The United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Brazil this week in New York reiterated their promise to lead by example and produce by the end of this year nationally determined contributions (NDCs) aligned with the Paris pact’s objective of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

But they failed to announce any numbers or flesh out what a 1.5C-compatible NDC means for them. Observers keen to understand how the three nations will reconcile a science-based climate plan with their expanding fossil fuel ambitions were left disappointed.

“We witnessed a worrying case of cognitive dissonance,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy manager with Oil Change International, which campaigns against fossil fuels. “At a time of grave climate urgency, the COP Troika is failing to deliver the leadership and clarity needed to raise climate ambition.”

The Troika has previously indicated that there is no universally accepted definition of what a 1.5°C-aligned climate plan should or should not include. “It’s up to each one to decide,” Brazil’s head of delegation, Liliam Chagas, said at the Bonn climate talks in June, raising fears of “1.5-washing”.

‘Ten tests’ for a 1.5C climate plan

That view is not shared by many climate experts and campaigners who are issuing suggestions for what such an NDC should look like.

A group of leading civil society organisations this week published an open letter that outlines “ten essential tests” to determine whether countries’ plans meet the 1.5C goal – seen as safer than the other, higher ceiling of “well below 2 degrees” set in the Paris Agreement.

The tests outlined in the letter include a commitment to end fossil fuel expansion, detailed and measurable targets both for the whole economy and for specific sectors such as transport, building and agriculture, provisions for wealthier countries to scale up climate finance, and measures to protect natural ecosystems and make food systems greener.

UN climate chief warns of “two-speed” global energy transition

“A lot of the failure or success of [the] Paris [Agreement] is going to be determined in the next eight or nine months as countries put forward their next round of NDCs,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G and veteran watcher of the UN climate process. “If these don’t step up and meet the mark, it’s really our last chance… this is a critical moment.”

To limit average temperature rise below 1.5C, scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say global emissions need to peak before 2025, shrink 60% by 2035 from their 2019 level, and continue on a steep downward trajectory, reaching net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by around mid-century.

Fossil fuels in the spotlight

The next round of updated NDCs, due by next February, should turn the goals agreed at COP28 last year into practice, advocates say. In the energy sector, that means laying out plans to triple renewable energy capacity and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030 – and, crucially, transition away from fossil fuels.

Climate experts and campaigners have stressed that a 1.5C-aligned NDC needs to include an explicit commitment to no new coal, oil and gas exploration, as well as credible targets for slashing existing production and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.

“Claiming to lead on climate while continuing the expansion of oil, gas and coal production is indefensible at this point,” said Natalie Jones, policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. “Governments need a plan for reducing reliance on fossil fuel production,” she added.

Senegalese banker Ibrahima Cheikh Diong picked to lead new loss and damage fund

Fossil-fuel reduction targets will be closely watched as a litmus test for the ambition of major hydrocarbon producers, including the Troika of COP presidencies. The UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil are set to increase their combined oil and gas production by 33% by 2035, according to a new analysis by Oil Change International.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aims to turn his country into the world’s fourth largest petrostate (it now ranks ninth), opening new extraction frontiers both on land and offshore, including in the Amazon. This plan contrasts with Brazil’s promise to present a new NDC  aligned with the 1.5C temperature goal this year – reaffirmed by Lula himself in his speech at the UN General Assembly this week.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

“As long as the Brazilian government insists on extracting oil and gas, especially in the Amazon, talking about decarbonising the economy and a fair energy transition is a pure exercise in rhetoric,” said Ilan Zugman, Latin America managing director for campaign group 350.org.

Azerbaijan has similarly come under renewed criticism this week with researchers at Climate Action Tracker (CAT) slamming its existing climate goals as “critically insufficient”.

The scientific watchdog said Azerbaijan was among “a tiny group” of countries that had weakened the targets in its latest NDC, published in late 2023, contradicting the Paris Agreement’s requirement that each climate action blueprint should be more ambitious than its predecessor. CAT singled out the Caspian country’s plans to expand fossil fuel production by 30% over the coming decade and its rising methane emissions.

Azerbaijan is now working on a new NDC that should be in line with the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, the government said.

Looking beyond energy

But, while energy is a crucial piece of the puzzle, it is not the only economic sector that needs a dramatic transformation in order to limit global warming to 1.5C. Agriculture, food production, industry and transport all contribute a large share of greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts say that spelling out specific emissions reduction targets for each sector can help guide policy-making across different government departments and attract larger investments.

COP29 aims to boost battery storage and grids for renewables, as pledges proliferate

E3G’s Meyer told journalists that “a robust consultation and transparent engagement process” are also key to building a 1.5C-aligned NDC. “If you’re going to get buy-in to implementation of the NDCs on the ground – which is the real key to reducing emissions – you need all those sectors engaged and backing the plan,” he added.

Mike Hemsley, deputy director at the Energy Transitions Commission think-tank, told Climate Home that sectoral targets will also play a pivotal role in engaging the private sector, alongside roadmaps and policy packages to implement them. “There’s increasing recognition that if you don’t have that in there, you’re not going to actually realise the ambition you set out in the NDCs,” he said.

‘Creative accounting’ trap

With goals only as good as the measures taken to meet them, a significant gap remains between the already-deficient set of national climate targets on paper and action in the real world.

Civil society groups say that governments need to outline how they are planning to hit their NDC targets in a clear and transparent way without resorting to “creative accounting”, as CAT warns.

A major sticking point is the reliance on forests and other carbon sinks to bring down emissions, because of the complex calculations involved and the unpredictable risk of carbon being released back into the atmosphere if, for instance, trees are decimated by a forest fire.

Australia, for example, has been accused by CAT of creating an “illusion of progress” towards its NDC targets by constantly revising its carbon sink assessment upwards and allowing more room for increased fossil fuel emissions.

E3G’s Meyer is sceptical that, despite the promises of 1.5C -aligned NDCs, countries will step up with the level of ambition needed – and said the task for COP30 host Brazil next year should be to encourage countries to work out how to fill the gaps.

“We need to see [the next NDCs] as a floor not a ceiling, and say what more can we do to supercharge ambition,” he said.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini and Megan Rowling; editing by Megan Rowling)

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The UN Summit of the Future that took place in New York over the weekend pitched strengthened diplomatic cooperation as the key to protecting the rights of present and future generations from environmental breakdown, amongst other issues.

As politicians, business leaders and civil society gathered in New York to discuss urgent progress needed on climate and nature, the upcoming diplomatic calendar was in sharp focus – in particular, the deadline for updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in February 2025. NDCs are commitments on emissions-cutting that countries submit to the UN every 5 years, and they are central for the Paris Agreement’s mechanism to ratchet up countries’ decarbonisation ambitions over time.

But now is also the moment to start asking, what comes after and with the NDCs?

UN climate chief warns of “two-speed” global energy transition

The conversation must evolve to ensure that international targets are translated into strong national laws to guarantee their full delivery. For us at ClientEarth, that looks like two things at national level; the adoption of Future Generation Acts to incorporate long-term thinking into governance, and the implementation of ambitious and science-driven framework climate laws.

UK leads the way

So far, framework climate laws have been adopted in almost 60 countries around the world. The first was the UK’s groundbreaking 2008 Climate Change Act. It committed the UK government to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with a pathway to achieving ‘Net Zero’ by 2050, and setting 5-year carbon budgets. It also established the Climate Change Committee – an expert, independent body that advises the government and ensures emissions targets are evidence-based and independently assessed.

Research says it has been working: a study from the London School of Economics suggests that the act has helped to reduce UK emissions over its 16 years, especially in the power sector: the share of low-carbon generation increased from 20% in 2008 to 45% in 2016, and experts say the act was a major driver of this transformation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its sixth assessment report, agreed that “climate laws have been growing in number and have helped deliver mitigation and adaptation outcomes”.

COP29 aims to boost battery storage and grids for renewables, as pledges proliferate

Such framework climate laws create a clear and binding legal foundation for climate action that stands the test of time and changing politics. They create stronger obligations on states to protect both present and future generations. They also provide clarity to business and investors on the long-term direction of policy and economic change.

It’s an area of environmental advocacy and legislation ClientEarth has worked in for over a decade. In Poland, in the absence of a legally binding government-level plan to tackle climate change, our lawyers put together a draft law to put pressure on the government to act. Our lawyers, alongside partners, are now supporting the development of framework climate laws in multiple countries, as we did with New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Act in 2018.

Future generations in focus

Future Generations Acts, like that introduced by Wales in 2015, are also a significant step that countries can take. Children and those not yet born have no recourse to participate in current decision-making processes, yet they stand to suffer the effects of our deteriorating climate far more than those currently holding power.

The first ever Declaration on Future Generations, agreed on Sunday by world leaders at the UN, was a commitment by countries to take account of future generations in decision-making. Their rights should now also be fully recognised in national law.

The law has an immense power to shape the world around us – both for those living in it today, and those who will inherit it in the future – and that’s why having the commitments made in the heady world of international diplomacy enshrined in binding national laws is a crucial next step for global climate action.

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Simon Stiell told investors at an event in New York that the efforts of many developing countries to adopt more renewables like solar and wind power “are hamstrung by sky-high costs of capital… or mired in spiralling debt crises”.

Because the “mega-trend” in clean energy is occurring unevenly, most investors are missing out on “gigantic, unrealised opportunities” outside of wealthy countries, he added, warning that this also poses a major threat to global action to curb climate change and avoid its worst impacts.

“I’ll be blunt: if more developing economies don’t see more of this growing deluge of climate investment, we will quickly entrench a dangerous two-speed global transition,” Stiell said.

UN climate chief calls for “exponential changes” to boost investment in Africa

Such an imbalance is both “unacceptable” and “self-defeating” for all economies, he emphasised. It would make halving global emissions by 2030 to keep warming in check “near impossible”, he explained, as well as causing havoc in international supply chains as extreme weather bites.

The disruptions experienced by businesses during the COVID19 pandemic “will seem like a minor hiccup compared to what an unchecked climate crisis will inflict” in an interdependent world economy, Stiell warned. “If a two-speed global transition sets in, ultimately everyone loses, and loses badly,” he added.

IEA weighs in

A report issued on Tuesday by the International Energy Agency (IEA), showing how to meet the energy transition goals agreed at last year’s COP28 climate summit, noted that advanced economies and China account for more than four out of every five dollars invested in clean energy since the Paris Agreement was signed in late 2015.

The IEA called for stronger and more stable policies to attract private investment in clean energy in other regions, together with larger, better-targeted international support spurred partly by a new climate finance goal due to be agreed at COP29 this November.

The agency also pointed out that, although governments are worried about how to make the energy transition socially acceptable, globally they are still spending nine times more making fossil fuels cheaper than on subsidising clean energy for consumers.

COP29 aims to boost battery storage and grids for renewables, as pledges proliferate

The report said that the COP28 goal of tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030 is within reach – but meeting it will not automatically mean that more renewable electricity will clean up power systems, lower costs for consumers and slash fossil fuel use.

Achieving those aims will require complementary efforts to enable clean electrification – including building and modernising 25 million kilometres of electricity grids by 2030 and adding 1,500 gigawatts (GW) of energy storage capacity by that year, largely with batteries.

Fast-tracking a green future

With businesses and financiers gathered in New York for the annual Climate Week NYC, alongside leaders attending the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), international agencies and green groups emphasised the need for concerted action by the public and private sectors to put internationally agreed energy targets into practice.

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, said the goals set at COP28 could put the global energy sector “on a fast track towards a more secure, affordable and sustainable future”. “To ensure the world doesn’t miss this huge opportunity, the focus must shift rapidly to implementation,” he added.

Other organisations also outlined key ways to make this happen. Mission 2025 – a coalition of businesses, sub-national governments and researchers, among others – appealed to governments to set “investment-positive policies” that can provide confidence to mobilise large-scale finance for the energy transition.

Using data from the Energy Transitions Commission, an international think-tank, Mission 2025 identified three such policies that have already worked in industralised countries and some large developing economies to help boost finance for renewables and electric vehicles.

It recommended fixing gigawatt targets for renewable energy deployment at the national level as the UK and India have done for example; derisking investment in renewable energy – by offering support such as competitive long-term contracts or tax credits – as in Europe, the India, China and the United States; and setting a date of 2035 or earlier to end sales of petrol and diesel passenger vehicles, as the European Union has done.

Global push to triple renewables requires responsible mining of minerals

Mission 2025 said these policies should be extended to other places, and could roughly double today’s investment in clean power and electric vehicles to $1 trillion of the $3.5 trillion needed annually for the energy sector to play its part in limiting warming to 1.5C.

Mike Hemsley, deputy director of the Energy Transitions Commission, told Climate Home these policies are as cheap as their fossil fuel equivalents, so there is no net cost to countries from implementing them as part of the updated national climate plans governments are now preparing – including for lower-income and emerging economies.

“We hope that this can give them some confidence to say if we set ambitious policy, we can attract private investment, realise some of our own goals and not necessarily cost ourselves anything – all for the good of the climate,” he said, adding that strong policies can also help lower investment risk in developing countries.

