Climate finance to be the focus of COP29 in Azerbaijan 21/10/2024

Photo © Rafa Neddermeyer/Agência Brasil of flooding due to heavy rains

By Agência Brasil

Climate finance to be the focus of COP29 in Azerbaijan

Fabíola Sinimbú - Reporter for Agência Brasil

The conference will bring together 198 countries, including Brazil

Less than a month away, the city of Baku, Azerbaijan, will bring together representatives from 198 countries and territories during the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), which will take place between November 11 and 22.

During the meeting, world leaders will debate the climate crisis and dozens of agreements and negotiations on the subject, but this year, one discussion will prevail: the design of global climate finance.

A new generation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) aligned with the mission of keeping the planet 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is the main duty of the parties that signed the Paris Agreement. In them, countries will present the ambitions they intend to turn into action to overcome the climate crisis, but for everything to work, it is necessary to know how much all this will cost and who will foot the bill.

According to the National Secretary for Climate Change at the Ministry of the Environment, Ana Toni, five themes dominate these impasses, which are transparency, the amount for updating global financing, who should pay, the time for updating the new obligation, and how the resources should proportionally finance more mitigation, adaptation or equivalent actions.

In the last five years, the amount that rich countries were supposed to finance for developing countries was US$100 billion, which has proven to be insufficient, but, according to Ana Toni, there is still a need for more clarity in the methodology adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the transfer of these amounts, to confirm that the paying countries are fulfilling the commitment made.

“Regardless of the number, we need transparency to know and monitor how these funds are reaching developing countries,” he says.

According to the Secretary for Climate, Energy and the Environment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, the maintenance of rich countries as financiers of developing countries is what Brazil will defend during the conference alongside the other 134 countries that make up the Group of 77 + China (G77/China), in opposition to the proposal by developed countries that voluntary financing from emerging countries become mandatory.

Carbon market

According to the secretaries, at the pre-COP held at the beginning of October in Baku, it also became clear that the regulation of a global carbon market is a second issue, which will have force during the conference in November. Singapore and New Zealand will lead the negotiations on the subject, and an international agreement is expected at the end of the meeting.

For Ana Toni, the understanding is that these two issues need to move forward this year and that Brazil is in a position to make an effective contribution to the global debate, following the example of the progress made nationally. “The NCQG [New Qualified Collective Goal] and the carbon market are debates that need to take place at COP29, if they don't, it will go to COP30. So, for the success of our own COP, we want this to be resolved,” he said. COP30 will be held in 2025 in Belém (PA).

The secretaries also considered the initiative that brought together the presidencies of COPs 28, 29, and 30, led respectively by the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, and Brazil, for assessment meetings and negotiations with other countries in the run-up to the conferences.

“The Troika has been working hard on this, talking to all the countries about putting the targets in mission 1.5, aligned with the next NDCs and having strong national implementation plans as well, like the Climate Plan that is being built in Brazil,” concludes Ana Toni.