‘Unwieldy’ first draft at Baku sets 2030 goal of $5 trillion for climate action

People walk outside the Baku Olympic Stadium, the venue for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan
| Photo Credit: AP

Two days into 29^th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP), the first major negotiating text that will decide if the two-week-long conclave will be a success has dropped. While this is far from any semblance of finality, it lists out the universe of options before 190 countries that they must collectively whittle down – every country’s vote is exactly as important as the other – and adopt before the conference ends.

The most prominent feature of the text is an ask of at least $5-6.8 trillion until 2030, as the so-called New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on Climate Finance, for developing countries to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), or voluntary targets that are updated periodically, where countries specify targetted action undertaken to reduce carbon emissions and substitute fossil fuel energy sources with renewable energy ones.

While there are multiple technical issues being deliberated upon at Baku, the headline-moment that the hundreds of negotiators are working upon, is the NCQG. This is an estimate of the money that developing countries will collectively require from developed countries to adapt to climate change and shift to renewable sources without compromising on developmental needs.

The existing estimate, agreed upon in 2009, was to mobilise and deliver $100 billion annually from 2020-2025 but was fulfilled – not to universal agreement—only in 2022. However the countries also collectively decided, in 2021, to increase this and come up with a new number and make it operational by 2025. This is why the Baku COP is expected to deliver a new number to make the COP a success.

As the text stands, however, there are a plethora of options within the NCQG. Large parts of the text are divided into ‘options’. Regarding the quantum of NCQG itself there are four options. At the end of two week, countries are expected to choose one.

The range of options extends from the blanket $5-7 trillion until 2030; 5.0–6.8 trillion for the pre-2030 period, and a separate ‘adaptation finance’ of $ 215–387 billion annually up until 2030; or another that estimates $ 455–584 billion per year, with no year specified and an acknowledgement that were “significant gaps and limitations due to gaps in information on the processes and approaches used in determining needs, the methodologies and underlying assumptions used, and a lack of available data, tools, capacities.”

Then there are other clauses, with their own sub-options, that call upon developed countries to explicitly acknowledge that they haven’t met their prior commitment of delivering $100 billion in 2020 and 2025 and that they commit to paying the arrears. (In the UN accounting system, such flows have only been accounted upto 2022). There are disputes on whether, as developed countries, claim that $115 billion had been delivered as climate finance in 2022.

A member of India’s negotiating team told The Hindu that currently countries had formed blocks, or negotiating alliances, among themselves and demanded insertions of paragraphs that included everybody’s demands. “India has a joint position with China and other developing countries as of now. Groups have sent representations and we are still analysing the latest version of the text. There are some major omissions. The text is too big now and It is a long road ahead,” the person said.

Independent experts who have been part of several COP proceedings are unanimous that at present everything is extremely open-ended. “The voluminous NCQG text with an abundance of brackets and options is indicative of various Parties maintaining their existing positions.

Much more work needs to be done to achieve agreement on key aspects of the NCQG such as quantum, quality and timelines. Ultimately, the NCQG should be aligned with the needs of developing countries and should amount to at least ₹1 trillion per year, composed primarily of grants and concessional finance,” said Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), who is at Baku.

“Countries asked for a new text that reflects all their positions. The new text does this but, unsurprisingly, it’s now much longer and unwieldy, taking us back to the length the text was earlier in the year. It’ll need to be streamlined again to be workable.”- Joe Thwaites, Senior Advocate, International Climate Finance, said in a statement.