full and within the deadline” and that the commitments “translate quickly into financial resources ”. Still, for him, the final document represents the basis for keeping alive the objective of limiting the increase in global temperature to 1.5°C.
Nations most vulnerable to climate change called the agreement an “offense”, claiming it did not provide the necessary volume of resources. Initially, the proposal was to US$250 billion per year and developing countries defended a target of US$ 1.3 trillion annually to finance the actions. The new agreement will replace the annual US$100 billion foreseen for the period 2020-2025.
The final COP29 text highlights the urgency of increasing ambitions and actions in this “critical decade” and recognizes that there is a “gap” between climate finance flows and needs, especially for adaptation in developing countries. The understanding is that US$5.1 to 6.8 trillion are needed by 2030, with US$455–584 billion per year for the new agreement.
“[A conferência] reiterates the importance of reforming the multilateral financial architecture and underlines the need to remove barriers and address unfavorable factors faced by developing countries in financing climate action, including high capital costs, limited fiscal space, unsustainable debt levels, high transaction costs and conditionalities for access to climate resources”, says the agreement.
For Guterres, the year 2024 was “brutal”, marked by record temperatures and climate disasters, while greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. He highlighted that developing countries, “choked by debt, devastated by disasters and left behind in the renewable energy revolution, are in desperate need of financial resources”.
carbon market
Countries also agreed on rules for a UN-backed global carbon market. This mechanism will facilitate the trading of carbon credits, encouraging countries to reduce emissions and invest in ecologically sustainable projects.
Guterres stated that the negotiation on the carbon market was “complex, in an uncertain and divided geopolitical scenario”. He praised the effort to build consensus, which he considered a demonstration that multilateralism can “find a way even on the most difficult issues”.
For the UN Secretary General, the end of the fossil fuel era is an “economic inevitability”. He stated that the new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), which are each country’s climate plans, should accelerate this change and ensure that it occurs fairly.
THE Brazil It was the second country to present the third generation of the NDC, which defines the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from 59% to 67% in 2035. The delivered document resumes the goal of climate neutrality by 2050.
In addition to bringing together a summary of public policies that contribute to achieving the goals proposed in the NDC, the document also details, by sector of the Brazilian economy, the actions that have been implemented in the country so that greenhouse gas emissions are mitigated.
The next climate change conference (COP30) will be held in Brazil, in November 2025, in Belém (PA).
*With information from UN News
