Governments are drawing their battle lines over what a new global climate finance goal should look like as talks face time pressure for a decision to be made at Cop29.
With fewer than nine months to go until the UN climate summit in Baku, negotiators are currently staring at a long list of options and no agreed details for the goal that is due to kick in from 2025.
They still need to work out everything from how large the overall sum should be, to what it needs to pay for, over how many years, and the best way to monitor the money.
But nations are at odds over what upcoming negotiations should prioritise.
Most developing countries want to talk about numbers and commit rich nations to stump up the highest amount of cash possible with the fewest strings attached. Meanwhile, developed countries argue it shouldn’t be just them paying and want the focus to be first on broadening the list of contributors.
Moving past contentious $100bn target
Experts say acrimony over the existing $100-billion annual target – which the new goal is set to replace – makes finding common ground more difficult.
Developed countries failed to provide that promised yearly sum to developing nations by the initial 2020 deadline and, again, in 2021. They now “look likely” to have met the goal in 2022, according to an assessment by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) based on preliminary data that is not publicly available.
Comment: Loss and damage must be a focus of IPCC’s next reports
The new collective quantified goal (NCQG) is due to be agreed at this year’s climate summit. The decision will be especially important for vulnerable countries that want to know how much money they are likely to receive as they draft their new climate plans due in 2025.
Two things are certain: It needs to be more than $100 billion a year and take into account the priorities of developing countries. Everything else is still to play for.
After several meetings in the last two years, negotiators produced dozens of options across the main issues at stake. They now need to narrow those down to hand politicians a draft text with the most contentious issues to be fought over in Baku in November.
New submissions made by countries this month give an insight into how they think those discussions should play out.
How big should the goal be?
Determining the exact size of the new goal is one of the thorniest elements to untangle.
The final figure will vary depending on the answers to a series of interconnected, and still unresolved, questions: What is the timeframe? Does it need to fund only emissions-cutting and adaptation measures, or loss and damage too? Will it include private finance?
“The $100 billion was just a political number, while the new goal needs to rely on science and an assessment of actual needs,” said Natalia Alayza, a climate finance expert at WRI, a US-based think-tank.
Switzerland proposes first UN expert group on solar geoengineering
The sources used to work that out will play a crucial role. One much-referenced document in negotiations so far is the needs determination report written by the UNFCCC’s standing committee on finance. Published in 2021, it tallied the money required by developing countries to fund actions listed in their climate plans. The report concluded a total of $5.8-5.9 trillion will be needed up to 2030.
India and the Arab group of countries, led by Saudi Arabia, argue this means rich nations have to provide at least $1 trillion a year under the new goal.
Experts say the chances of that are close to zero. “Developed countries would never be able to convince their parliaments to spend those sums,” said Michai Robertson, a research fellow at London-based think-tank ODI and adviser to the group of small island nations. “What’s likely to happen is that, once an overall technical figure is established, there will be a highly political discussion on a fractional amount to be used for the goal.”
Who should pay?
Developing countries lament that their wealthy counterparts have so far shied away from any talk of numbers in the negotiations. The latest submissions from the US, EU, UK, Japan and Australia do not mention figures or possible sources to determine them.
Alpha Kaloga, the lead negotiator for the African group, told Climate Home donor governments should stop coming to the table with “empty pockets”.
“If they are negotiating in good faith, they should say ‘this is the amount that we commit now, the signal we want to give’,” he added. “They should come with ambitious numbers and then push for other countries that are in a position to do so to pitch in.”
Negotiations over the new climate finance goal at Cop28. Photo: IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis
But developed countries are pressing for discussions to move in the opposite direction. Before agreeing to any dollar amounts, they want to settle the question of who is going to fill the money box. Spoiler: They think it shouldn’t be just them.
In its submission, the EU says the new goal should take into account “the evolving capacities of countries to contribute to the provision and mobilization of climate finance”. The US laments that options to determine the contributor base “have not been sufficiently discussed or identified” in technical meetings to date.
Japan is more explicit: “Emerging countries with a capacity to do so” should be added to the list of contributors, its submission says. “Now is the time to move away from the binary opposition between developed and developing countries,” it adds.
Legal arguments over contributors
Last year, similar rhetoric animated discussions over who should pay into the nascent loss and damage fund. Rich countries argued that high-emitting nations like China, South Korea, Russia and the Gulf petrostates should contribute. In the end, developing nations were only “encouraged” to do so “on a voluntary basis”. The United Arab Emirates, host of Cop28, pledged $100 million to the new fund.
Most developing countries still strongly oppose any changes to the contributor base. They argue that the 2015 Paris Agreement puts the responsibility of fulfilling the climate finance goal squarely on the shoulders of rich governments.
“It is clear that they are attempting to shift the burden,” said Kaloga.
Shell accused of trying to wash hands of Nigerian oil spill mess
But developed countries point the finger at another section of the landmark Paris text. Article 2.1 calls for “making financial flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”. They claim this provides cover for their argument that everyone should pay for climate action.
ODI’s Robertson doesn’t see any realistic legal avenue to compel additional countries to stump up the cash for the goal. “Either nations self-declare that they now consider themselves ‘developed’ or all 195 parties agree to amend the Paris Agreement and redefine, top-down, who is and isn’t a developed country,” he said. “Both options seem impossible.”
Tracking delivery of pledges
Heated negotiations are also expected over the transparency arrangements to monitor if and how the money is delivered.
The earlier $100-billion pledge came with no official rules on what activities could be counted. As Reuters discovered, Italy provided money to a retailer opening gelato stores across Asia and Japan financed a new coal plant in Bangladesh. Both projects were included in the countries’ contributions towards the $100-billion goal.
The fundamental issue is that there is no internationally agreed understanding of what climate finance means.
Most developing countries are pushing for a common definition to be included in the new goal to be set at Cop29, alongside strict rules that prevent any accounting tricks.
“Transparency is one of the biggest lessons to learn from the $100-billion goal. Not only we don’t know if it’s been met, but how it’s been met,” said WRI’s Alayza. “We need to ensure that data is comparable, accurate and consistent – and accurately reflects what has been provided.”
The post Countries draw battle lines for talks on new climate finance goal appeared first on Climate Home News.
Countries draw battle lines for talks on new climate finance goal
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit
Prepared by a coalition of nine Western Australian union, industry, conservation, and community organisations—including UnionsWA, the Conservation Council WA, and the Smart Energy Council—the WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan provides a practical roadmap to transform Western Australia into a clean energy powerhouse while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
Western Australia stands at a pivotal crossroads: lead the global clean energy economy or watch investment, future industries, and secure jobs go elsewhere. The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan outlines a transformative blueprint to harness the state’s world-class solar and wind resources. Discover how legislated renewable targets, green iron manufacturing, and a dedicated regional training strategy can generate tens of thousands of local jobs, lower household bills, and build a resilient, net-zero future for all Western Australians.
