Teresa Anderson is the global lead on climate justice at ActionAid International.
Imagine your wealthy neighbour has just driven their giant truck into your living room, destroying half your home.
But instead of offering to pay for the costs of the rebuilding, they just offer you a high-interest loan. You end up not only paying all the costs for the damage your neighbour caused to you, but also end up giving them money through the interest they earn off you.
That’s just crazy. That would never happen in real life, right?
Wrong.
That’s exactly what is happening when it comes to climate change.
And that’s why the UN COP29 climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan this week and next will essentially determine whether or not we’re serious about putting our money where our mouths are to fix the climate crisis.
Rich nations “on track” to double adaptation finance but huge gap persists
Injustice of the climate crisis
The wealthy countries of the Global North have been industrialising for more than a century. In comparison, Africa, Asia and Latin America have produced far fewer of the emissions responsible for heating our planet today. Unfortunately for them, however, the warming of our planet has disrupted weather patterns in the Global South first and far worse. This is the fundamental injustice of climate change.
This year alone, Bangladesh has suffered three major destructive cyclones, as well as catastrophic floods. The most severe drought in 100 years means Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe are in a deepening hunger crisis. Floods in East Africa earlier this year affected 1.6 million people.
From cyclone to drought, Zimbabwe’s climate victims struggle to adapt
Events similar or worse than the recent terrible flooding in Spain have been happening for years across the Global South, but out of the international media spotlight. Meanwhile, the list of slow-onset climate impacts such as rising sea levels, disrupted rainfall, desertification and temperature grows steadily longer.
This means the costs of climate change are escalating. Countries in the Global South are being forced to repeatedly rebuild their schools, hospitals, roads and homes in the aftermath of disasters. Entire regions’ economic activities are put on hold while communities recover. Crop failures are leaving families hungry, and farmers without their livelihoods. The Global South is being pushed deeper into poverty by the climate impacts caused by others.
Twice more spent on ice cream
Frontline countries also know that in order to limit the harm from the droughts, floods and cyclones of the future they too need to invest in adaptation and resilience. And somehow, on top of all of this, also scale up renewable energy and green technologies to cut emissions. But with climate change pushing them deeper into debt, they simply can’t do it all.
You would think, then, that with climate disasters starting to be felt in the Global North, rich polluting countries would be motivated to pay for the climate harm caused to others, as well as action to prevent the crisis getting far worse.
Apparently not.
In 2022, the countries of the Global North only provided $28-35 billion between them in grants to support climate action in the Global South. For context, the global ice cream market share that year was $71 billion.
At the moment we’re paying twice as much for ice cream as we are for a liveable planet.
Even worse, rich countries seem to see the climate crisis as an opportunity for profit. They’ve been providing loans – often with high interest rates – to the countries desperate for any means to finance their recovery and transition. To add insult to injury, they insist on labelling these loans as “climate finance.”
But loans can actually worsen the climate crisis for low-income countries. Among climate-vulnerable counties, 93% are in or at risk of debt distress. Not only do indebted countries prioritise national revenue spending on debt repayment instead of climate action, but in order to earn foreign currency for debt repayment, they may often be forced to expand their fossil fuel developments and exports.
New climate finance goal
COP29 climate negotiations are set to agree a New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG), to boost climate action and protect communities in the Global South. To stop the spiral and move climate action forward, developing countries need developed countries to provide at least $1 trillion a year in grants. In fact, $5 trillion a year would be a fairer number, considering the decades of past damage that has been wreaked and paid for by the Global South.
But negotiations are fraught. Developed countries are keen to keep their grant-based contributions minimal, while blithely claiming that “private finance can fill the gap” and pushing the concept of a “multi-layered goal” that would count loans, corporate investments and all sorts of potentially exploitative private finance flows.
Rich countries are also trying to shift the responsibility onto others by demanding that the new goal require developing countries to contribute finance. Not only does this re-open a key Paris Agreement decision (not a can of worms we should be opening), but assumptions that countries like China have equivalent responsibilities to the Global North are simply not true. China’s cumulative historical per capita emissions – and thus financial responsibilities for fixing the climate – are still far below those of developed counties.
Rather than finger-pointing, the Global North needs to ask itself whether it genuinely wants to avert catastrophic climate change or not. In fact, the recent US election result means that giving our planet any chance of a safe future may require other developed countries to do more – not less – than their fair share.
Because the escalating crisis means that someone is going to have to pay at the end of the day. The question at COP is whether the bill lands at the door of those that are causing the damage, or those that suffer it.
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https://www.climatechangenews.com/2024/11/10/frontline-countries-must-not-be-stuck-with-the-climate-bill-at-cop29/
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.”
-ENDS-
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
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
The African Group wants dedicated space on tripling adaptation finance, the Green Climate Fund and trade, setting up a possible clash
To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.