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After negotiations in Baku ran far beyond the Friday deadline, delegates at COP29 agreed a deal on Sunday to pay $300 billion per year to developing nations to help power their green transition.
The sum is far below what developing nations and climate activists had hoped. The deal also does not oblige Gulf nations nor China to chip in, despite Western diplomats pushing hard for the world’s largest carbon emitter and the oil-rich Gulf states to be included in financing the deal.
Almost immediately after the deal was reached, delegates from developing nations voiced their criticism. ”I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion,″ one Indian delegate said in the closing session of the summit, while a Nigerian envoy said, “This is an insult.”
In addition, countries and third parties like development banks and private investors are encouraged to voluntarily contribute to a more ambitious goal of $1.3 trillion in climate financing by 2035.
“The commitments made in Baku — the dollar amounts pledged and the emissions reductions promised — are not enough. They were never going to be enough,” Ralph Regenvanu, climate envoy from the island nation Vanuatu, told Semafor. “And even then, based on our experience with such pledges in the past, we know they will not be fulfilled.”
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One avenue for “fresh hope” accomplished at COP is a reform to the carbon credit trading — whereby governments and firms can carbon removal and reduction programs abroad and count them toward their own targets. While experts are cautiously optimistic about carbon credit trading, the scheme could power “low-hanging fruit of climate mitigation while making sure emissions are capped in line with the Paris agreement,” The Guardian wrote.