At COP29, wealthy and poor nations negotiate to split the climate bill
At COP29, wealthy and poor nations negotiate to split the climate bill
Negotiators from around the world are in Azerbaijan this week for the annual United Nations climate conference known as COP29.
The central question this year: How much should wealthier countries pay to help developing nations transition to cleaner energy and adapt to the impacts of climate change?
Industrialized countries have already been funding these efforts, after a COP agreement in 2009. Now, negotiators need to decide what other countries might be in that group and how much more those nations will commit in the years ahead.
Some countries are, historically, more responsible than others for the heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere, said Kenneth Gillingham, a professor at Yale University, and that’s at the root of these negotiations.
“It’s really the wealthier nations of the world that predominantly have been leading to the issue of climate change that we have today,” he said.
The United States, the United Kingdom and most of Europe bear much of the blame. Those nations are asking poorer countries to also reduce their carbon emissions, and they’ve said they’ll help fund the task.
“Industrialized countries agreed in principle many times in the history of the climate negotiations to provide this kind of financial assistance,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Here’s where things get tricky: That list of industrialized countries that have to pay was created in the 1990s.
“So countries like China were considered, and very much were developing countries in terms of per-capita income at that time, back in the 1990s. But circumstances have changed a lot,” she said.
China, especially, is now much wealthier and more industrialized. But it’s not officially on the hook for climate finance. That’s a big sticking point at COP this year, said Rishikesh Ram Bhandary, assistant director of the Global Economic Governance Initiative at Boston University.
“How do you get the politics and the reality, you know, in one place so that we can have a deal that really works for everybody?” he said.
As they figure out who pays, negotiators must also settle on a number, said Ian Mitchell, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. “Most people agree that the needs are in the trillions of dollars per year,” he said.
Mitchell just landed in Azerbaijan for COP29. He said he’s not particularly optimistic that the assembled countries will agree to an amount that meets those needs.
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