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Ben Abraham is a senior consultant at the Talanoa Institute and a former senior climate finance adviser at the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

COP30 must deliver a significant outcome on finance to meet its billing as an “implementation COP”. For whatever commitments Parties reach on mitigation, adaptation, or protecting nature, they will not come to pass if finance flows do not align with their implementation.

At COP29 in Baku, countries agreed a new collective goal on climate finance. By 2035, it aims to channel $300 billion a year in public climate support and $1.3 trillion in wider investment to developing nations. The announcement made headlines, but many countries in the Global South left disappointed, arguing the sums still fell far short of what is needed.

And they have a point. Estimates of climate investment needs in the Global South until 2030 are on the order of $5.1 trillion-$6.8 trillion. At a global level, the International Energy Agency estimates annual clean energy investment must reach $4 trillion – more than triple current levels – to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century. At the same time, governments spent $7 trillion on global fossil fuel subsidies in 2022 alone.

The imbalance is stark. While the finance flowing in the right direction is increasing, too much continues to support high-carbon activities, and too little reaches the communities most exposed to climate impacts. For example, only a tiny share (2.5%) of global climate finance flows reach sub-Saharan Africa, despite the region’s acute vulnerabilities.

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These figures illustrate the conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that while there is sufficient global capital to close the investment gap for meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, urgent action is required to redirect it.

Fully delivering on the new climate finance goal agreed at COP29 will be critical to the success of the Paris Agreement and donor countries are due to make renewed climate finance commitments this year. But as the statistics show, this cannot be where the conversation on climate finance ends.

This is where Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement comes in.

Aligning finance with global climate goals

The long-term goals of the Paris Agreement envision aligning global finance flows with climate action. Article 2.1c of the pact is the goal of “Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” It sits equally alongside the goals of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees (Article 2.1a) and adapting to climate change (Article 2.1b).

There has also already been action in the real economy towards this goal. Many major banks and investors have pledged to align their portfolios with net zero and, despite backlashes in some contexts, the majority are still committed to do so. More than 50 diverse jurisdictions are developing or using sustainable finance taxonomies, and the market for green and social bonds has expanded rapidly, reaching $6 trillion in 2025.

But valiant as these bottom-up efforts are, they are fighting an uphill battle. Without political support from the top they will continue to lack the speed and scale required.

    Balance and integrity are also issues: finance flows for adaptation receive much less attention than for mitigation (measures that reduce emissions), developing countries remain on the periphery of many initiatives, and oversight of potential greenwashing is insufficient.

    Meanwhile, what have the UN climate negotiations done to address global finance flows? The answer is, unfortunately, not much. But COP30 presents an opportunity to change this.

    Sending political signals on green finance

    Since COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, a series of workshops on Article 2.1c has created space for technical exchanges but not yet produced decisions to drive real-world change. The final workshop in this series has just taken place in Rome, and leaders will decide how to take forward Article 2.1c when they gather in Belém in November.

    At the Rome workshop, the need for the UN climate process to better support the realignment of finance flows was widely recognised. Otherwise, the rules and norms shaping these efforts will remain uncoordinated and left to other institutions where climate is not prioritised and decision-making is much less inclusive and transparent.

    While no COP decision can magically make all finance go green, the annual summits can send powerful political signals and leverage the Paris Agreement architecture to facilitate action and accountability.

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    For Article 2.1c, this could be done by establishing a framework for tracking progress towards aligning finance with climate goals, guiding policies to redirect investment, and ensuring developing countries can access the capital they need. The framework should also support balanced attention to both adaptation and mitigation.

    Political backing for the implementation of Article 2.1c would support COP30’s response to the ambition gap, with the national climate plans submitted so far still way off bringing us on track to limit global warming to 1.5C. 

    The importance of a COP30 decision on Article 2.1c

    Properly crafted, a decision on Article 2.1c could send a powerful signal that governments understand climate action is not just about having ambition, but also about aligning the financial system with those ambitions.

    For developing countries, this could signal that finance flows will finally help turn plans on paper into projects that change lives. For markets, it could provide the certainty needed to unlock greater private investment. For citizens, it can restore faith in international climate cooperation by tackling the issue at its core.

    Among all the decisions Belém could produce, a strong outcome on Article 2.1c could prove the most significant. If finance continues to support fossil fuels at today’s levels, the Paris Agreement will fail. If it is equitably redirected to clean energy and resilience, there is still a chance to deliver.

    While authority for the full suite of actions needed to achieve this lies beyond the remit of the UN climate regime, there is an important role for the COP process to play. Its credibility in an era of implementation depends on it.

    The post How COP30 could deliver an ambitious outcome on global finance flows  appeared first on Climate Home News.

    How COP30 could deliver an ambitious outcome on global finance flows 

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    Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents

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    A confused – and, at times, contradictory – story has emerged about precisely which countries and negotiating blocs were opposed to a much-discussed “roadmap” deal at COP30 on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

    Carbon Brief has obtained a leaked copy of the 84-strong “informal list” of countries that, as a group, were characterised across multiple media reports as “blocking” the roadmap’s inclusion in the final “mutirão” deal across the second week of negotiations at the UN climate summit in Belém.

    During the fraught closing hours of the summit, Carbon Brief understands that the Brazilian presidency told negotiators in a closed meeting that there was no prospect of reaching consensus on the roadmap’s inclusion, because there were “80 for and 80 against”.

    However, Carbon Brief’s analysis of the list – which was drawn up informally by the presidency – shows that it contains a variety of contradictions and likely errors.

    Among the issues identified by Carbon Brief is the fact that 14 countries are listed as both supporting and opposing the idea of including a fossil-fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome.

    In addition, the list of those said to have opposed a roadmap includes all 42 of the members of a negotiating group present in Belém – the least-developed countries (LDCs) – that has explicitly told Carbon Brief it did not oppose the idea.

    Moreover, one particularly notable entry on the list, Turkey – which is co-president of COP31 – tells Carbon Brief that its inclusion is “wrong”.

    Negotiating blocs

    COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, had finalised the first “global stocktake”, which called on all countries to contribute to global efforts, including a “transition away from fossil fuels”.

    Since then, negotiations on how to take this forward have faltered, including at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where countries were unable to agree to include this fossil-fuel transition as part of existing or new processes under the UN climate regime.

    Ahead of the start of COP30, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a surprise call for “roadmaps” on fossil-fuel transition and deforestation.

    While this idea was not on the official agenda for COP30, it had been under development for months ahead of the summit – and it became a key point of discussion in Belém.

    Ultimately, however, it did not become part of the formal COP30 outcome, with the Brazilian presidency instead launching a process to draw up roadmaps under its own initiative.

    This is because the COP makes decisions by consensus. The COP30 presidency insisted that there was no prospect of consensus being reached on a fossil-fuel roadmap, telling closed-door negotiations that there were “80 for and 80 against”.

    The list of countries supporting a roadmap as part of the COP30 outcome was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks. Until now, however, the list of those opposed to the idea had not been revealed.

    Carbon Brief understands that this second list was drawn up informally by the Brazilian presidency after a meeting attended by representatives of around 50 nations. It was then filled out to the final total of 84 countries, based on membership of negotiating alliances.

    The bulk of the list of countries opposing a roadmap – some 39 nations – is made up of two negotiating blocs that opposed the proposal for divergent reasons (see below). Some countries within these blocs also held different positions on why – or even whether – they opposed the roadmap being included in the COP30 deal.

    These blocs are the 22-strong Arab group – chaired in Belém by Saudi Arabia – and the 25 members of the “like-minded developing countries” (LMDCs), chaired by India.

    For decades within the UN climate negotiations, countries have sat within at least one negotiating bloc rather than act in isolation. At COP30, the UN says there were 16 “active groups”. (Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has not sat within any group.)

    The inclusion on the “informal list” (shown in full below) of both the LMDCs and Arab group is accurate, as confirmed by the reporting of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), which is the only organisation authorised to summarise what has happened in UN negotiations that are otherwise closed to the media.

    Throughout the fortnight of the talks, both the LMDCs and Arab group were consistent – at times together – in their resistance to proscriptive wording and commitments within any part of the COP30 deal around transitioning away from fossil fuels.

    But the reasons provided were nuanced and varied and cannot be characterised as meaning both blocs simply did not wish to undertake the transition – in fact, all countries under the Paris Agreement had already agreed to this in Dubai two years ago at COP28.

    However, further analysis by Carbon Brief of the list shows that it also – mistakenly – includes all of the members of the LDCs, bar Afghanistan and Myanmar, which were not present at the talks. In total, the LDCs represented 42 nations in Belém, ranging from Bangladesh and Benin through to Tuvalu and Tanzania.

    Some of the LDC nations had publicly backed a fossil-fuel roadmap.

    ‘Not correct’

    Manjeet Dhakal, lead adviser to the LDC chair, tells Carbon Brief that it is “not correct” that the LDCs, as a bloc, opposed a fossil-fuel roadmap during the COP30 negotiations.

    He says that the group’s expectations, made public before COP, clearly identified transitioning away from fossil fuels as an “urgent action” to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal “within reach”. He adds:

    “The LDC group has never blocked a fossil-fuel roadmap. [In fact], a few LDCs, including Nepal, have supported the idea.”

    Dhakal’s statement highlights a further confusing feature of the informal list – 14 countries appear on both of the lists of supporters and opposers. This is possible because many countries sit within two or more negotiating blocs at UN climate talks.

    For example, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu are members of both the “alliance of small island states” (AOSIS) and the LDCs.

    As is the case with the “informal list” of opposers, the list of supporters (which was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks) is primarily made up of negotiating alliances.

    Specifically, it includes AOSIS, the “environmental integrity group” (EIG), the “independent association of Latin America and the Caribbean” (AILAC) and the European Union (EU).

    In alphabetical order, the 14 countries on both lists are: Bahrain; Bulgaria; Comoros; Cuba; Czech Republic; Guinea-Bissau; Haiti; Hungary; Kiribati; Nepal; Sierra Leone; Solomon Islands; Timor-Leste; and Tuvalu.

    This obvious anomaly acts to highlight the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs on the informal list of opposers.

    The list includes 37 of the 54 nations within the Africa group, which was chaired by Tanzania in Belém.

    But this also appears to be a function of the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs in the list, many of which sit within both blocs.

    Confusion

    An overview of the talks published by the Guardian this week reported:

    “Though [Brazil’s COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago] told the Guardian [on 19 November] that the divide over the [roadmap] issue could be bridged, [he] kept insisting 80 countries were against the plan, though these figures were never substantiated. One negotiator told the Guardian: ‘We don’t understand where that number comes from.’

    “A clue came when Richard Muyungi, the Tanzanian climate envoy who chairs the African group, told a closed meeting that all its 54 members aligned with the 22-member Arab Group on the issue. But several African countries told the Guardian this was not true and that they supported the phaseout – and Tanzania has a deal with Saudi Arabia to exploit its gas reserves.”

    Adding to the confusion, the Guardian also said two of the most powerful members of the LMDCs were not opposed to a roadmap, reporting: “China, having demurred on the issue, indicated it would not stand in the way [of a roadmap]; India also did not object.”

    Writing for Climate Home News, ActionAid USA’s Brandon Wu said:

    “Between rich country intransigence and undemocratic processes, it’s understandable – and justifiable – that many developing countries, including most of the Africa group, are uncomfortable with the fossil-fuel roadmap being pushed for at COP30. It doesn’t mean they are all ‘blockers’ or want the world to burn, and characterising them as such is irresponsible.

    “The core package of just transition, public finance – including for adaptation and loss and damage – and phasing out fossil fuels and deforestation is exactly that: a package. The latter simply will not happen, politically or practically, without the former.”

    Carbon Brief understands that Nigeria was a vocal opponent of the roadmap’s inclusion in the mutirão deal during the final hours of the closed-door negotiations, but that does not equate to it opposing a transition away from fossil fuels. This is substantiated by the ENB summary:

    “During the…closing plenary…Nigeria stressed that the transition away from fossil fuels should be conducted in a nationally determined way, respecting [common, but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities].”

    The “informal list” of opposers also includes three EU members – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

    The EU – led politically at the talks by climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, but formally chaired by Denmark – was reportedly at the heart of efforts to land a deal that explicitly included a “roadmap” for transitioning away from fossil fuels.

    Carbon Brief understands that, as part of the “informal intelligence gathering” used to compile the list, pre-existing positions on climate actions by nations were factored in rather than only counting positions expressed at Belém. For example, Hungary and the Czech Republic were reported to have been among those resisting the last-minute “hard-fought deal” by the EU on its 2040 climate target and latest Paris Agreement climate pledge.

    (Note that EU members Poland and Italy did not join the list of countries supporting a fossil-fuel roadmap at COP30.)

    The remaining individual nations on the informal list either have economies that are heavily dependent on fossil-fuel production (for example, Russia and Brunei Darussalam), or are, like the US, currently led by right-leaning governments resistant to climate action (for example, Argentina).

    Turkey is a notable inclusion on the list because it was agreed in Belém that it will host next year’s COP31 in Antalya, but with Australia leading the negotiation process. In contrast, Australia is on the 85-strong list of roadmap supporters.

    However, a spokesperson for Turkey’s delegation in Belem has told Carbon Brief that it did not oppose the roadmap at COP30 and its inclusion on the list is “wrong”.

    Saudi negotiators in conversation with COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago. Do Lago is on the left with his eyebrows raised, and 9 negotiators can be seen gathered around him, all people forming a circle.
    Saudi negotiators in conversation with COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago. Credit: IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis.

    Media characterisations

    Some media reporting of the roadmap “blockers” sought to identify the key proponents.

    For example, the Sunday Times said “the ‘axis of obstruction’ – Saudi Arabia, Russia and China – blocked the Belém roadmap”.

    Agence France-Presse highlighted the views of a French minister who said: “Who are the biggest blockers? We all know them. They are the oil-producing countries, of course. Russia, India, Saudi Arabia. But they are joined by many emerging countries.”

    Reuters quoted Vanuatu’s climate minister alleging that “Saudi Arabia was one of those opposed”.

    The Financial Times said “a final agreement [was] blocked again and again by countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia”.

    Bloomberg said the roadmap faced “stiff opposition from Arab states and Russia”.

    Media coverage in India and China has pushed back at the widespread portrayals of what many other outlets had described as the “blockers” of a fossil-fuel roadmap.

    The Indian Express reported:

    “India said it was not opposed to the mention of a fossil-fuel phaseout plan in the package, but it must be ensured that countries are not called to adhere to a uniform pathway for it.”

    Separately, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs during the closing plenary at COP30, India had said: “Adaptation is a priority. Our regime is not mitigation centric.”

    China Daily, a state-run newspaper that often reflects the government’s official policy positions, published a comment article this week stating:

    “Over 80 countries insisted that the final deal must include a concrete plan to act on the previous commitment to move beyond coal, oil, and natural gas adopted at COP28…But many delegates from the global south disagreed, citing concerns about likely sudden economic contraction and heightened social instability. The summit thus ended without any agreement on this roadmap.

    “Now that the conference is over, and emotions are no longer running high, all parties should look objectively at the potential solution proposed by China, which some international media outlets wrongly painted as an opponent to the roadmap.

    “Addressing an event on the sidelines of the summit, Xia Yingxian, deputy head of China’s delegation to COP30, said the narrative on transitioning away from fossil fuels would find greater acceptance if it were framed differently, focusing more on the adoption of renewable energy sources.”

    Speaking to Carbon Brief at COP30, Dr Osama Faqeeha, Saudi Arabia’s deputy environment minister, refused to be drawn on whether a fossil-fuel roadmap was a red line for his nation, but said:

    “I think the issue is the emissions, it’s not the fuel. And our position is that we have to cut emissions regardless.”

    Neither the Arab group nor the LMDCs responded to Carbon Brief’s invitation to comment on their inclusion on the list.

    The Brazilian COP30 presidency did not respond at the time of publication.

    While the fossil-fuel roadmap was not part of the formal COP30 outcome, the Brazilian presidency announced in the closing plenary that it would take the idea forward under its own initiative, drawing on an international conference hosted in Colombia next year.

    Corrêa do Lago told the closing plenary:

    “We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand…As president Lula said at the opening of this COP, we need roadmaps so that humanity, in a just and planned manner, can overcome its dependence on fossil fuels, halt and reverse deforestation and mobilise resources for these purposes.

    “I, as president of COP30, will therefore create two roadmaps, one on halting and reverting deforestation, another to transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner. They will be led by science and they will be inclusive with the spirit of the mutirão.

    “We will convene high level dialogues, gathering key international organisations, governments from both producing and consuming countries, industry workers, scholars, civil society and will report back to the COP. We will also benefit from the first international conference for the phase-out of fossil fuels, scheduled to take place in April in Colombia.”

    Fossil-fuel roadmap

    ‘Supporters’

    Antigua and Barbuda
    Australia
    Austria
    Bahamas
    Barbados
    Belgium
    Belize
    Brazil
    Cabo Verde
    Chile
    Colombia
    Cook Islands
    Costa Rica
    Croatia
    Cyprus
    Denmark
    Dominica
    Dominican Republic
    Estonia
    Fiji
    Finland
    France
    Georgia
    Germany
    Greece
    Grenada
    Guatemala
    Guyana
    Honduras
    Iceland
    Ireland
    Jamaica
    Kenya
    Latvia
    Liechtenstein
    Lithuania
    Luxembourg
    Maldives
    Malta
    Marshall Islands
    Mauritius
    Mexico
    Micronesia
    Monaco
    Mongolia
    Nauru
    Netherlands
    Niue
    Norway
    Palau
    Panama
    Papua New Guinea
    Peru
    Portugal
    Romania
    Samoa
    São Tomé and Príncipe
    Slovakia
    Slovenia
    South Korea
    Spain
    St. Kitts and Nevis
    St. Lucia
    St. Vincent and the Grenadines
    Suriname
    Sweden
    Switzerland
    Tonga
    Trinidad and Tobago
    UK
    Vanuatu

    Both ‘supporter’ and ‘opposer’

    Bahrain
    Bulgaria
    Comoros
    Cuba
    Czech Republic
    Guinea-Bissau
    Haiti
    Hungary
    Kiribati
    Nepal
    Sierra Leone
    Solomon Islands
    Timor-Leste
    Tuvalu

    ‘Opposers’

    Algeria
    Angola
    Argentina
    Armenia
    Bangladesh
    Benin
    Bolivia
    Brunei
    Burkina Faso
    Burundi
    Cambodia
    Central African Republic
    Chad
    China
    Democratic Republic of the Congo
    Djibouti
    Ecuador
    Egypt
    El Salvador
    Eritrea
    Ethiopia
    Gambia
    Guinea
    India
    Indonesia
    Iran
    Iraq
    Jordan
    Kuwait
    Laos
    Lebanon
    Lesotho
    Liberia
    Libya
    Madagascar
    Malawi
    Malaysia
    Mali
    Mauritania
    Moldova
    Morocco
    Mozambique
    Nicaragua
    Niger
    Nigeria
    Oman
    Pakistan
    Palestine
    Paraguay
    Philippines
    Qatar
    Russia
    Rwanda
    Saudi Arabia
    Senegal
    Somalia
    South Sudan
    Sri Lanka
    Sudan
    Syria
    Tanzania
    Togo
    Tunisia
    Turkey
    Uganda
    United Arab Emirates
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Yemen
    Zambia

    Additional reporting by Daisy Dunne.

    The post Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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    Members of America’s Largest Power Grid Can’t Agree on How to Power Data Centers

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    With no consensus among stakeholders, PJM Interconnection’s 10-member board now must craft a policy for surging data-center demand that has already driven up electricity prices for millions.

    After months of wrangling over how to handle surging power demand from AI-driven data centers and the resulting spike in electricity prices for millions, members of PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest grid operator, could not agree on a solution.

    Members of America’s Largest Power Grid Can’t Agree on How to Power Data Centers

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    “Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat

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    During the closing session of COP30, the representative of the Holy See – the governing body of the Vatican – was booed. That reaction was triggered by his statement requesting that any mentions of gender should be “understood as grounded on the biological sexual identity that is male and female”.

    The comments followed a heated debate that had threatened to derail talks on the new Gender Action Plan (GAP) in Belém, stirring concerns that growing political pressure in the wider world to roll back advances on gender issues had seeped into the UN climate process.

    Gender was a hotter-than-usual topic at this COP. Negotiators were tasked with agreeing a new GAP – a document to guide how gender features in climate decisions and action over the next 10 years, including balanced participation in climate talks, ensuring that climate projects consider different gender needs in their implementation, and collecting data that is broken down by gender.

    Part of a broader work programme on gender, which was renewed during COP29, work on the GAP started at June’s mid-year talks in Bonn. That produced a text containing 99 brackets, denoting issues to be resolved. As disagreement among parties multiplied in Brazil, the last draft made public during COP30 had 496 brackets, making it a small miracle that a final version of the GAP was approved at the summit.

    COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel transition but triples finance for climate adaptation

    The most controversial issue was the definition of gender, which the Holy See, Argentina, Paraguay and Iran wanted to refer to as “biological sex”, reflecting their concerns about trans and non-binary people. One draft version of the text included a footnote added by each of those countries marking their objections. None of them made it into the final decision.

    While Russia did not submit its own footnote, Climate Home News understands that it pushed hard to replace the term “gender” with “women and girls” and “men and boys”. During its intervention at the closing plenary, Russia’s delegate said his government works to strengthen the institution of marriage, which it understands as “a relationship between a man and a woman”.

    Another thorny issue was “sexual and reproductive health”, a term that did not appear in the final text. The Holy See was among those that fought hard to exclude it. Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, the head of delegation, said in an interview with Vatican News that tackling this topic was “a diversion from the real issue under discussion”, adding that “the inclusion in the text of sexual and reproductive rights, which include abortion”, is something the city-state could not “in any way accept.”

    “Cruel” intrusion into climate debate

    Partway through COP30, as the rows over gender surfaced, women’s rights organisations denounced the situation at a press conference.

    “We’ve always had fights on the Gender Action Plan… but this is different. This is trying to actually push women back by having this binary definition,” said Mary Robinson, former Irish president who is now a member of the Elders. “It’s so cruel. I mean, it’s actually unbelievable that this would enter into our space.”

    Demonstrators, with lamps called ‘Poronga’ on their heads, attend a march in defense of the living forest, territorial rights, and global climate responsibility during the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

    Demonstrators, with lamps called ‘Poronga’ on their heads, attend a march in defense of the living forest, territorial rights, and global climate responsibility during the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belem, Brazil, November 13, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

    Bridget Burns, executive director of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), said it felt like a coordinated backlash – and it wasn’t limited to the gender negotiations.

    Argentina and Paraguay also raised objections to definitions of gender in the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) negotiations. But they didn’t get what they wanted there either.

    “The outcomes we got in the JTWP decision are the most ambitious from a rights and inclusion perspective ever,” said Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition with Climate Action Network International, noting that the protestations by specific countries on gender would only be added to the UN climate summit’s report. “They didn’t get what they wanted, which was a footnote in each decision.”

    Had that happened, it would have posed “a very serious threat to the process”, said Rosemberg. Burns said allowing definitions on what words mean for individual parties to creep into the formal decision texts could have set “a bad precedent”.

    Claudia Rubio Giraldo, associate for policy and programmes at WEDO, said that such resistance to human rights language shows how important advocacy is – and advocacy groups should be ready to act when negotiation rooms that were previously “progressive points of discussion” become “battlegrounds” on human rights in climate action.

    Activists say COP30 row on human rights language reflects wider threat
    Members of civil society during the People’s Plenary (Photo: UN Climate Change – Kiara Worth)

    Nonetheless, noted Burns, this was the first time sexual and reproductive rights had entered a gender draft, albeit in brackets.

    And she pointed to a deliverable in the final GAP document that asks governments to submit the findings of national assessments, including on “health, violence against women and girls, and care work in the context of gender and climate change”.

    “We’re hopeful that [this] gives us the opportunity for countries who are making progress on this to actually share their solutions,” Burns added.

      A GAP without money

      On finance, however, campaigners were disappointed with the outcome. They had pushed for women to be given direct access to funding – and for gender to be addressed as part of the climate finance negotiations. Yet, even at a COP where one of the main wins was a tripling of finance for adaptation by 2035, there was little progress on funding for “gender-responsive” work.

      Burns described the talks as “a massive failure” on that front. But she pointed to the COP29 decision to renew the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, which says that the Green Climate Fund, the biggest UN climate fund, should “strengthen the gender-responsiveness of climate finance”, and facilitate access to climate finance for grassroots women’s organisations.

      In 2022, they received just 4% of government aid spent on adaptation. On mitigation efforts to reduce emissions, that number dropped to 2%.

      Burns said advocacy groups will also push for finance across broader areas like tax, trade and debt to intersect with gender needs and unlock more funds for climate programmes targeted at women.

      For now, she said, it is important to ensure COP30’s progress is protected and that the agreement on the GAP in Belém in allows for “focusing on solutions and ways in which we can both enhance climate action and gender equality without having to renegotiate our rights every single year”.

      The post “Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat appeared first on Climate Home News.

      “Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat

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