At COP29 in Baku, developed-country parties such as the EU, the US and Japan agreed to help raise “at least” $300bn a year by 2035 for climate action in developing countries.
The goal was welcomed by global-north leaders and presented as a “tripling” of the previous target for international climate finance.
Yet it faced a strong backlash from many developing countries, with some branding it a “joke” and “betrayal”.
Closer analysis of the goal and climate-finance data helps to explain this response.
Analysts have shown that the target is achievable with virtually “no additional budgetary effort” from developed countries, beyond already-committed increases.
A combination of pre-existing national pledges and multilateral development bank (MDB) plans will bring climate finance up to around $200bn a year by the end of this decade.
Counting money already being distributed by emerging economies such as China – as “encouraged” under the new goal – could bring the total to $265bn by 2030. This could mean the target is well on its way to being met by that date, with minimal extra effort.
Moreover, as activists and academics have noted, the $300bn target does not account for inflation. When this is factored in, its “real” value could shrink by around a quarter.
The new target has emerged against a backdrop of financial strain and political uncertainty in developed countries.
At the same time, developing countries have stressed that they need climate finance to reach the “trillions of dollars” needed to cut emissions and protect themselves from climate change.
This article looks at three ways in which the $300bn goal could be met with little extra financial effort by developed countries – and provide fewer benefits for developing countries than the figure suggests.
- Much of the goal will be met with ‘no additional effort’
- Developing-country contributions could cover part of the goal
- Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance
1. Much of the goal will be met with ‘no additional effort’
The $300bn climate-finance target agreed at COP29 in Baku will be met with finance from a “wide variety of sources”, largely coming from developed countries.
This part of the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) for climate finance is likely to be made up of public finance provided directly by governments, as well as money from MDBs, specialised climate funds and private finance “mobilised” by public investments.
The wording of the $300bn goal frames it as an extension of the $100bn target. This was the amount that developed countries agreed in 2009 to raise for developing countries annually by 2020 – a goal that was extended through to 2025 by the Paris Agreement.
Beyond the central goal of $300bn, the NCQG also includes a much broader “aspirational” target of $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035.
However, this is harder to assess, as the text of the deal is vague about who will be responsible for raising the funds, which could include various sources that are beyond the jurisdiction of the UN climate process.
Developed countries and MDBs had already committed to raising their climate-finance contributions before a deal was struck at COP29, as noted in a joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ODI, Germanwatch and ECCO.
The collective impact of these pre-existing commitments can be seen below, with climate finance from developed countries set to increase from $115.9bn in 2022 – the most recent year for which data is available – to $197bn in 2030. This can be seen in the chart below, which does not account for inflation. (See: Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance.)
The expected increase between 2022 and 2030 comes from a few different sources.
The analysts calculated that climate finance distributed “bilaterally” – as grants or loans via overseas aid and other public funding – was already expected to increase $6.6bn annually by 2025, based on existing pledges, bringing the total to $50bn. (The chart above assumes that bilateral finance remains at this level up to 2030.)
They also estimated that existing pledges and reforms at specialised climate funds, such as the Green Climate Fund and Climate Investment Funds, would add another $1.3bn per year by 2030. This would bring their contribution to $5bn.
The biggest increase that was already locked in before the COP29 deal was a pledge by MDBs – which provide 40% of existing climate finance – to increase their contributions further.
A joint statement by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and others in the first week of COP29 committed to raising $120bn of climate finance per year by 2030 for low- and middle-income countries. Of this, $84bn can be attributed to developed countries, based on their shareholdings in these banks.
On top of this, the climate-finance analysts estimated that $58bn of private finance would be mobilised by these bilateral and multilateral contributions in 2030 – up from $21.9bn in 2022.
The chart below shows the estimated breakdown, by source, of climate finance in 2030, compared to 2022.
These expected increases over the course of this decade mean that with “no additional efforts”, beyond what had already been agreed prior to COP29, developed countries would have been on a trajectory to reach around $200bn per year by 2030, and $250bn per year by 2035. (The latter was the first numerical target proposed by developed countries at COP29, which was, ultimately, negotiated upwards to $300bn on the final day.)
NRDC climate-finance expert Joe Thwaites, one of the researchers who undertook the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NDRC) analysis, tells Carbon Brief that bilateral funding directly from governments is the “big constraint” in climate finance. COP29 came just after the re-election in the US of climate-sceptic Donald Trump and many European countries have cut their aid budgets. Thwaites says:
“The MDBs are growing and doing all kinds of reforms and getting bigger and better, but the bilaterals are what are politically very stuck.”
Moreover, the COP29 climate-finance deal contains no pledge by developed countries to provide a set amount of public, bilateral finance, despite strong pressure from developing countries to include such a goal.
Following COP29, Thwaites released updated modelling to calculate different ways of reaching the $300bn target. He wrote:
“What is clear is that $300bn by 2035 is eminently achievable, with little to no additional budgetary effort required from developed countries, let alone other contributors, to meet the goal.”
