As COP29 wound up in the early hours of Sunday, India’s fierce objection to the climate finance deal that was the summit’s main outcome showed its resolve to act as a voice for the Global South in wanting more international support to step up climate action, diplomats and policy analysts said.
In a statement described as “bold” and “historic”, India rejected the rushed approval of the new finance goal for 2026-2035, arguing that due process had not been followed, and sought “much higher ambition” from rich nations.
“The Global South is being pushed to transit to no-carbon pathways even at the cost of our growth… other measures are being imposed by developed country parties to make this transition really not easy,” Chandni Raina, an advisor with India’s Department of Economic Affairs, said in an impassioned speech. “This amount is a paltry sum and not something that will enable conducive climate action,” she said of the hard-fought deal on climate finance after it was gavelled through.
Rich nations on Saturday agreed to channel at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for developing countries to ramp up climate action, after bad-tempered talks in which the most vulnerable pushed for a bigger slice of the pie.
Fractious COP29 lands $300bn climate finance goal, dashing hopes of the poorest
The new goal replaces the existing annual target of $100 billion, which was met two years late in 2022 and is widely seen as insufficient to meet rocketing needs among poorer nations for transitioning to clean energy and adapting to extreme weather and rising seas.
In Baku, poorer countries had pushed for that amount to be raised to at least $1 trillion, with most of the money provided as grants.
The far lower final offer of $300 billion, whose provision will be led by rich governments, is part of a wider effort agreed at COP29 to scale up finance to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 “from all public and private sources”.
“We are disappointed in the outcome which clearly brings out the unwillingness of the developed country parties to fulfill their responsibilities. We cannot accept it,” Raina told the final plenary, drawing loud cheers. Delegates from Cuba, Nigeria, Malawi and Bolivia also outlined their disappointment and frustration after the decision had been approved.
Champion for the Global South
“It is important when India speaks up. It reflects our views – those of the least developed countries (LDCs),” said Hana Hamadalla of Sudan, who was part of a delegation of least-developed countries that on Saturday walked out of consultations in protest at an earlier version of the deal.
She told Climate Home she found Raina’s emphasis on the $300bn figure not being enough for poor nations to fight climate change “to the point” and reflective of Sudan’s views.
“India has been and wants to continue to be a champion for other Global South developing countries,” said Sandeep Pai, director for research and strategy at Swaniti Global, a social enterprise that works on climate action and policy.
In Baku, wealthy nations first put on the table an annual sum of $250 billion by 2035, which was rejected by climate campaigners and poor countries. They then increased their offer to $300 billion by that date. A high-level group of economists has recommended that level should be reached five years earlier and then raised to $390 billion a year by 2035.
As climate-vulnerable countries, we know what kind of finance we need
India, for its part, had called on rich nations to pledge $600 billion a year in grants. The final deal in Baku – half of that – did not specify how much of the core public finance goal should come as grants and cheap loans.
Pai described the COP29 finance deal as “grim”. “At this point everyone knows money is not coming unless it is for something that would make sense commercially,” he told Climate Home.
With Donald Trump’s election as US president, the money will likely also be less than promised, Pai added, especially if the country withdraws from the Paris climate agreement as Trump has threatened to do.
That could leave a finance hole that European nations, Japan and other wealthy governments may be unwilling to fill, boosting pressure on richer, big-emitting developing countries to dig deeper.
Voluntary contributions
Industrialised countries before and during COP pushed hard to expand the donor base for climate finance to include richer developing countries such as China and oil-rich Gulf states, a proposal fiercely rejected by India, the world’s most populous nation.
“Indian negotiators are articulating a long-held stand, so they (wealthy nations) don’t start counting India as a developed nation, expected to pay,” said Pai.
Analysts said there had been no formal ask for India to join the contributor base for the new goal. But New Delhi has pushed back strongly against changes that could shift the parameters of the global climate agreements governing the negotiations, particularly those that could blur the line on who shoulders the greatest responsibility to act on climate change.
The final deal only “encourages” developing countries to make contributions to the new finance goal “on a voluntary basis”.
But on Sunday, within hours of COP29 finally reaching a deal, Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special envoy for climate, posted a statement on X saying: “We stand to give more, if those who have grown significantly since 1992 – in wealth and emissions – are ready to step up as well. The target we have put forward demonstrates our seriousness.”
While China, the United States, India and the EU currently make up the world’s largest emitters, India ranks lowest in terms of per-capita emissions, according to World Research Institute analysis. The United States and Russia have the highest per-capita emissions.
India’s Raina told the final CO29 plenary that developing countries are now being seen as contributors to finance climate action, and India was opposed to it.
Less finance, weaker NDCs
In the negotiating rooms in Baku, India led the conversation on the NCQG from the Global South, and its opposition to the agreed goal could signal that developing countries may submit weak national climate plans (NDCs) next year, analysts warned.
Sanjay Vashist, director of Climate Action Network South Asia, said developing countries such as India may not slow down their efforts to adapt to climate shifts, but their actions and ambitions will not be reflected in the NDC they submit.
“We are answerable to domestic monitoring systems not international. Now you are not under obligation,” he said, referring to the shortfall in finance.
India’s strongly worded objection at COP29 was also regarded as significant because it sends a strong signal “that a deal cannot be done” without countries being heard, said Srestha Banerjee, director of just transition at the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST), a research and policy think-tank.
The critical voices, not just of India but also other countries including Colombia’s environment minister, “should be a wake-up call for rethinking the UNFCCC [process] and how it can truly deliver cooperative action”, Banerjee said.
(Reporting by Roli Srivastava; editing by Megan Rowling)
This article was produced as part of the COP29 Cross-Border Energy Transition Reporting Fellowship, a programme organised by Clean Energy Wire and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
The post India fires warning shot with rejection of finance deal at COP29 appeared first on Climate Home News.
India fires warning shot with rejection of finance deal at COP29
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
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Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace