CoP29: Global North Breaches Trust, Collaboration, Protocol

Global civil society has characterized to CoP29 as a carefully manipulated breach of confidence by Global North governments for using the Baku climate talks to sideline the core principles of a treaty-party-driven process to finalize their decades-long conspiracy to renege on the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement.

They identified the political bullies, led by the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, for having failed in their moral and legal responsibility to address the climate crisis they have caused and pay their climate debt. This agenda was enabled by a UNFCCC and CoP29 presidency that repeatedly departed from established protocol, including in the closing plenary where the Azeri president gaveled through a decision on the New Collective Quantified Goal on Finance (NCQG), which the CoP executive secretary celebrated, without consensus by Parties and with multiple governments objecting.

With so much at stake, CoP29 has forced through a deal that condemns people and states across the Global South by withholding the much-anticipated finance, collaboration, and technology needed to prevent a total climate collapse.

When so many lives are at stake, no deal would have been better than a bad deal, according to Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) and multiple Global South governments such as Cuba, India, Bolivia, and Nigeria, which adamantly reject this CoP outcome. The outcomes of CoP29 produced rules will scale up risky and ineffective carbon markets on one hand, and massively underdeliver on the Global North’s climate debt on the other.  They charge that CoP29 has failed to take into account lived realities and, instead, pushed climate-affected communities into further devastation by offering only false solutions like debt swaps, carbon markets, loans and green bonds.

Critics charge that the NCQG ‘decision’ is destructive because it:

• Fails to meet the needs of developing countries as calculated in numerous surveys to be in the trillions, offering only $300 billion, with no guarantee of any public funding that does not put Global South countries deeper into debt;
• Excludes loss and damage in the goal; and
• Supports the US-led argument that the finance should come not from the governments responsible for the climate crisis, but from development banks and private investors, thus, allowing developed countries to escape their responsibility to provide finance.

Communities in the Global South and civil society organizations (CSO) seeking climate justice at CoP29 have roundly denounced both the procedures and outcomes of the conference hosted by Azerbaijan, another petrostate.

Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development characterized the process so far as “selling out the Global South to the private sector,” while “the US has always been the biggest blocker of climate action” and, the rest of the Global North, having “condemned the world to climate catastrophe.”

The Third World Network added: “They expect developing countries to show greater ambition on mitigation and adaptation without the commensurate ambition on finance. This is not just a joke but a serious insult to developing countries, as they pretend with slogans to keep the 1.5 degree C alive, abdicating their responsibilities under the Paris Agreement and risking lives of the poor and wrecking the planet.”

The GCDCJ announced “We the Global South categorically reject this illegitimate outcome. We will not accept the erasure of equity, nor will we allow the historical responsibility of polluters to be diluted under the guise of voluntary commitments and privatised finance. Our nations may have been sidelined in the CoP halls, but we will carry this fight into every space, every movement, and every avenue for climate justice. This is not an end—it is the start of a stronger, unified resistance against climate colonialism and for the survival and dignity of our people.”

Speaking to the perverse priorities of the Global North, Abeer Butmeh, of PENGON / Friends of the Earth – Palestine, observed: “It is infuriating to hear rich countries claim there is no money to repay the climate debt owed to the South, while pouring billions into the genocide in Palestine. More than empty promises and expressions of solidarity, we need accountability and action to deliver both climate justice and justice for Palestinians.”

Photo: Environmental activists protest at CoP29 to demand financial commitments from developed countries. Source: Reuters.