2. Developing-country contributions could cover part of the goal
Unlike the earlier $100bn target, contributions from developing countries could count towards the new climate finance goal.
Only developed countries are obliged to provide climate finance to developing countries under the Paris Agreement. But the NCQG outcome says that developing countries can “voluntarily” declare any climate-related funds they contribute, if they choose to do so.
This allowed negotiators at COP29 to skirt the controversial issue of formally expanding the list of official donors that are required to help with financial aid.
Developed countries had previously been pushing to enlist relatively wealthy developing nations, such as China and the Gulf states, to share the financial burden.
Several countries described since the early 1990s as “developing” under the UN’s climate convention are known to already make large, climate-related financial contributions to other developing countries. Examples include China’s Belt and Road initiative supporting clean-energy expansion and South Korea’s contributions to the GCF.
In fact, at COP29 China announced for the first time that it had “provided and mobilised” more than $24.5bn for climate projects in developing countries since 2017 – confirming that its contributions are comparable with those of many developed countries.
This roughly aligns with calculations by research groups that have placed China’s annual climate finance at around $4bn a year.
Both developed and developing countries pay money into MDBs. As well as “encouraging” developing countries to voluntarily contribute directly to climate finance, the NCQG outcome also specifies that these countries could start counting the share of climate-related money paid out of MDBs that can be traced back to their inputs.
Roughly, 30% of the banks’ “outflows” can be attributed to developing countries in this way.
Counting the developing-country share of the projected increase in climate finance from MDBs by 2030 would add an extra $36bn to the global total, plus an extra $20bn of private finance mobilised by the funds.
It is not possible to say for sure how much climate finance new contributors such as China will choose to officially declare.
However, the chart below shows an estimate based on an “illustrative scenario”, by NRDC and others, of bilateral finance and multilateral climate funds, combined with expected MDB outflows and the associated private finance that this would mobilise. This could bring total annual climate finance up to $265bn by 2030.
Some observers at COP29 said they hoped that officially counting developing-country contributions towards UN “climate finance” targets would enable parties, such as the EU, to set more ambitious goals.
However, Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), dismissed this as an “accounting trick”, because these funds are already being provided.
Li Shuo, head of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), tells Carbon Brief that the NCQG outcome could bring more attention to China’s climate-related aid and lead to “stronger and better climate support from Beijing”. However, he notes that this is in the context of a low-ambition global target that is a “far cry” from what is needed:
“I take this as a classic example of geopolitical competition weakening environmental ambition, namely, the geopolitical desire of including China as a donor without corresponding desire of developed countries to contribute more limited the overall scale of climate finance.”
3. Inflation wipes out much of the increase in climate finance
One issue that has surfaced in the wake of COP29 is the impact of inflation. Campaigners have noted that the failure to factor this into the 2035 climate-finance target means that, by the time it is met, the true value of the money pledged will be far lower than it is today.
In an article highlighting this issue, the Guardian reported that the $300bn goal was, therefore, “not the tripling of pledges that has been claimed”.
Researchers had flagged this before COP29, pointing out that the previous $100bn annually by 2020goal, which was first set in 2009, had also not accounted for inflation.
They noted that merely correcting the $100bn for inflation would bring it to between $139bn and around $150bn a year. (Such calculations depend on the rate of inflation applied to the starting figure, as well as the base year for the calculation.)
Civil-society groups at COP29, such as Power Shift Africa, estimated that the impact of inflation would cut the “real” value of the $300bn to $175bn in today’s money by 2035. This is based on an annual inflation rate of 5%.
In its analysis, the Guardian opted for an inflation rate of 2.4% – based on the average rate in the US over the past 15 years. This is taken to reflect the conditions for governments contributing climate finance and the currency much of it would be provided in.
The figure below shows the impact of an inflation rate of 3%. This is based on input from economists and analysis by the Center for Global Development (CGD), which, in turn, is based on the World Bank’s global GDP deflator.
If inflation over the next decade follows this trend, the $300bn pledged in 2024 would only be worth $217bn in today’s money in 2035 – a 28% reduction in value.
In order to offer climate finance with a real value of $300bn in 2035, countries would have needed to set a goal for that year of around $415bn.
(The figures in the chart above cannot be directly compared with the existing pledges made by governments and MDBs, as those too would need to be adjusted for inflation.)
CGD modelling suggests that if developed countries’ climate-finance contributions simply increase in line with expected inflation and gross national income (GNI) growth, they would reach $220bn by 2035.
The CGD analysts write in a blog post that “by the time the new goal is met, beneficiary countries will find that the purchasing power of these resources has eroded significantly”.
Independent experts, as well as climate-vulnerable countries themselves, emphasised both before and during COP29 that more than $1tn dollars will be needed each year to help developing countries deal with climate change. Many developing nations said that around $600bn of this should come directly from developed countries’ public coffers.
With such a relatively small amount of finance pledged for the NCQG, some developing countries have already indicated that they may scale back their future climate ambitions.
The post Analysis: Why the $300bn climate-finance goal is even less ambitious than it seems appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Why the $300bn climate-finance goal is even less ambitious than it seems
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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