Renewables cheaper than fossil fuels

Research released on Tuesday by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) at the Global Renewables Summit during UNGA showed that with renewable power capacity additions setting a record of 473 gigawatts in 2023, four-fifths of newly commissioned, utility-scale renewable projects had lower costs than their fossil fuel-fired alternatives.

Power from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, it found, has seen its cost plummet to around $0.04 per kilowatt hour in just one year, making it 56% cheaper than fossil fuel and nuclear options in 2023. Overall, the renewable power deployed globally since 2000 has saved up to $409 billion in fuel costs in the power sector, IRENA added.

“Thanks to low-cost renewables in the global market, policy makers have an immediate solution at hand to reduce fossil fuels dependency, limit the economic and social damage of carbon-intensive energy use, drive economic development and harness energy security benefits,” IRENA’s Director-General Francesco La Camera said in a statement.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling, editing by Joe Lo)

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In the two decades since Greenpeace launched its groundbreaking Energy Revolution scenarios in 2005, renewable energy uptake has accelerated at speeds most analysts could not have anticipated, but leaders at the UN General Assembly must act even more boldly. 

Greenpeace’s pioneering vision for the clean energy transition was once considered unrealistic, perhaps even idealistic – but given the rapid changes to the world’s power generation, the scenarios have been proven right and perhaps not even ambitious enough. 

It’s a charge, however, that can be more readily laid at current world leaders attending the UN General Assembly in New York this month who lack sufficient ambition.  

Under existing policies and targets, the International Energy Agency (IEA) found in June that renewable energy capacity would grow to 8,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, missing the target to triple capacity to 11,000 GW – an objective agreed at the UN climate talks COP28 in Dubai last year. 

Global goal of tripling renewables by 2030 still out of reach, says IRENA

Political leaders must now turn that promise into action as part of a fast and fair fossil fuel phase-out. These are issues to also be discussed in New York at the first Global Renewables Summit, which I will attend, and where governments will be urged to ‘Now Deliver Change’. 

With new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for 2035 due by next February, it is essential they include robust policies and targets for renewable energy expansion, while also targeting the goal of doubling the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. 

Let’s be clear: the consequences for a lack of action are dire. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from under-nutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone. Climate action now is essential. 

All three of the world’s hottest years on record – 2023, 2020 and 2016 – have occurred since the Paris Agreement in 2015 set the goal to limit warming to 1.5°C and already 2024 is on track to eclipse last year.  

Renewable energy implementation must now reach the heights of our stated ambition if we’re to stave off the worst impacts of a changing climate and protect people from harm. 

Rising demand fuels risk

The IEA is urging governments to close the “bridgeable” gap between current policies and what’s required to meet the 2030 renewables targets.  

That requires an accelerated roll-out of renewables, but we must also improve energy efficiency and total energy demand reductions to minimise the adverse impacts of mining for the critical minerals essential for today’s clean energy. 

The IEA notes solar PV and wind energy capacity accounted for 95 percent of growth in renewables expansion in 2023 as demand for critical minerals remained robust. 

Q&A: What you need to know about clean energy and critical minerals supply chains

However, to limit warming to 1.5°C, one of the latest IEA scenarios estimates that $800 billion of investment in mining for critical minerals is required up to 2040. This need for new supplies, however, puts Indigenous Peoples, local communities and the environment at risk. 

Critical minerals present a multitude of complex issues, such as the inherent uncertainty of the demand estimates. Rather than ramping up mining to an uncertain projection while trying to limit adverse impacts, we must first understand which impacts might be avoidable. 

Opaque supply chains

Actions to achieve overall energy, resource and material reductions, such as through energy efficiency and circularity, must be combined with long-term holistic societal and policy changes to minimise environmental impacts and stay within planetary boundaries. 

Better public transport systems, as outlined in Greenpeace’s Sustainable Mobility Vision, can greatly reduce the need for critical minerals in electric vehicles – a huge source of forecast demand – while promoting more equitable access to mobility. 

Critical minerals in short supply should be prioritised for the energy transition above other uses, and substitution is a great opportunity to leverage abundant and lower-impact options (for example, EV batteries that do not use key metals such as nickel and cobalt). 

Human rights must be “at the core” of mining for transition minerals, UN panel says

Where mining is required, it needs to occur within limits, avoiding sensitive areas – including the deep sea – and it must respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, ensuring their empowerment in decision-making, with benefits shared equitably. 

There’s also plenty of work to be done in ensuring adequate governance, traceability, human rights, worker safety and equity across the energy transition supply chains, which often remain relatively opaque and fraught with challenges. 

But like any problem, there are solutions if we’re brave and prepared to not only envision a new world, but commit with concerted action to bringing it to life. Imagine how far and how quickly we could go if today’s political leaders put their full weight behind an urgent renewables push. 

The climate crisis demands bold, transformational change and the only thing stopping us is a lack of political will to act now. 

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Governments are being asked by the COP29 presidency to back a pledge to increase global energy storage capacity six times above 2022 levels, reaching 1,500 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, and to add or refurbish more than 80 million kilometres of electricity grids by 2040. The voluntary initiatives are currently in draft form and will be finalised after consultation with states and other partners.

The targeted increase in the ability to store energy, mainly in batteries, is what the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said is needed to meet the goal set last year at COP28 to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 while maintaining energy security.

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As renewable sources tend to produce more variable power than fossil fuels – generating it only when it is windy or sunny, or water is available – batteries and other forms of energy storage can help even out those peaks and troughs in electricity supply and keep homes and economies running.

How ambitious?

Iola Hughes, research manager at London-based battery consultancy Rho Motion, told Climate Home the COP29 target is not ambitious as it sounds.

Rho Motion predicts that by 2030, there will be 1,400 GW just from battery storage – so 1,500 GW of energy storage, which includes a non-battery method called pumped hydro, would not be a big jump.

The IEA forecasts that, under current policies, energy storage will reach 1,000 GW by 2030. Its “Net Zero Emissions scenario”, which is compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, includes 1,500 GW of energy storage by 2030.

Global installed energy storage capacity in 2023 (left), 2030 under the stated policies scenario (middle) and 2030 under a 1.5C-compatible Net Zero Emissions scenario (right). Light purple is utility-scale batteries, dark purple is behind-the-meter batteries and orange is pumped hydro (Photos: IEA)

Hughes said “the real challenge” will be ensuring that storage is installed on a global basis to support the adoption of renewables. The IEA expects that the vast majority of battery storage is likely to be in China and in advanced economies.

The IEA has said that rolling out battery storage “will require action from policy makers and industry, taking advantage of the fact that battery storage can be built in a matter of months in most locations”.

In a report on batteries released this April, it also said the supply of the minerals needed for them – like cobalt, lithium and nickel – must be scaled up and that policy-makers should remove barriers to this expansion.

Lithium tug of war: the US-China rivalry for Argentina’s white gold

Richard Black, policy director at think-tank Ember, agreed that the COP29 storage target looks “absolutely achievable” given the current high rate of growth. He told Climate Home the boom in solar energy over the last 20 years shows that exponential growth can continue but “the market can’t do everything”.

Governments must provide confidence and bring costs down by agreeing to the COP29 pledge and setting policies that boost energy storage, he added.

The other part of the pledge, to refurbish or add 80 million km of electric grids, also comes from an IEA report, which said in 2023 that this target is necessary to meet the world’s climate goals.

The proposed 80 million km is the equivalent of the entire existing global grid – or about 2,000 times the Earth’s circumference.

The world’s transition to clean energy will mean running more machinery – like cars and heating and cooling systems – on electricity. Bigger and better electrical grids are needed to provide that power, the IEA says.

Trend for more initiatives

The core job for COP presidency teams is to get all countries to agree by consensus on formal UN agreements and decisions setting out what they will do to tackle climate change.

But in recent years, presidencies have also sought to get as many governments as possible to agree to voluntary initiatives, like the COP26 pledge to end forest loss and land degradation by 2030 and the COP28 declaration to adapt and transform food systems to respond to the  “imperatives of climate change”.

Fernanda Carvalho, climate lead at WWF International, said this trend has picked up since COP26 in Glasgow, adding that the progress of these initiatives should be monitored. “As a trend, it needs to be studied – it needs to be questioned,” she told journalists this week.

UK calls for “ambition” on COP29 climate finance goal but won’t talk numbers

The 14 initiatives announced under the COP29 “Action Agenda” include a platform to support the nexus between climate finance, investment and trade, a declaration to unlock a global market for clean hydrogen, an appeal for a “COP Truce” and a declaration on sustainable tourism including sector targets in national climate plans.

Alden Meyer, a senior associate with think-tank E3G, said he had held several discussions with the COP29 presidency over its raft of initiatives and had “stressed the need to break the cycle of each presidency putting its own bright, shiny objects on the table as a legacy and claiming success”.

Last December, a report from the Climate Action Tracker research group estimated that of the total emissions savings that could be achieved by the pledges announced at COP28, around a quarter was already included in government climate plans, around a quarter was additional and achievable, and around half was unlikely to be achieved without further action to improve the initiatives.

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On Thursday, the Industrial Transition Accelerator launched at COP28 said weak demand for green products is curbing needed investment of up to $700 billion in low-carbon projects in heavy-emitting industries such as aluminium, steel and cement.

Meyer said the COP29 presidency had assured him they were talking to previous COP hosts about how to institutionalise the various voluntary pledges Baku is leading and make them deliver. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; additional reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Megan Rowling)

Correction: This article was corrected on 23/09/24 to clarify that the 80 million km of grids target is for 2040. It originally incorrectly said it was for 2030.

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In his first major speech in government, after the Labour Party won power in July, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told journalists, diplomats and green campaigners at London’s Kew botanical gardens that, at COP29, the UK will “push for the ambition needed to keep 1.5 alive”. That refers to a global warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed by governments, which is set to be exceeded unless climate action is ramped up dramatically.

However, when asked by Climate Home, Lammy declined to say how high the UK government thinks the new global finance goal should be – or when it will put forward its proposal. “I can’t make announcements here because if I did, I’d go back to a storm with [UK finance minister] Rachel Reeves,” he said.

The new collective quantified goal (NCQG) will determine how much finance should be mobilised for developing countries each year starting from 2025. It is the main outcome expected from COP29 in Baku in November. The current goal of $100 billion per year is widely viewed as inadequate and was only met two years late in 2022.

Developing-country negotiators have complained that rich nations are refusing to discuss the size (or quantum) of the NCQG. Developed countries have instead pushed to expand the list of contributors to the goal to include wealthier, higher-emitting developing countries like China and Saudi Arabia.

Developing-country “frustration”

“It’s been frustrating for most of the developing-country negotiators,” Kenyan climate finance negotiator Julius Mbatia told journalists on Monday. He accused developed countries of trying to “dodge” their mandates and responsibilities and “avoid committing to a scale that they are actually not committed to deliver politically”. “It’s a tactic,” Mbatia said. “Unfortunately, it’s being played at the worst moment when we are talking about meeting the needs and priorities of vulnerable countries.”

Melanie Robinson, global climate director at the World Resources Institute, said on Tuesday the context has changed since the current finance goal was set 15 years ago, as the impacts of climate change have worsened. All countries now need to get onto a net-zero, climate-resilient economic development pathway that benefits everyone and restores nature, she said.

“We know just how huge that challenge is for all countries,” she added. “But while developed countries and China can probably find the finance to make that transition themselves, we know that developing countries will need international finance.”

Slow progress in Baku risks derailing talks on new climate finance goal at COP29

Asked about developing countries’ frustrations, Lammy said: “I recognise the disjunct between rhetoric sometimes in the Global North and the real pressing needs that exist in the Global South as they look to see is that rhetoric going to be actually matched with funds.”

He said it remains the government’s “ambition” to deliver on the promise made by the former ruling party to provide £11.6bn ($14.7bn) in climate finance between 2021 and 2026, while Labour undertakes a regular review of spending plans. It had inherited from the Conservatives a £22bn ($29bn) “black hole” in Britain’s annual budget and a “tough fiscal environment”, he added.

The previous government cut the UK’s overseas aid target from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income. The new one has repeated the Conservatives’ pledge to reverse this when “fiscal circumstances allow”. Lammy said on Tuesday he wants to restore it “as quickly as possible, and of course that’s a discussion that I’m continuing to have with colleagues in the [finance ministry]”.

He added that the UK government will propose to Parliament a guarantee for the Asian Development Bank which will “unlock $1.2 billion in climate finance for developing countries in the region”. He repeated the previous government’s support for a capital increase for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development “subject to reforms”.

Clean Power Alliance

In addition, Lammy announced that the UK will appoint two new envoys for climate and nature, reporting to climate minister Ed Miliband and environment minister Steve Reed respectively. It will also launch a Clean Power Alliance that aims to help countries leapfrog fossil fuels and transition to energy systems based on clean power.  The UK itself aims to get all its electricity from clean sources by 2030.

“Of course, there are different obstacles from different countries but, despite several other valuable initiatives pushing forward the energy transition, there is no equivalent grouping of countries at the vanguard of the transition,” Lammy said.

He added that the alliance would “focus on diversifying the production and supply of copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel – the lifeblood of the new economy”. These minerals are key to the global energy transition because they are needed for things like electric cables and batteries – and their processing is largely dominated by China, something that is a concern for Western politicians.

Lammy stressed the need to “bring these commodities to market faster while avoiding the mistakes of the past”, and said the UK would help developing countries “secure economic benefits while promoting the highest environmental standards for mineral extraction”.

Human rights must be “at the core” of mining for transition minerals, UN panel says

Climate Home has reported on how mining of these minerals has hurt local communities in Indonesia and Argentina – and may fail to bring fair benefits to local communities in Zimbabwe. A United Nations panel said last week that supply chains for critical minerals should not harm the local environment or human rights.

Lammy said the UK would restore its international credibility on climate action – after perceived indifference from former Conservative prime minister, Rishi Sunak – by ending new licenses for oil and gas production and overturning an effective ban on onshore wind power.

“We’re bringing an end to our climate diplomacy of being ‘do as I say, not as I do’,” he said.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

This article was amended after publication to clarify Lammy’s comments on the UK’s existing £11.6bn climate finance commitment.

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About 30 developing countries sent civil servants to a five-star hotel in Ghana for official UN discussions on “response measures” that are meant to tackle how to maximise the benefits and minimise the negative impacts of a green transition.

All nations agreed at last year’s COP28 climate conference to hold the latest round of talks in a hybrid format. There were no officials present from wealthy governments – and while the US, the European Union and the UK did log on virtually, they kept their cameras largely off during the two-day meeting. Their rare contributions were received badly by developing countries.

The UN negotiations on response measures to climate change have been going on for more than 20 years. The 2015 Paris Agreement reinforced a commitment by governments to consider the concerns of countries “with economies most affected by the impacts of response measures”, particularly developing ones.

In a video message introducing this month’s talks, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said national climate action plans “will have profound societal implications – both good and bad”, adding “it’s crucial that we ensure more people benefit and that harms are mitigated”.

Participants then swapped their experiences on issues such as electric motorcycles with dead batteries being dumped on the roadside in the Maldives and the effects of EU deforestation regulations on Ghana’s cocoa industry.

Slow progress in Baku risks derailing talks on new climate finance goal at COP29

Towards the end of the first day, Egyptian negotiator Khaled Aly Hashem Hussein observed that “it’s very unfortunate that in this room we don’t have a single representative from the developed countries”. This, he said, made it a monologue rather than a dialogue.

Brazil’s negotiator Vitor Mattos Vaz echoed those concerns, saying that no interventions had been heard from developed countries, including contributions via video.

He said governments “can not cherry-pick only the commitments and the tracks [of the Paris Agreement] that they are interested in”. When they do so, “they are eroding the spirit of mutual trust and reciprocal commitment,” he added, calling for the “absence of their comments”  to be formally noted.

Don’t mention CBAM

The next day, representatives from the US, EU and UK did speak up. Sewek Gasiorek from the British government said he regretted not being there in person as “it is a very busy time”, with G20 meetings and the United Nations General Assembly running concurrently.

He then clashed with negotiators from South Africa and Saudi Arabia over the extent to which the talks should focus on how measures taken by developed countries affect poorer nations. Gasiorek said “there is no agreement, as has been suggested earlier” that the discussions should be limited to that – which led South Africa’s Mahendra Shunmoogam to accuse him of “revisionist agenda-setting”.

Shunmoogam then asked the EU’s representative, Belgian government official Catherine Windey, how the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) – a tax system that is due to be fully in place by 2026 and is regarded by some emerging economies like South Africa as a protectionist measure that will damage their economies – was compatible with the “do no significant harm principle.”

Windey responded that the dialogue “isn’t supposed to address any individual policies of parties, so I’m not going to enter that discussion here”.

One developing-country official at the meeting told Climate Home they had left Ghana feeling they had wasted their time. “It was getting us into the discussion about nothing really of value,” the bureaucrat said.

Talks will continue at COP29 in Baku in November on whether and how to hold a further year’s worth of workshops and dialogue on response measures.

At COP28, governments agreed that “measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade”. Developing countries are likely to push at COP29 for agreement on more explicit criticism of policies like the EU’s carbon border tax.

(Reporting by Joe Loe; editing by Megan Rowling)

This article was updated on Sept. 18 to add that the talks were planned in a hybrid format and to clarify a comment from the UK’s negotiator.

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In a big country in the Americas, an elderly leader defeats his far-right rival by a narrow margin. After facing a coup attempt, he starts off his government reversing several of his predecessor’s nefarious policies, rebuilding federal governance, and proposing ambitious measures to tackle the climate crisis.  

Soon, however, it becomes clear that the new government can’t or won’t deliver on its progressive agenda: the president faces severe hurdles in a Congress tipped to the far right. The elderly leader’s popularity starts to plummet, even though the economy is doing fine, and job creation is spiking. His adversaries regroup and are threatening to take back power at the next election. 

This could be the story of the United States – but it’s Brazil we’re talking about. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78, led in 2022 a coalition of democrats across the political spectrum to salvage his country from the grip of autocracy. 

Slow progress in Baku risks derailing talks on new climate finance goal at COP29

His tightly won election was greeted with relief by the international community, but environmentalists had particular reason to celebrate. Lula’s far-right predecessor saw Amazon deforestation increase by 60% over his term and turned Brazil not only into a pariah but also a liability for the global fight against climate change. 

More environmentally conscious now than in his two previous administrations, former union leader Lula vowed to prioritize the fight against the climate crisis. He gave native Brazilians a seat in the cabinet for the first time and promised to end deforestation by 2030, starting by re-enacting the Amazon Deforestation Control Plan that made Brazil a success story of climate mitigation in the past.  

Lula also offered to host the 2025 UN climate conference in Brazil, resurrected environmental funds, and corrected his country’s embattled climate pledge. The efforts paid off: in 2023, Amazon deforestation dropped by 22% and a further reduction is expected for 2024. 

Stakes high for COP30

Understandably, the world started to look up to Brazil in search of leadership in this critical decade for climate action. As Europe has weakened its position in the wake of farmers’ protests and the rise of the far-right in the EU parliamentary elections – and the US faces the threat of Trump 2.0 – the stakes are getting higher for COP30, the UN climate summit to be held in the rainforest city of Belém next year under Lula’s baton.   

Alas, Mr. da Silva has little to show for it so far. The Brazilian president has faced a hostile Congress, dominated by the far-right and the rural caucus, and empowered by Jair Bolsonaro, whose government gave Congress increased control over the federal budget.  

In the tough negotiations with such a parliament, the environmental agenda has been a bargaining chip. More anti-environment and anti-Indigenous bill projects have advanced since 2023 than during the whole Bolsonaro administration.  

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Right now, three dozen legislative proposals are under examination that could make it impossible to control deforestation and meet the country’s climate pledges. Lula’s negotiators in Congress have faced this barrage with embarrassing apathy. 

In a situation similar to that of Joe Biden in the United States, Lula’s polling has dropped – for no obvious economic reason. Joblessness is at its lowest since before the 2015 recession; inflation is under control; real wages have increased, and with them the purchasing power of families; and GDP growth, though mediocre, is steady.  

The perceived weakness of a government that has so far failed to make transformative changes (and whose greatest merit is precisely to make Brazil normal again) works as the proverbial blood in the water for the opposition: as a result, the government gets even weaker and more likely to forgo progressive agendas.  

New oil and roads

To be sure, a fair share of environmentalists’ disappointment stems from Lula’s own actions. The president has been determined to make Brazil the world’s 4th biggest oil producer (today it ranks 9th) at the expense of the global climate, even though Brazil right now is ablaze and its major cities are covered in smoke from record-breaking wildfires.  

Lula’s plan involves opening up new hydrocarbon frontiers both on land and offshore, including in the Amazon. His administration is also hell-bent on constructing a highly controversial road that cuts through the heart of the rainforest, which is feared to facilitate land-grabbing and illegal timber extraction and could increase emissions from deforestation by 8 billion tons by 2050.  

Human rights must be “at the core” of mining for transition minerals, UN panel says

Da Silva’s Workers’ Party is riddled with old-school backers of national development who don’t believe in the green economy and isolate pro-climate officials such as Finance Minister Fernando Haddad and Environment Minister Marina Silva. Bizarrely, Lula also bets his international prestige on non-starters, like Ukraine, while leaving unattended the only geopolitical agenda where he and his country could really make a difference: climate change.  

“Lead by example” is a motto of the Brazilian government whenever it tries to portray itself as a trusted champion of the Paris Agreement global warming limit of 1.5oC. Right now, the world would do better searching for leadership elsewhere. The good news is that Lula can still be persuaded to wear the mantle. COP30 is his golden opportunity – but it is a window that will not remain open for long. 

The post Is Brazil’s Lula a climate leader? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Negotiators gathered in Azerbaijan this week for the last round of technical talks before COP29, after mid-year discussions in Bonn ended in stalemate on several crunch issues.

Countries have yet to define critical aspects of the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) for climate finance, including who should pay – the so-called “contributor base” – and how much money they will mobilise – known as the “quantum”.

Commenting on this week’s talks, COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev said negotiations had come “a long way” but still risk “falling short”.

“Determination and leadership is needed from all parties to bridge the gaps that still divide us in this critical final phase,” Babayev said. “Sticking to set positions and failing to move towards each other will leave too much ground to be covered at COP29,” he added.

Bigger share of COP29 badges for Global South NGOs upsets rich-country groups

Civil society groups belonging to Climate Action Network (CAN), an international climate justice coalition, said in a joint statement they were disappointed at what they described as a lack of preparation by delegations from rich governments.

“The failure to achieve any clear outcome also means developing countries face uncertainty as they draw up their national climate plans, known as NDCs, because their ambition is necessarily dependent upon the availability of climate finance,” the statement said.

All countries are scheduled to submit more ambitious NDCs with stronger goals to cut planet-heating emissions and adapt to climate change impacts by February next year.

Contributor controversy

During this week’s Baku talks, sharp divisions remained over who should provide finance for vulnerable countries, as developing nations rejected rich governments’ proposals to elicit contributions from high-emitting emerging economies like China and wealthy developing states in the Gulf.

On behalf of the G77 group of developing countries, India’s negotiator told the final session that developed nations must provide “affordable, accessible and adequate” climate finance to avoid repeating the problems of the $100-billion goal, which was met two years late and mostly delivered in the form of loans.

“Instead we’re being asked to change the policy environment, divert our domestic resources away from the goal and even contribute to the goal,” said the Indian negotiator. “These are huge concerns for developing countries.”

The G77 group advocated for the inclusion of loss and damage finance in the NCQG – as the previous $100-billion goal covered only adaptation and mitigation – as well as pressing for funding to be delivered through “public finance in a grants-based or concessional manner”.

Green Climate Fund restructures, aiming to become donors’ “partner of choice”

Developed countries, meanwhile, held their ground and insisted that some developing nations should also pay up for the new goal, with the UK’s negotiator saying it cannot be argued the world has not changed since climate negotiations started in 1992, when the current country groupings were defined.

Global North governments also defended the role of private finance in the NCQG, with New Zealand claiming that, since trillions of dollars will be required, “we need to be speaking the same language” and “to do that we need structural transformation which can only happen by including [the] private sector”.

“Silence on finance”

Climate finance experts following the talks criticised developed countries for acting in “bad faith”, accusing them in the CAN statement of being “silent on future climate finance”.

“Just weeks before COP29 and after three years of process and engagements, we don’t even have an inkling of what developed countries will bring to the table for the NCQG,” said Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Washington.

Campaigners noted the time constraints as COP29 approaches fast, and expressed concern that ministers have been left with too many issues to resolve.

“It is shameful how developed countries have been undermining these finance negotiations. With less than two months to go until COP29, they should be scaling up their ambition and delivering their fair share of public finance through grants,” said Mariana Paoli, global advocacy lead at Christian Aid.

“If we get a weak finance outcome at COP29, it will be their fault – and devastating for communities in the Global South,” she added.

(Reporting by Sebastián Rodríguez, editing by Megan Rowling)

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After five months of discussion, the UN Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals launched a report on Wednesday containing a set of seven principles to underpin responsible, fair and sustainable extraction of critical minerals for clean energy supply chains.

“The essence of this report is to inspire care and caution to avoid the mistakes of the past,” said South Africa’s UN ambassador Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko, who co-chaired the panel. “We’ve already seen conflict generated by the scramble for these resources, particularly in my continent.”

Critical minerals – among them lithium, nickel and rare earth elements – are essential for manufacturing renewable energy technologies including electric vehicles and batteries. At the COP28 UN climate summit, governments agreed to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 – a goal that is also set to triple demand for minerals by the end of the decade.

Q&A: What you need to know about clean energy and critical minerals supply chains

But expanding mining at the scale required poses environmental and social risks, particularly for indigenous communities. A 2022 study, which reviewed more than 5,000 critical mineral mining projects, found that more than half were located on or near Indigenous lands.

Principles for just mining

The principles proposed by the UN panel say that human rights must be “at the core” of mineral value chains. They also urge safeguards for nature, adopting a justice perspective, sharing financial benefits with local communities, investing responsibly, ensuring accountability, and promoting international cooperation.

To enforce the principles, the panel also recommended five actions, among them setting up a high-level advisory group to facilitate dialogue on the issue and a transparency system to shed light on mineral value chains, which could be piloted in “two or three” mineral-producing developing countries.

UN chief António Guterres convened the panel of experts in April, gathering representatives from 25 governments, as well as from the mining industry, finance, Indigenous peoples and civil society.

He said its report identifies ways “to ground the renewables revolution in justice and equity, so that it spurs sustainable development, respects people, protects the environment, and powers prosperity in resource-rich developing countries”.

Indonesia turns traditional Indigenous land into nickel industrial zone

Suneeta Kaimal, CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) who participated in the panel’s deliberations, said that up to now the mining sector and the international system had failed developing nations in delivering justice and equity, but the panel report could serve as a first step for a “new norm”.

“A new paradigm in the mining sector is not going to transform overnight, but this is a very important series of first steps. Developing producer countries have a right to expect that the mining sector can deliver shared benefits, value addition and economic diversification,” Kaimal told Climate Home News.

Broader consultation on the principles will be carried out among governments and other groups in the run-up to November’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

Finding common ground

Both Mxakato-Diseko and Kaimal said the panel had convened a diverse group of experts, who were tasked with finding common ground on important issues such as transparency and benefit-sharing with local communities.

The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), an industry organisation that participated in the panel, issued a statement welcoming parts of the report, but noted it “had hoped and advocated for the Principles to go further in areas where the roles of governments and international bodies are essential to ‘raise the floor’ of mining practices”.

The ICMM has advocated for the adoption of industry standards on responsible mining, overseen by “an independent, multi-stakeholder governance body” outside the UN system. Civil society groups have criticised this initiative, arguing against “self-regulation” by business.

The UN can set a new course on “critical” transition minerals

NRGI’s Kaimal noted that the report had missed opportunities for more ambitious language in some parts, including the acknowledgement of Indigenous rights – where it cited only existing agreements – and more specific definitions of a “fair share” of benefits from mining projects and “no-go zones” where they should be avoided.

While the experts sought and built on common ground, the discussions took place in the context of global geopolitics, Kaimal said – “and you can’t ignore that elephant in the room”.

But, she added, governments now have “a pathway to continue the dialogue”. “Bringing the recommended actions to life will be an important part of the next steps,” she said.

(Reporting by Sebastián Rodríguez, editing by Megan Rowling)

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The company has agreed to pay British project developer UNDO to take around 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere – about 0.02% of the airline’s current annual emissions – through a form of carbon removal known as “enhanced weathering”.

Weathering is the natural process of rocks decomposing and converting carbon dioxide into solids and liquids. Enhanced weathering is when this natural process is artificially sped up by spreading ground-up rock on land, shorelines or in the ocean.

British Airways’ sustainability director Carrie Harris said carbon removals like this “form a key part of our roadmap to reach our climate goals”, adding that though the firm’s initial purchase was “relatively small, the partnership hopes to demonstrate the art of the possible and unlock future investment in carbon removals”.

Standard Chartered bank provided debt financing for UNDO to scale up its activities, and CFC provided insurance for the deal.

Most technology to cut aviation emissions directly is expensive, speculative or problematic, while sustainable aviation fuels are costly and in short supply. As a result – and with the industry and governments generally unwilling to reduce flight numbers – a large chunk of airlines’ green strategies counts on carbon removal technologies.

In 2022, transport ministers around the world agreed an “aspirational goal” for the international aviation industry to reach net zero by 2050.

The British government’s “Jet Zero Strategy” to get UK aviation to net zero by 2050 plans to achieve about a third of the industry’s emissions reductions through carbon removals.

British Airways projects that its own emissions will be higher in 2050 than in 2020, even with more efficient flying and sustainable aviation fuel. But it plans to still reach net zero emissions in 2050 by investing in carbon removal projects and buying carbon offsets.

Experts have questioned the legitimacy of some of the carbon credits previously purchased by the firm. A government official in Peru claimed in an investigation by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s journalism unit, that a forest protection project funded by British Airways over-estimated how much danger the forest was in – and therefore how much greenhouse gas was prevented from being released into the atmosphere.

More broadly, academics at the University of California Berkeley found last year that clean cooking projects, another type of carbon offset bought by British Airways, deliver only a fraction of the emissions reductions they advertise.

Jim Mann, the founder of UNDO, said in a statement that the aviation industry “will require large amounts of high-quality carbon removal to meet their net zero commitments” and that deals like the one with British Airways are needed to scale up the market.

He added that enhanced rock weathering is “one of the most robust carbon dioxide removal solutions available today because it is permanent, highly scalable and provides a host of co-benefits” – including better soil.

Green Climate Fund restructures, aiming to become donors’ “partner of choice”

Scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however, reported in 2022 that enhanced weathering is expensive due to the costs of mining, transport and disposal, and requires a lot of energy to grind up the rocks. Deployment at scale may require decades, they added.

While the technique has the positive side-effect of improving soil quality, the IPCC scientists found it can also have negative impacts caused by mining for the rocks and contamination of air and water.

A briefing by researchers for the UK parliament warned that if the technology were to take off, “there would likely be adverse environmental impacts due to the extent of quarrying required, such as destruction of habitats, noise, water and air pollution.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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John Podesta visited Beijing last week on his first trip to China as US climate envoy. Both countries’ new climate action plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), were high on his agenda, along with talks on methane, the circular economy and sub-national cooperation.    

The discussions on NDCs were relatively low-key, and that appears to be a strategic choice. With constant emphasis that China will take actions “at its own pace”, Beijing is unlikely to play into any “US persuades China” narrative, where China is hit up for political points that land in its competitor’s basket.   

Rather than pressuring, engagement with Beijing should be about building a strong case for China’s growing self-interest in raising climate ambition now, based on robust economic, political and social pillars. 

Bigger share of COP29 badges for Global South NGOs upsets rich-country groups

Podesta landed in China amid a bit of a climate policy revival. Beijing recently issued measures instructing provinces and industries to use more renewable power and to adopt better carbon accounting and confirmed that China will apply a hard emissions cap by 2030 at the latest. 

It’s good news for an international community that had started to worry whether the climate issue was slipping down China’s political agenda. But it’s not clear whether the recent positive signals from Beijing mean that China will necessarily be bolder in setting its new international commitments.  

Economic boon 

Climate diplomacy is heating up as the deadline for countries to submit 2035 NDCs approaches early next year. American and European climate diplomats are seeking affirmation from China that its new NDC will be ambitious. But China is keeping its cards close to its chest and has so far only confirmed it will deliver its new NDC on time in 2025. In response to its western counterparts, Chinese policymakers still stick to long-standing positions, arguing that they are more focused on implementation than on grand targets that may not be realized in the end.  

The obvious constraints to China’s ambition on its new NDC include the domestic economy, where ensuring steady growth remains the primary concern for governments at all levels. As a consequence, reforms that could cause structural changes in industries and jobs have stagnated.  

Lessons from trade tensions targeting “overcapacity” in China’s cleantech industry

But for China’s domestic economy, stronger climate action—buoyed by ambitious targets—is unmistakably an economic boon. The cleantech industry is becoming a new economic driver in China. And companies, especially in the solar and EV sectors, are rapidly expanding their manufacturing capacity in anticipation of strong future demand.  

While exports of cleantech products keep growing, the size of the domestic market means it will remain the “base” for Chinese companies. Chinese policymakers’ conventional “under-promise, over-deliver” style of target-setting is not enough for the industry. This year, China is already hitting its 2030 target on wind and solar installation. Stronger sectoral targets for the next 5 to 10 years will help expand the domestic market and give the industry and investors the confidence it needs. 

Responsible global power 

Internationally, China should also see the growing self-interest in setting strong targets and leading global climate action. It’s clear that China wants greater recognition as a responsible global power – and its decision to focus on implementation is a way of differentiating itself from Western powers. But this strategy will not succeed if it ends up presenting a weak target that gives no one aspiration or hope. 

By 2035, global emissions need to be reduced by at least 60% from 2019 levels, in order to keep within the 1.5°C warming limit, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In terms of China’s share, different models suggest a 30%-80% cut of emissions from the peak by 2035 is needed to align with the 1.5C global goal.  

Chinese policy makers may argue that modeling is too far from the economic and social realities. But it is exactly because of this gap that countries need ambitious policy targets to alter the curve of business-as-usual. Readjustments can only move us so far from business as usual. Emissions reductions need a well-defined target to orient themselves towards. 

Verra axing of Shell’s rice-farming carbon credits in China fuels integrity fears

The possibility of a Trump 2.0 inevitably constrains the potential for climate ambition in many countries. But China is an exception, thanks to its strong cleantech industry. The clean transition of China’s economy is independent of a Trump or Harris victory, so should be China’s international commitment.  

China should see the coming months as a window of opportunity to demonstrate its unimpeachable role in international climate politics. When the global process is at risk of losing momentum, a robust new NDC from China would be a shot-in-the-arm.   

Fundamentally, tackling climate change is a matter of public health and safety. China has just experienced a summer of historic flooding and weather disruption. In July alone, storms, floods and related disasters affected nearly 23 million people and caused $10 billion in direct economic losses, according to China’s Ministry of Emergency Management.  

Economic and political gains aside, there is no stronger evidence than broken families and communities to demand robust action to mitigate climate impacts.  

The post How to convince Beijing of the case for stronger climate targets appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mafalda Duarte, the Portuguese climate finance specialist who heads the fund’s South Korea-based secretariat, says that after her first year in the job, she’s still discovering gems in the portfolio.

The GCF “is delivering many interesting things that are actually not known”, she told Climate Home – from its large equity investments that support entrepreneurs to a pioneering green credit guarantee company and a blended finance platform to lend to local governments.

“Because we haven’t placed enough focus on impact – and assessing the impact and assessing results – we are not able to have that information and communicate it,” she said in an exclusive interview setting out her plans to thrust the world’s biggest multilateral climate fund into the spotlight with the launch of a new organisational strategy.

Operations at the GCF’s head office in the city of Songdo are being overhauled to better track the benefits of its support for people on the frontlines of the climate crisis, to strengthen its investment partnerships, and to offer a more efficient service to the organisations that deploy its money on the ground.

The fund now has a network of around 250 partners – ranging from large UN agencies to environment ministries, banks and green NGOs – that are implementing climate programmes in some 130 countries, mainly in the Global South.

Cheaper and faster

Ever since the GCF – set up under the UN climate process – started operating about a decade ago, a key ask from these partners has been reducing the costs and the time it takes to do business with the fund, especially those based in the poorest countries with limited administrative capacity.

“That is always the primary topic of debate,” noted Duarte, who previously ran the multilateral Climate Investment Funds.

It’s an issue the GCF has made some progress in addressing. It now takes a median of four and a half months from getting a project approved by the board to the first pay-out of cash for the work to start – down from 14 months in 2022.

UN climate chief calls for “exponential changes” to boost investment in Africa

This July, the fund set a new record with a locally-led adaptation project for mountain farmers in Bhutan and another to strengthen watershed ecosystem management and food security in Malawi receiving money 15 days after being greenlit by the board.

Duarte told Climate Home the fund is now looking at whittling down the period from a project’s concept note to its approval from over two years to nine months by next year.

Speeding up the project process is one pillar of the executive director’s new vision which she launched last September during the UN Climate Ambition Summit in New York, just weeks after starting the job.

“50 by 30” vision

Dubbed “50 by 30”, the strategy aims to enable the GCF to efficiently manage $50 billion by 2030. Since 2014, the fund has secured total pledges of $33.1 billion – of which it has so far received $18.5 billion.

Other key goals of Duarte’s vision include boosting help for the most vulnerable countries like Somalia, increasing participation by the private sector, and shifting emphasis from one-off projects to programmes that secure wider change.

“I think there was a general understanding in the organisation that there was a need for change and for reform,” its executive director told Climate Home.

When Duarte took over, the GCF was merging from a rocky few years under previous management which led to whistleblowers exposing a range of problems – from a lack of integrity in vetting projects to a toxic workplace culture marred by sexism and racism. The fund responded by strengthening its internal procedures for handling grievances.

In Somalia, Green Climate Fund tests new approach for left-out communities

With those problems behind it, the GCF is now concentrating on getting more bang for its buck at the community level where climate finance needs are rising fast in line with the effects of extreme weather and rising seas.

To that end, the fund is reorganising its 300 staff into four regional teams – covering Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia – which will offer an integrated service to countries, from programme design to delivery.

GCF Executive Director Mafalda Duarte (right) visits a GCF-supported coffee farm in Kenya, September 2023. (Photo: Green Climate Fund / Andy Ball)

From this month, 14 management-level hires are coming on board to lead Duarte’s twin drives to deliver greater real-world impact and win more co-investment from the private sector.

It’s an approach, she said, that’s needed to position the GCF as a “partner of choice” in a troubled world where international climate funds must compete for scarce resources from donor governments juggling multiple pressures.

“With the geopolitical context that we are facing globally, unless we see some shifts, it’s a challenging task to mobilise significant money,” said Duarte.

Bigger share of COP29 badges for Global South NGOs upsets rich-country groups

She has ideas for how to do that – whether it’s working more strategically with philanthropies like the Rockefeller Foundation or securing a share of new global climate levies being considered on activities such as fossil fuel production, aviation and financial trading.

“What I do want is GCF to be an institution that can deliver at scale, efficiently and with impact so that it becomes clear that it’s a key mechanism to deliver resources – whether they come from those [new] fiscal tools or they continue to come from state budgets,” Duarte said.

The GCF estimates that its projects to date will help 1 billion people become more resilient to climate change and avoid emissions equivalent to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Trump risk

For its second replenishment in 2023, the Green Climate Fund secured commitments of $12.8 billion from predominantly wealthy governments – its largest fundraising round to date – but that includes $3 billion from the United States, which has yet to deliver $1 billion of an earlier $3 billion pledge.

The White House struggles to persuade a Republican-led Congress to stump up money for the GCF at the best of times – but should Donald Trump be elected as its next inhabitant in November, all bets are off. During his first stint as president, the climate-sceptic Republican criticised the GCF harshly and delivered nothing.

Duarte admits the outcome of the US election could be a threat to the GCF’s bank balance – and stressed the importance of being prepared for any donors ducking their promises.

“It is a risk; it is a risk that we have seen before as well – and to be honest, it’s a risk that I don’t know if we will not see more of given political dynamics,” she added.

Donor priorities

That means Duarte’s new management team have a major task on their hands to persuade both existing contributors and new ones – which could include richer emerging economies, private foundations or venture capitalists – to pour billions more into its coffers this decade.

Its boss argues that wealthy governments should raise their ambition in backing the GCF – but believes the onus is on the climate community to show why putting money into efforts to cut planet-heating emissions and protect people from global warming in vulnerable parts of the world is a wise investment.

“There are significant macroeconomic and geopolitical constraints that countries are facing – but we also know that they mobilise funding for what they consider to be priorities,” Duarte said. “So I think the goal is for all of us to continue to make the case that [climate] needs to be more of a priority when countries think of allocating public resources.”

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Matteo Civillini)

This article was updated after publication to clarify comments on the US election, philanthropies and GCF disbursement timing.

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The UNFCCC has tweaked the algorithm used to allocate badges to observer groups this year in response to requests from governments to address a long-standing imbalance in the global representation of participants from civil society, academia and indigenous communities.

Attendees from rich industrialised countries have historically formed the biggest contingent of observers at the COP climate summits. Half of all observers at COP28 in Dubai last year hailed from a bloc of Western European nations, the US, Canada and Australia, even though countries in that group represent only 12% of the world’s population.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell wrote this week in a foreword to a handbook for observers that “we need the COP process and participation to reflect the fact that the climate crisis is hitting communities in every part of the world”.

Campaigners in the Global South have welcomed the reforms, while some green groups in the Global North quietly expressed surprise and disappointment over hefty cuts to their allocated quotas and the way the changes have been implemented.

Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based think-tank Power Shift Africa, said “finally we are getting a fairer distribution of observer badges”.

“It’s only right that people from countries that are most vulnerable to the climate crisis are able to attend the meetings that are supposed to address their needs,” he added. “For too long, the vast majority of COP badges have been held by people from a small part of the world but with disproportionately high emissions.”

Racquel Moses is the CEO of the Caribbean Climate-Smart Accelerator, which aims to modernise infrastructure through supporting projects like a solar panel assembly facility in Trinidad and Tobago.

She told Climate Home her organisation usually gets three badges but this year received six. “In past years, we had to rely on the generosity of other organisations for support with passes,” she said, “this year at COP, we finally have the ability to be adequately represented”.

Stela Herschmann said that Climate Observatory, the Brazilian think-tank she works for, has “for the first time received a number of credentials close to what we requested”.

She said that “no matter how many badges we requested” in previous years, they only got one or two. But this year, they asked for eight and received seven.

“I believe that this year we will see more Global South involved in the negotiations,” Herschmann said.

Letter of complaint

Some Global North groups, however, have been stunned by the scale of the changes and the impact on access to the climate summit for their staff. Climate Home is aware of several climate organisations with a historically large presence at COPs that have so far received just a handful of COP29 passes or, in more extreme cases, only one badge each.

Joseph Robertson is the head of the US-based Citizens’ Climate International, which trains volunteers to lobby their political representatives. He leads a joint delegation with partner organisations which usually gets about 12 badges, some of which it passes on to campaigners from the Global South. But this year, it got just two badges and so has had to rethink its plans for the summit.

A spokesperson for the UNFCCC told Climate Home that the “Western European and Others Group” was given 40% of the total number of observer badges in the initial allocation for COP29, made in August.

A US-based academic who is a coordinator for the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGO) constituency – one of the largest groupings of observers – voiced their concerns in a letter sent to Stiell at the end of August and seen by Climate Home.

UN climate chief calls for “exponential changes” to boost investment in Africa

It said that while RINGO appreciates efforts towards achieving “a more diverse and balanced representation” at COPs, the “drastic reduction” in badge allocations for Global North groups “has significant unintended impacts that undermine” that goal.

The letter argued that many groups use their allocations to bring young people to COPs and that organisations headquartered in the Global North provide badges to colleagues based in developing countries.

The letter went on to say that restricting observer quotas could prompt more NGOs to seek attendance passes from government delegations, known as ‘party overflow’. That would put countries “in position of controlling NGO access” and undermine the openness and transparency of negotiations, the RINGO coordinator warned.

The letter calls on the UNFCCC to revisit the quota allocation for COP29 and provide transparency in the process.

UN appeal for “global solidarity”

The UN climate body did not comment on the specific content of the RINGO letter. But a spokesperson told Climate Home “this will continue to be a gradual, iterative and difficult process”, and the UNFCCC secretariat “values any feedback from all stakeholders and will keep looking for ways to improve this process”.

They added that, as some organisations are now applying for an increase in their initial allocation, “the final breakdown of participants by geographic grouping won’t be known for some months”.

The Baku Olympic Stadium will be the COP29 venue (Photo: Matteo Civillini)

In the handbook for observers, published after the RINGO letter had been sent, Stiell pleaded with organisations affected by the changes to support the re-balancing efforts “in a spirit of global solidarity which is so crucial to success, at all levels”.

He also pointed out that the overall number of observer badges had to be cut this year due to a reduction of space at COP29. The summit hosted by Azerbaijan at Baku’s “Olympic Stadium” is expected to be smaller than last year’s gathering in Dubai, which saw a record-breaking 84,000 people attending. A member of Azerbaijan’s COP29 organising committee told Climate Home in April they were expecting around 40,000 people.

The changes to the quota allocation followed an explicit request from countries to the UNFCCC – formulated at June’s mid-year climate negotiations in Bonn – to “continue taking administrative measures to encourage a more diverse representation of observer organizations”.

Update: This article was updated on 9/9/2024 to include Stela Herschmann’s comments and on 10/9/2024 to include Joseph Robertson’s comments and on 11/9/2024 to include Racquel Moses’s comments

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini and Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Bigger share of COP29 badges for Global South NGOs upsets rich-country groups appeared first on Climate Home News.

“The first time I travelled by bus in Belém it was very difficult. It was so stuffy – there were so many people. It was so hot, I almost got sick,” José Martin, 26, an exchange student from Guinea, told Climate Home at a bus stop near Mangueirão stadium, a busy area of the city.

Belém has 870 public buses that carry around 470,000 passengers a day – but they lack cooling in a city where temperatures can rise to 34 or 35 degrees Celsius on Amazonian summer afternoons from July to November. Most of the buses are old, and users complain about broken seats and frequent breakdowns.

Candidates in mayoral elections have made campaign promises to modernise the bus network – also a hot topic among city councillors. But it was the prospect of hosting a global climate conference in November 2025 that boosted the push for a new, air-conditioned fleet.

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The first five state-of-the-art electric buses for a pilot project were delivered in early July and should have been on the road already. The vehicles – with a range of 270 kilometres and capacity for 76 passengers – are the same model used to ferry delegates around during COP28 in Dubai.

However, their deployment was held up by a dispute between Belém City Hall and the local political opposition, which lasted for nearly two months until it was resolved at the end of August.

Old buses continue to circulate in Belém (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

Soon after the buses arrived in the city, the Municipal Audit Court (TCMPA) published a precautionary measure, suspending the purchase contract for the initial batch of 10 buses issued by the Belém Executive Secretariat for Urban Mobility (Semob). The decision alleged flaws including overpricing and lack of planning.

In response, Semob’s head, Ana Valéria Borges, said the cost – which works out at R$3.6 million (around $636,500) per bus – took into account taxes and changes in import tariffs.

The left-wing Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) – of the city’s current mayor, Edmilson Rodrigues – claimed the suspension was an attempt to benefit the opposition’s mayoral candidate, Igor Normando of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) party. He is backed by his cousin, Pará state governor Helder Barbalho, who is a key player in the mobilisation for COP30.

Peak COP? UN looks to shrink Baku and Belém climate summits

The PSOL’s accusation stems from the fact that the councillor who took the decision to suspend the bus contract, Ann Pontes, was a federal deputy from 2003-2011 for the MDB party and has close ties to the Barbalho family.

In addition, Normando’s mother – an aunt of Barbalho – is secretary-general of the TCMPA, while another relative is director of the School of Public Accounts. The court did not respond to a request for comment from Climate Home.

Mayor Rodrigues himself also accused the Barbalho family of being involved in the TCMPA’s decision on social media.

https://twitter.com/EdmilsonPSOL/status/1827832289524318622

This post by Mayor Rodrigues on X says: “Belém’s buses are at a standstill due to an unfounded decision by the TCM, which questions the purchase of the vehicles. And guess what? The Barbalho family is involved, including Hilda Centeno Normando, Igor’s mother and TCM secretary. Stay tuned!”

Climate Home asked the press offices of Normando and the Pará State Government to comment on this claim but had not received a response at the time of publication.

COP30 tensions feared

Political scientist Eliene Silva, a researcher at the Laboratory of Geopolitical Studies of the Legal Amazon (LEGAL), warned that political tensions between the national, state and municipal authorities over arrangements for COP30 are likely to intensify, at least in the run-up to this October’s municipal elections.

Silva noted that in 2022, when there was first talk of Belém hosting the conference, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT), the governor of Pará and the mayor of Belém were allies, despite their differing political affiliations.

Helder Barbalho (left to right), President Lula and Edmilson Rodrigues in June 2023, at the COP30 announcement ceremony in Belém (Photo: Ricardo Stuckert)

But in recent months, there have been signs of a split, such as in March when Mayor Rodrigues was not seen with the Pará state governor and Lula during a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to an island in Belém.

Since Normando announced his decision to run for mayor, the division between Barbalho and Rodrigues has become more evident, although Lula’s party continues to support Rodrigues.

“This issue is closely linked to the fact that Edmilson’s administration has been very poorly evaluated by the population,” said Silva.

As well as dissatisfaction with public transport, there has been widespread criticism of chaotic management of the city’s garbage, exacerbated by the hiring of a new company for the job, leading to months of irregular waste collections before the contract started.

“I think Helder [Barbalho]’s bet is precisely to bring in a new figure [as mayor], even if they don’t have as much experience in executive positions, to guarantee the continuity of the plans he has for the capital, including COP30,” said Silva.

Far-right  mayoral candidate

So far, all the main three mayoral candidates in Belém have publicly supported the hosting of COP30, highlighting it as a crucial opportunity for the city’s development.

According to the latest opinion poll released in mid-August, Normando was ahead in the race, with 36.5% of voting intentions, closely followed with 34.7% support for Éder Mauro, a far-right candidate who is aligned with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Rodrigues was trailing at around 16%.

Fossil fuel transition back in draft pact for UN Summit of the Future after outcry

Ex-policeman Mauro, now a Liberal Party parliamentarian, is regarded by environmental groups as antagonistic to the green agenda – although he has backed Belém’s hosting of COP30, primarily as a business opportunity. He has made statements defending police violence against members of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), for example, as well as calling Indigenous people “fakes”.

He is also the author of a bill that allows municipal bodies to issue environmental licences for small-scale mining operations, which environmentalists warn will weaken oversight.

Silva said a win for Mauro “could jeopardise the entire mobilisation of the federal and state governments to hold COP30″. “In this scenario, political tensions would be much more worrying than what we’re seeing now between Edmilson and Helder,” she added.

Green light for buses

Meanwhile, the suspension of the electric bus procurement was lifted last week after a series of hearings and meetings between the TCMPA and Belém City Hall.

As part of the deal, the company selling the buses, TEVX Motors Group, agreed to “reimburse” almost R$4 million – around 1% of the contract’s value – through products and services such as training, installation of chargers and disposal of the buses’ electric batteries when they can no longer be used.

Overall, by the time of COP30, 778 new buses with air-conditioning and wi-fi are expected on the streets of Belém thanks to three separate purchasing processes. The first by City Hall was expanded from an initial 10 electric buses to 30 after winning additional investment from the federal government last November.

This money will also fund another 183 more fuel-efficient buses with lower emissions that will expand the public bus transport service by adding new routes and reinforcing others.

Izabela Souza commutes 30 km every day by bus, which can take up to three hours due to traffic and bus changes (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

The Pará state government has also ordered 265 new buses, which it will pay for with R$368.7 million from the federal government, channelled through the Ministry of Cities, run by Barbalho’s brother. Of these, 40 will be electric – used to improve connections across the Belém metropolitan region – and 50 will run on natural gas.

A further 300 new diesel buses have also been purchased as part of a joint agreement between Belém City Hall, the Pará State Government and the Belém Public Transport Companies Union. This fleet will replace older buses.

For local people, wherever the buses come from, they can’t arrive soon enough. Izabela Souza, 29, a specialist in neuro-pedagogy, commutes 30 kilometres by bus every day, which can take up to three hours due to traffic and bus changes. She said that, aside from the heat, there is a need for more buses to cut commuting times and enable passengers to sit down.

“It’s very precarious – and while the politicians are bickering, we’re the ones who have to wait here like this,” she said.

(Reporting by Alice Martins Morais in Belém; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Belém’s electric bus controversy: a cautionary tale for COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Initially the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) was hailed as a game-changer in the fight against illegal forest clearing.

It was the first law of its kind in the world – and when it came into force in June 2023 it had an overwhelming democratic mandate from EU member states and the European Parliament. 

The law signalled their resolve to end EU complicity in global forest destruction by only allowing EU market access to companies that can prove their products made from cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil, coffee and rubber are deforestation-free.  

Agricultural production is the biggest driver of deforestation on the planet, and these specific commodities’ impact on forests and peoples’ rights has been nothing short of catastrophic. 

But as the EUDR’s implementation day – December 30, 2024 – edges closer, the positivity has been supplanted by a barrage of negative stories. 

More cocaine, fewer diapers?

In March, Austria’s agricultural ministry called for implementation to be postponed. This appeal has been echoed by agricultural ministries in Czechia, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden, as well as the European People’s Party (EPP). 

The debate around the law has grown increasingly fractious. 

In May, the US Secretaries of Commerce and Agriculture wrote to the European Commission demanding that the EU delay the law, as it posed “critical challenges” to American producers.  

EU hit with lawsuit over green labelling of aviation and shipping investments

Meanwhile South American diplomats warned it would aggravate Europe’s cocaine problem, as poor Peruvian and Colombian farmers wouldn’t be able to prove that their coffee or cacao wasn’t grown on deforested land and would shift to farming coca leaves instead. 

As well as more cocaine on their streets, Europeans would find fewer diapers, sanitary pads and other hygiene products on their supermarket shelves, according to US paper-makers. At the same time, the European timber industry claimed that the law was “a huge regulatory and administrative monster”. 

And all this came against a backdrop of warnings about price rises for food, drink and other goods. 

Industry sabotage 

So how did a law designed to tackle one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time become so divisive? And what is the true picture on the ground as industries prepare to implement the law? 

Two things are abundantly clear. The first is that agricultural deforestation is a deep-seated, complex problem, and eliminating it presents real challenges. 

Fern, which first called for a law to combat the illegal deforestation tainting the EU’s imports of agricultural commodities a decade ago, has consistently highlighted one of the biggest challenges: ensuring that the smallholders who could be affected by the regulation receive the specific support they need, and that companies don’t squeeze them out of their supply chains. 

Second, powerful vested interests within affected industries and EU member states are intent on sabotaging it. 

A proper assessment paints a different picture. 

Galvanising effect 

Away from breathless headlines about Europe being flooded with cocaine, the humdrum work of preparing for implementation is steadily progressing. 

Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana are the world’s biggest cocoa producers, and Europe is their largest market. The new law therefore could have a profound impact on those countries’ economies and peoples’ lives. 

While European industry and big US wood companies are claiming they can’t meet the EUDR’s requirements in time, Ghana’s cocoa regulator, COCOBOD, recently stated that their traceability system – which will prove sustainability by tracing cocoa beans from the farm where they’re produced to the port of shipment – will be operational from October 2024. 

Can the rising cost of chocolate help cocoa producers go green?

In Cote d’Ivoire, a similar story is also unfolding. 

The Ivorian government has been distributing ID cards to farmers that will increase traceability and allow them to receive e-payments. Though this system will take time to roll out, it will stop the widespread fraudulent underpayments which are so damaging to small-scale farmers’ livelihoods. 

It’s no surprise then that a group of 120 Ghanaian and Ivorian civil society and farmer organisations recently wrote to EU decision-makers, expressing their deep concerns about member states trying to delay the EUDR.  

Indigenous land rights 

Their call was echoed by more than 170 NGOs from around the world, including Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB), which represents more than 300 Brazilian Indigenous Peoples’ groups. 

APIB have long been at the forefront of efforts to protect the Amazon and Brazil’s other precious biomes from the ravages of agribusiness and loggers. They see the EUDR as a way of not just protecting nature but helping to safeguard Indigenous Peoples’ territorial rights. Earlier this year, APIB called for the EUDR to be extended into non-forest biomes such as the Cerrado. 

Some consumer goods giants who will be affected by the EUDR are also defending it: in July, Nestle, Mars Wrigley and Ferrero wrote to the European Commission defending the law as “an important step forward in driving the necessary transformation of the cocoa and chocolate sector”. 

They called for more EU support, which should include funds to help smallholders adjust to the law’s demands, and equitably negotiated partnerships with the countries producing goods that fall under the legislation’s scope. 

Support for affected producers

Last year, the world lost an area of forest almost as big as Switzerland; destruction that released about a half as much carbon dioxide as the United States does annually through burning fossil fuels. 

Delaying or abandoning the law on the eve of it being applied is not an option, but its success depends on how it’s implemented: how the EU rises to its inevitable challenges, and how far the EU is prepared to increase its support to affected smallholders and countries. 

We need to redouble our commitment to making it work and oppose those resisting it out of short-sighted self-interest. 

The post Delaying the EU’s anti-deforestation law is not an option  appeared first on Climate Home News.

Dear COP29 President-Designate Babayev, 

My name is Joseph Sikulu, and I am Tongan. Last week you visited my home island, where your team witnessed torrential rains and an earthquake. You witnessed how susceptible our people are to disasters, and how prepared we must be to meet them.

The escalating climate crisis exacerbates already destructive disasters and last week, as COP29 President-Designate, you met with the UN Secretary-General here in Tonga and acknowledged our realities. You made a commitment to amplify the voices of the Pacific Islands and build a more resilient, sustainable future ahead of COP29.

But the time for amplifying our voices is over. We need action. Fossil fuels are at the root of this crisis, fossil fuels threaten our islands.

Despite being confronted with devastating climate impacts, and the prospects of many more, we gathered in solidarity for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. We fight. And if we fight, we expect the same from you.

Fossil fuel transition back in draft pact for UN Summit of the Future after outcry

The Pacific has done the least to contribute to the climate crisis, yet we are fighting it the hardest. Pacific island countries have committed to achieving net zero by 2050 and 100% renewable energy targets. A transition to renewables means hope and survival.

If we can do it, so can you. As the next COP President, it is your duty to demonstrate leadership. In a letter to country delegations you called on them to deliver 1.5C-aligned NDCs and committed Azerbaijan to doing the same. But keeping 1.5 alive means no fossil fuel expansion.

Yet, this year, your president, Ilham Aliyev, called fossil fuels “a gift from the gods”. For us in the Pacific, such words aren’t just careless — they’re cruel. Our very homes are at risk, and keeping our Pacific homes means no fossil fuel expansion.

‘No more empty words’

Currently, Azerbaijan does not lead. Azerbaijan is nowhere near 1.5-aligned. Your climate goal uses accounting tricks to continue business as usual. You speak of “reducing emissions by 40% compared to 1990 levels by 2050”. However, your emissions were much higher in 1990 than they are in the twenty-first century. We need to completely phase out fossil fuels by 2050. Your climate goal is to do nothing while you plan to expand fossil fuels for exports.

Instead of holding the fossil fuel industry to account, you have presented a greenwashing fund to allow industry to continue with business as usual. The fund masks the ongoing expansion of fossil fuel production by SOCAR, your state oil company which is set to be the first to contribute. The $1-billion fund will operate at market rates instead of concessional finance, a pitiful gesture when set against the colossal sums needed for genuine climate action and reparations – a cynical attempt to distract from your country’s destructive environmental practices.

Leaders are cutting fossil fuel finance – next comes unlocking clean energy for all

We can’t afford any more empty words. The world needs you to lead it towards an ambitious and fair new collective finance goal at COP29 to facilitate the global energy transition. We need real, new and transparent finance, coupled with a global effort, particularly on behalf of countries in the Global North and those, like yours and Brazil, that will host international climate summits. It’s your responsibility to make sure that COP29 results in meaningful climate finance commitments and the financial resources to swiftly transition away from fossil fuels for good, with justice, equity and respect at the forefront.

We have neither the time nor the patience for more scams, or games of smoke and mirrors like your greenwashing fund. To keep global warming below 1.5C, we need a full and immediate phase-out of fossil fuels – period.

Azerbaijan must step up with ambitious climate goals before November, especially if it seeks to be seen as a respected climate host. Real climate leadership is not optional; it’s a prerequisite for hosting climate summits – and so should be respecting and upholding human rights and civic space. Now is the time to make real commitments – and to deliver on them.

The post As Pacific Islanders, we need climate action – not greenwashing – from Azerbaijan appeared first on Climate Home News.

The U-turn comes after nearly 80 Nobel prizewinners and world leaders hit out at the deletion of any references to fossil fuels in a previous version of the negotiating text for the Summit of the Future taking place in New York during this year’s UN General Assembly.

The UN has billed the high-level event as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate global action” on issues including climate change, sustainable development and peace. Member states are expected to agree on an “ambitious, concise and action-oriented” pact seen as a blueprint for boosting multilateral cooperation.

In the latest draft, published on Thursday, world leaders “decide to […] transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

The language closely mirrors the landmark agreement struck at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last year with the exception of a call to “accelerating action in this critical decade” which is absent from the draft.

The new Pact for the Future draft “cements the [COP28] commitment”, according to Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. “If the language stays, it’s clear there’s no going back. This is a first step, but declarations alone will not suffice. We need to build on this outcome with immediate, decisive action and concrete plans.”

Controversy over fossil fuels

UN Secretary-General António Guterres first proposed the Summit of the Future back in 2021 when he laid out his vision for global cooperation in the coming decades. The gathering will bring together governments, UN agencies, civil society organisations, academic institutions and the private sector on September 22 and 23.

Governments have been negotiating the text of the pact for nearly a year, with Germany and Namibia coordinating efforts as co-facilitators of the summit.

Last January they released a “zero draft” based on member states’ initial inputs and submissions from civil society, academia and the private sector. It included a reference to countries “accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems”.

But any mention of fossil fuels disappeared from a second draft published in mid-July following another round of consultations.

Leaders are cutting fossil fuel finance – next comes unlocking clean energy for all

That prompted strong condemnation from climate action leaders. In a letter to governments, Nobel Prize laureates – including Bangladesh’s new interim leader Muhammad Yunus and former Irish President Mary Robinson – said they were “gravely concerned” about the absence of any mention of fossil fuels, which they called “one of the greatest threats facing the world today”.

The burning of coal, oil and gas is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming. Any pathway to limit warming to the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5C requires a significant decline in the use of fossil fuels by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Backslide fears

In addition to a shift away from fossil fuels, the latest Pact for the Future draft also follows in the footsteps of the COP28 agreement in calling for an acceleration in the “development and deployment” of renewable energy and “other zero and low-emission technologies”.

While the Summit of the Future text does not qualify these technologies, the Dubai deal explicitly referred to nuclear energy, as well as emissions abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage (CCUS).

Sultan Al Jaber and Simon Stiell celebrate as the Cop28 agreement is passed (Photos: Cop28/Mahmoud Khaled)

The COP28 agreement adopted by nearly 200 countries was widely hailed as a historic achievement signposting an end to the fossil fuel era. But climate campaigners have since grown worried that countries are backsliding on their promises and attempting to weaken their commitment to wean the world off dirty energy.

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud, for example, claimed last January that the transition away from fossil fuels was just one of several “choices” on an “à la carte menu” offered by the COP28 pact.

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International, told Climate Home that any attempt to weaken or reverse the COP28 decision “is like playing a losing hand with billions of lives that would put any chance of avoiding a 1.5C breach out of reach”.

“Civil society should not have to be the fighting voice of reason to keep fossil fuel phase-out on the table and align international declarations with science,” he added.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Fossil fuel transition back in draft pact for UN Summit of the Future after outcry appeared first on Climate Home News.

Most developing countries offer a straightforward answer: keep the status quo, meaning only the countries classified as industrialised when the UN climate treaty was adopted in 1992.

But this club of developed nations, vocally led by the European Union and the United States, argues that the world has changed dramatically over the past three decades.

They now want other countries that have become wealthier – and more polluting – to pitch in for the post-2025 New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), set to be agreed at the COP29 climate summit in Baku this November.

China targeted

The EU wrote this week, in a document submitted as part of the NCQG negotiations, that “the collective goal can only be reached if parties with high [greenhouse gas]-emissions and economic capabilities join the effort”.

The US echoed that position in its latest submission, arguing that “those with the capacity to support others” in pursuing action to cut emissions and boost climate resilience “must also be accountable” for delivering on the climate finance target.

But, as governments polish their arguments ahead of the next round of talks in mid-September, climate finance experts warn of an uphill battle to get everyone to agree to a fair and accurate way to broaden the donor base.

FAO draft report backs growth of livestock industry despite emissions

For instance, as the world’s top polluter and the second-largest economy, China is the primary target of the finger-pointing. But, when the country’s emissions and wealth are divided by its enormous population, China does not rank among the main candidates for an expanded contributors’ pool, according to climate finance studies.

At annual climate talks in the German city of Bonn in June, China’s negotiator reacted angrily at suggestions his country should become a donor. “We have no intention to make your number look good or be part of your responsibility as we are doing all we can to save the world,” he said.

Who pays?

Switzerland and Canada have been the first nations to propose precise criteria to expand the list of contributors beyond developed countries.

The Swiss negotiators pitched two detailed metrics in their latest submission early this month.

The first would target the ten largest current emitters of carbon dioxide that also have a gross national income (GNI) per capita – adjusted for purchasing power parity – of more than $22,000.

Under this measure, Saudi Arabia and Russia would be included. China would too if it is calculated based on current international dollars, which Climate Home understands would be the Swiss intention, even though the proposal does not specify.

But China would be excluded if GNI per capita were based on constant 2021 international dollars, highlighting the ambiguity of the proposals at this point.

Populous nations with large absolute emissions like India, Indonesia, Brazil and Iran would be left out because the average wealth of their residents falls below the threshold, according to World Bank data.

Similarly, Canada’s proposal – released last Friday after this article was first published – singles out the top ten emitters but with a slightly lower GNI per capita threshold of $20,000. In this case, China would be included whichever GNI calculation is used.

The second category in the Swiss proposal targets countries that have cumulative past and current CO2 emissions per capita of at least 250 tonnes and a purchasing power parity-adjusted gross national income per capita of more than $40,000.

Assuming the Swiss proposal means emissions starting in 1990, then fossil fuel-producers in the Gulf like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain would be included, alongside South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Czechia and Poland.

But climate finance experts told Climate Home they are sceptical such strict criteria will work at the negotiating table and make it into a final decision.

“Discussing thresholds and indicators is a technical and politically charged issue, and it will be very difficult to get everyone to agree on them,” Laetitia Pettinotti, a research fellow at ODI, told Climate Home. She added that countries need to be encouraged to consider whether their emissions and GNI per capita are similar to those of developed countries, while also taking into account their climate vulnerability.

Pieter Pauw, assistant professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, said the current system is “outdated and increasingly dysfunctional”, but the focus should be on making it less rigid rather than finding “arbitrary” ways to add more countries to a list.

Pauw is the co-author of a new study looking at options to increase the number of climate finance providers.

New “net recipients” category

The paper found that several developing countries, including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia, have shown appetite to finance multilateral development funds, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, but not those dedicated to climate action.

“It’s because the climate discourse is so politicised now,” Pauw said. “They are afraid that agreeing to contribute to a climate finance goal would set a precedent and burden them with more responsibilities.”

“It is important to find a way to have them join the ‘contributors club’ without putting a stamp on them and saying ‘OK, now you’re on the same level as developed countries’,” he added.

The study suggests one way out of the deadlock: instead of labelling countries rigidly as pure providers or recipients of climate aid, a third category of “net recipients” could be created. These would be nations that make financial contributions of any amount, while also being able to receive money at the same time.

“This compromise would allow countries to maintain their ‘developing’ status that gives them a right to receive finance where it is needed,” said Pauw. “But it also incentivises them to play a more proactive role that better reflects their new capabilities and responsibilities.”

Better transparency

A separate study by UK think-tank ODI suggests that many developing countries are voluntarily providing climate aid to fellow developing states, but their contributions go unrecognised at the moment because of a lack of transparency.

For example, China contributed over $10 billion in climate finance through its contributions to multilateral development banks and funds between 2015 and 2022, according to a newly updated ODI analysis shared with Climate Home and due to be released in early September.

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Pettinotti thinks that the donor base could be expanded by recognising these contributions and bringing them to the surface through a better reporting system.

“There is not going to be coercion – that is just not going to work,” she told Climate Home. “Making space for a bottom-up, self-determined position is all we can do to encourage more countries to contribute.”

Developing-world opposition

Many developing countries have opposed any official discussion over an expansion of the donor base in the talks so far, claiming that is not part of the NCQG working group’s mandate. They have also complained that, while fixating on this issue, developed countries have failed to put forward proposals on other key elements of the NCQG, such as the size of the funding target.

Avantika Goswami, climate lead at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home that developed countries have “a moral imperative” to provide climate finance because of their historically high emissions over the past century.

“The contributor-base expansion debate cannot be resolved within the narrow timeline of November 2024 when the NCQG is due to be decided”, she added. “Pushing for this expansion as a bargaining chip will only derail constructive discussions.”

This article was updated on 19/8 to include a proposal by Canada released after the article had been first published. It was also updated to remove a reference to Bermuda as a potential donor, as it is a British overseas territory. 

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Switzerland and Canada propose ways to expand climate finance donors appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the talks in Sofia, Bulgaria, most countries supported a faster process that would see three flagship reports assessing the state of climate science delivered by mid-2028, in time for the next global stocktake – the UN’s scorecard of collective climate action.

But a group of high-emitting developing countries made up of China, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia and South Africa – backed by Kenya – opposed an accelerated timeline, citing concerns that it would be harder to include scientists from the Global South, three sources present at the talks told Climate Home.

Governments were unable to reach a decision for the second time this year after “fraught talks” in January ended with the same outcome. The issue will be debated again at the next gathering in February 2025, while a separate expert meeting is tasked with drafting the outline of those reports by the end of 2024.

Fight over climate science

Adão Soares Barbosa, IPCC representative for Timor-Leste within the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) group, expressed his disappointment over the lack of agreement in Sofia resulting from “strong polarisation in the room”.

“If the assessment reports are not able to feed information into the global stocktake process, what are they good for?” he said, speaking to Climate Home.

Joyce Kimutai, who represented Kenya at the Sofia talks, said her country’s opposition to the proposed shortened timeline was “absolutely not intended to frustrate the process” but to highlight the challenges countries with more limited resources would be facing.

“With such a tight timeline, it is likely that we will produce a report that is not comprehensive, not robust. We found that very problematic,” she told Climate Home on Monday.

IPCC delegates exchange views in an informal huddle in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou

The primary purpose of the IPCC is to provide credible scientific assessments to the UN’s climate body (UNFCCC) and national decision-makers. The findings of its reports – which are usually compiled over several years by scientists working on a voluntary basis around the world – have been highly influential. They synthesise the latest research on climate change, as well as efforts to curb planet-heating emissions and adapt to the impacts of global warming.

The sixth series, whose final report was issued in March 2023, played a prominent role in informing the first UNFCCC global stocktake which resulted in governments agreeing for the first time to begin “transitioning away from fossil fuels” at COP28 in Dubai last December.

But some fossil fuel-rich countries like Saudi Arabia – which have pushed back against clear language on the need to cut production – have previously opposed strong recognition of IPCC reports in UNFCCC negotiations.

The UN climate body has officially requested that its scientific counterpart align its activities with the timeline of the next global stocktake. The IPCC’s input will be “invaluable” for the international review of climate action, Simon Stiell, chief of the UN climate body, told the IPCC meeting in January.

Reputation ‘at risk’

As he opened the session in Sofia, the IPCC chair Jim Skea warned of a “complex and testing” agenda.

The discussion over the report production schedule would have “far-reaching implications in terms of the timeliness of our products, and the inclusivity of both our own processes and the science that is being assessed”, he added. 

Scientists and government officials were presented with a proposal drafted by the IPCC secretariat – its administrative arm – which would see the assessment reports completed between May and August 2028. That would be a few months before the global stocktake process is scheduled to end in November 2028.

The IPCC must produce its flagship report in time for the next UN global stocktake

A majority of countries, including EU member states, the UK, the US and most vulnerable developing nations, supported the proposal, stressing the importance of the scientific reports feeding into the global stocktake, according to sources and a summary of discussions by the IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin. Many supporters added that the IPCC’s reputation would otherwise be at risk.

Small island states and least-developed countries argued that IPCC input is crucial for those that lack capacity to produce their own research and are most vulnerable to the immediate impacts of climate change, according to the IISD summary.

But a dozen developing countries – with India, Saudi Arabia and China being the most vocal – opposed speeding up the process, arguing that more time is needed to ensure greater inclusion of experts and research from the Global South, which would result in “robust and rigorous” scientific output.

South Africa, Russia, Kenya, Algeria, Burundi, Congo, Jordan, Libya and Venezuela expressed similar views, according to IISD.

More time for more voices

India said that “producing the best science needs time, haste leads to shoddy work”, while Saudi Arabia claimed that the shortened timeline would “lead to incomplete science and would be a disservice to the world”, according to the IISD summary of the discussions.

Kenya’s Kimutai told Climate Home that producing scientific literature and reviewing submissions takes a lot of time and, unlike their counterparts in richer countries, scientists in the Global South can rarely count on the help of junior researchers at well-funded institutions.

“We love this process – we find it important,” she added, “but we’re trying to say that, while it may be an easy process in other regions, it is not for us”.

As first airline drops goal, are aviation’s 2030 targets achievable without carbon offsets?

The IPCC has long struggled with ensuring adequate representation of expert voices from the Global South. Only 35% of the authors working on its sixth and latest assessment report hailed from developing countries, according to a study published in the journal Climate, up from 31% in the previous cycle.

In Sofia, several delegates pointed out that the IPCC is working to improve inclusivity and that a slight extension of the schedule would not be the solution. Similar views were aired by forty IPCC authors from developing countries in a letter circulated ahead of last week’s talks, urging countries to ensure that the reports are ready in time for the global stocktake.

While recognising concerns over the inclusion of under-represented communities, they argued that it would not be achieved by allowing more time but through “deliberate efforts to counterbalance long-standing inequalities” in the research world.

Writing for Climate Home, Malian scientist Youba Sokona, one of the letter’s authors, warned that the IPCC risks losing its relevance and influence over global climate policy-making if its output cannot be used in the global stocktake.

IPCC Chair Jim Skea gavels the session to a close. Photo: Photo by IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou

Despite lengthy exchanges, scientists in Sofia could not find a solution and decided to postpone a decision on the timeline until the next IPCC session in February 2025, when countries will also need to agree on the outline of the reports’ content.

Kenya’s Kimutai has proposed a compromise that would see reports on adaptation and mitigation completed in time for the global stocktake, with a third on the physical science of climate change coming in later.

Richard Klein, a senior researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and a lead author of previous IPCC reports, told Climate Home the ongoing row was “problematic”. “With these delays, a shorter [report] cycle in time for the global stocktake may not be feasible anymore, which in turn makes it less likely we will see ambitious nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) after that process,” he warned.

Expert scientists from the IPCC will meet again this December at a “scoping” session to sketch out a framework for what the assessment reports should include.

Barbosa of Timor-Leste is worried that those discussions will also become “heavily politicised”.

“We are concerned that high-emitting developing countries will try water down the work on emission-cutting measures and keep out strong messages on things like the need to phase out fossil fuels,” he told Climate Home.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post IPCC’s input into key UN climate review at risk as countries clash over timeline appeared first on Climate Home News.

July will be a month of records. Athletes and spectators gather for the Paris Olympics to celebrate feats of human endurance and record-breaking achievement. But July is also seeing records of another kind breaking.

This month we experienced the hottest day ever in over 120,000 years meaning global temperatures are now the highest they have ever been as a result of climate change caused by burning coal, oil and gas, and deforestation. 

This also means real-world impacts – every day, every hour and every minute. Just in the past few weeks, Hurricane Beryl destroyed parts of the Caribbean, a heatwave caused power outages in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and there were severe floods in Kenya. 

In just four months, Azerbaijan will be in the global spotlight for two weeks when it will be responsible for spearheading UN climate talks in Baku. Government, businesses, media and civil society are anxious to know what the COP29 Presidency has been doing to shift the gears on diplomacy and ramp up global ambition. 

COP29 priorities

In its recent Letter to Parties, the COP29 Presidency outlined some of its processes leading to Baku. It said its two pillars are to “Enhance Ambition, Enable Action”.  It has pursued a raft of initiatives, but these will not pave the way for the systems change that is required.

The task at hand is clear.

First, we need a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. Second, we need a strong climate finance goal to deliver on this. Third, we need countries to submit ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that respond to the Global Stocktake and robustly adhere to the science. 

Comment: A global wealth tax is needed to help fund a just green transition

The COP29 Presidency has a crucial strategic role to play in building pressure on countries to demonstrate what they are doing to meet all these commitments. Finding the landing ground on these pillars cannot wait until November. The real work is done in the months and weeks before the summit.

Let’s not forget that the COP28 deal was meant to mark the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. Yet, progress on this since the Dubai summit has been woefully slow. The window for a 1.5℃ future is closing fast and Azerbaijan, a significant fossil exporter itself, cannot ignore the root cause of the problem.

Finance deal

Similarly, we must avert a failure to agree to the new climate finance goal in Baku.

The Presidency says negotiating a fair and ambitious New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) is their priority. If that’s the case, then the clock is ticking. Effectively leading these finance talks will require proactive steps and a recognition of the scale of financing required. At least $1 trillion of investment is needed for climate and environment by 2030.

Azerbaijan’s proposal for a  Climate Finance Action Fund (yet another fund with insufficient money!) would rightly mean a mechanism through which polluters do finally pay. However, this cannot be used as an excuse for countries to continue with fossil fuel expansion.

UAE’s ALTÉRRA invests in fund backing fossil gas despite “climate solutions” pledge

The recent appointment of Denmark’s Dan Jørgensen and Egypt’s Yasmine Fouad as a Ministerial Pairing for the finance deal is welcome.

But in addition to their support, there has to be political will for system change. There must be alignment on areas of agreement and expectations. Balancing the needs and demands of 190+ countries is challenging. But by engaging with champions from business, government and civil society across the board it can be done.

Civil society engagement

Azerbaijan does not need to reinvent the wheel with shiny new deals. Creating the enabling conditions and encouraging countries to implement existing commitments can have the greatest impact on tackling the climate crisis. 

Azerbaijan will benefit from continuing to engage tirelessly with credible actors who can help it avoid pitfalls and needless mistakes. Sporadic consultations will not suffice; consistent dialogue is key.

Lastly, Azerbaijan should be prepared for intense scrutiny from the media and civil society.

In the coming weeks and months, it must engage openly and transparently with those who will question its actions and motives. They must avoid increasing distrust in the process. They must directly address concerns over the COP being co-opted by fossil fuel interests as well as reports that it is intensifying a crackdown on civil society. 

Azerbaijan’s role as the host of COP29 places it in a position of significant responsibility and opportunity not only to advance the negotiations but build a legacy for the climate regime and future generations. Setting clear timelines, leveraging expert advice, intensifying finance talks and keeping pressure on countries to deliver can all result in a successful COP.

The post It’s time for Azerbaijan to shift gears on diplomacy ahead of COP29 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Calling for global action to limit the devastating consequences, the head of the United Nations said “billions of people are facing an extreme heat epidemic – wilting under increasingly deadly heatwaves”.

Extreme-heat events have been getting more frequent, intense and longer-lasting in recent decades as a result of human-made climate change.

Guterres’ appeal comes as the record for the world’s hottest day was broken twice on consecutive days this week, according to Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Monday beat Sunday, with the global average surface air temperature reaching 17.16 Celsius, as parts of the world sweltered through fierce heatwaves from the Mediterranean to Russia and Canada.

Guterres said the UN had just received preliminary data indicating that Tuesday “was in the same range”, which would make a third hottest straight day on record, if confirmed.

In a speech, he noted that heat – driven by “fossil fuel-charged, human-induced climate change” – is estimated to kill almost half a million people a year, about 30 times more than tropical cyclones.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, December 1, 2023. COP28/Christophe Viseux/Handout via REUTERS

This year alone, extreme heat struck highly vulnerable communities across the Sahel region, killed at least 1,300 pilgrims in Mecca during Hajj and shut down schools across Asia and Africa affecting more than 80 million children.

“And we know it’s going to get worse. Extreme heat is the new abnormal,” Guterres added in his speech to journalists at UN headquarters in New York.

The Secretary-General’s “call for action” brings together ten specialised UN agencies for the first time in an urgent and concerted push to strengthen international cooperation in addressing extreme heat.

Focus on most vulnerable

Guterres listed four areas where greater efforts could be made to keep people, societies and economies safer from the negative consequences of rising global temperatures.

He emphasised the importance of “caring for the most vulnerable” – with those at greatest risk including poor people in urban areas, pregnant women, people with disabilities, the elderly, children, those who are sick and people who are displaced from their homes.

Households living in poverty often live in substandard homes without access to cooling, he added, appealing for a boost in access to low-carbon cooling and expanded use of natural measures – which include planting trees for shade – and better urban design, alongside a ramp-up of heat warning systems.

Graphic from Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change

Workers also need more protection, he said, as a new report from the International Labour Organization warned that over 70 percent of the global workforce – 2.4 billion people – are now at high risk of extreme heat, especially in Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Arab States.

The UN is calling on governments to urgently review laws and regulations on occupational safety and health to integrate provisions for extreme heat, including the right to refuse working in extreme hot weather.

Energy transition and adaptation

A third area targeted by the UN for action is making economies and societies better able to withstand heat, through stronger infrastructure, more resilient crops, and efforts to ease the pressure on health systems and water supplies.

“Countries, cities, and sectors need comprehensive, tailored Heat Action Plans, based on the best science and data,” Guterres said.

Lastly, the UN chief urged stepped-up action to “fight the disease”, by phasing out fossil fuels “fast and fairly” including no new coal projects, with the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5C – a goal nearly 200 governments signed up to in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world’s wealthiest countries,” he emphasised. “In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future.”

The United States, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK have issued two-thirds of the global number of oil and gas licences since 2020, according to research published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development this week.

‘Still time to act’

Commenting on the UN’s call to action, Alan Dangour, director of climate and health at Wellcome, a UK-based science foundation, noted that people working outside in physical jobs and those who cannot afford to adapt to rising heat are particularly exposed – but the effects are far broader.

“The levels of heat we now routinely see around the world put every part of society under extreme pressure, directly harming our health while also affecting food and water security and much of our vital infrastructures,” he said in a statement.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday, scientists convened by Wellcome said there are positive measures that can be taken to combat the problem of extreme heat, which can also bring wider social benefits.

UAE’s ALTÉRRA invests in fund backing fossil gas despite “climate solutions” pledge

For example, they explained that using community facilities as cooling centres can offer older people a place to chat or play cards, tackling social isolation and heat stress at the same time. Or adding shades with solar panels to market stalls can help women traders keep working on hot days while also providing free electricity for their businesses.

“There is still time for concerted action to save lives from the impacts of climate change, but we can no longer afford to delay,” Dangour said.

A construction worker drinks water while working on a building during hot weather in Pristina, Kosovo, June 19, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Valdrin Xhemaj)

The UN’s call for action points out that existing tools to reduce the devastating consequences of extreme heat could be deployed with large and far-reaching effects. Guterres said the good news is that “there are solutions… that we can save lives and limit its impact”.

For example, a global scale-up of heat health warning systems could save more than 98,000 lives every year, according to the World Health Organization. And the rollout of occupational safety and health measures could avoid $361 billion a year in medical and other costs, the ILO has estimated.

The UN chief urged a “huge acceleration of all the dimensions of climate action” as global warming is currently outpacing efforts to fight it. That could start to change, he added, as heatwaves, impacts on public health and disasters such as Canada’s wildfires are now hitting the richest countries as well as poorer ones.

“The heat is being felt by those that have decision-making capacity – and that is my hope,” he said.

(Reporting and editing by Matteo Civillini and Megan Rowling)

The post UN chief appeals for global action to tackle deadly extreme heat appeared first on Climate Home News.

ALTÉRRA was billed as the world’s largest private investment vehicle to “focus entirely on climate solutions”. COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber hailed its launch as “a defining moment” for creating a new era of international climate finance.

Yet four months later, one of the initial funds ALTÉRRA backed with a $300-million commitment agreed to buy a major fossil gas pipeline in North America, Climate Home has discovered.

In March, BlackRock’s “Global Infrastructure Fund IV” acquired half of the 475 km-long Portland Natural Gas Transmission System, with Morgan Stanley taking the rest in a deal worth $1.14 billion overall.

That acquisition would not have come as a surprise to the fund’s investors.

When US-based BlackRock pitched it to the State of Connecticut’s Investment Advisory Council back in 2022, the world’s biggest asset manager gave a flavour of where their money would likely end up. Its presentation – seen by Climate Home – featured a list of “indicative investments” including highly-polluting sectors such as gas power plants and transportation networks, liquefied natural gas (LNG), airports, terminals and shipping.

Climate Home does not know whether ALTÉRRA saw the same presentation, nor did the UAE firm respond directly to a question asking if it was aware before the COP28 announcement that the BlackRock fund might invest in those sectors.

An ALTÉRRA spokesperson told Climate Home its “investments seek to build the energy systems of tomorrow, while supporting the transition of existing energy infrastructure towards a just and managed clean energy ecosystem”.

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In addition to the gas pipeline, BlackRock’s infrastructure fund has so far invested in carbon capture, waste management, utilities maintenance services, telecom infrastructure, data centres and the production of industrial gases, according to regulatory filings, a BlackRock job advertisement and press reports accessed by Climate Home.

A BlackRock spokesperson said its global infrastructure fund franchise “targets investments in solutions across the energy transition value chain, driven by the long-term trends of decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization to support the stability and affordability of energy supply around the world”.

Andreas Sieber, associate director of global policy and campaigns at climate advocacy group 350.org, said Climate Home’s findings “confirm our worst fears”. “The ALTÉRRA fund uses a masquerade of green progress while funnelling investment into fossil fuel pipelines and gas projects, which are the biggest causes of the climate crisis,” he told Climate Home.

Climate finance is a hot topic at UN negotiations, with countries expected to set a new global goal at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, this November, amid persistent calls for higher amounts to help poorer nations boost clean energy production.

The COP28 presidency said last year that ALTÉRRA would “drive forward international efforts to create a fairer climate finance system, with an emphasis on improving access to funding for the Global South”. Al-Jaber added that “its launch reflects… the UAE’s efforts to make climate finance available, accessible and affordable”.

But the sparse details provided at the time prompted climate justice activists to question the real impact it would have in countries that most need financial support to adopt clean energy and adapt to a warming world. Only about a sixth of the fund – $5 billion – was earmarked as “capital to incentivize investment into the Global South”.

Follow the money

ALTÉRRA is a so-called ‘fund of funds’. Instead of directly investing money in individual companies or assets, it puts its cash into a series of funds run by other investment firms. At COP28, it committed a total of $6.5 billion to funds managed by BlackRock, Brookfield and TPG, without setting out how the remaining $23.5 billion would be spent.

Since then, ALTÉRRA has not announced any further investments. Its chief executive, Majid Al Suwaidi, told Bloomberg this month that the fund is “actively planning the next phase of allocations”, without giving further details.

The launch of #ALTÉRRA marks the start of three unique alliances with global asset managers, @Brookfield, @BlackRock, and @tpg.

Together, we share the same vision, to bridge the climate investment gap and finance a new climate economy. pic.twitter.com/7yEXOyZqpK

— ALTÉRRA (@Alterrafund) December 1, 2023

Most of the funds picked by ALTÉRRA remain at an early stage and have yet to announce completed transactions or are still trying to raise more capital from investors. The most notable exception is BlackRock’s fourth Global Infrastructure Fund. By the time it won the $300-million commitment from ALTÉRRA in Dubai, the vehicle was ready to deploy its money.

ALTÉRRA told Climate Home its investment in the BlackRock vehicle is in line with its goals of getting climate finance “flowing quickly and at scale” and of partnering “with funds that invest in the energy transition and accelerate pathways to net-zero”.

Announcing its first $4.5-billion closing in October 2022, BlackRock said the fund would “continue to target investments in climate solutions, while also supporting the infrastructure needed to ensure a stable, affordable energy supply during the transition”.

In private conversations with potential investors, the asset manager spelled out more clearly what that meant.

Its presentation to the State of Connecticut in December 2022 showed that the fund would not only invest in things like renewable energy, electrification and battery storage, but also in fossil gas power plants and pipelines, LNG and transportation infrastructure like airports, shipping and terminals.

A slide from BlackRock’s presentation of the Global Infrastructure Fund IV to investors

In line with this strategy, BlackRock agreed a deal this March for its Global Infrastructure Fund IV to acquire half of the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGT), a fossil gas pipeline stretching from the Canadian border across New England in the United States to Maine and Massachusetts.

When it began operations in 1999, the pipeline helped shift New England’s power generation away from coal and oil, but it has also created a stronger dependency on fossil gas, leaving citizens vulnerable to price spikes. The region is now planning to accelerate the rollout of renewable energy sources.

Comment: To keep its profits, Big Oil stole our future

The PNGT was not the first fossil fuel infrastructure the BlackRock team behind the Global Infrastructure Fund had snapped up. In a written testimony submitted this March to the State of New Hampshire, a senior executive listed a dozen oil and gas pipelines backed by earlier rounds of the fund. They included one operated by ADNOC, the UAE state-owned oil company whose CEO is Sultan Al-Jaber, COP28 president and chair of ALTÉRRA’s board.

Responding to Climate Home’s findings on where ALTÉRRA’s money is going, Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based think-tank Power Shift Africa, said it is “extremely concerning to see a fund hailed by a COP president as a solution to the climate crisis investing in fossil fuels”.

“This needs to be a wake-up call to the world that these funds created by COP hosts are little more than PR stunts designed to greenwash the activities of fossil fuel-producing nations,” he added.

Oil-backed carbon capture

BlackRock does not disclose the infrastructure fund’s complete portfolio, but it has invested another $550 million in Stratos, the world’s biggest direct air capture (DAC) project being developed in a joint venture with oil giant Occidental. The plant under construction in Texas promises to suck as much as 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere annually and bury it underground.

Its proponents see DAC as a key technology to balance out emissions in the race to achieve net zero by 2050, although so far it remains expensive and largely unproven at scale. Stratos won a grant from the US government to fast-track the construction of the facility, and it has struck deals to sell carbon offsets generated in future from the plant with corporate giants like Amazon.

Scottish oil-town plan for green jobs sparks climate campers’ anger over local park

When the DAC partnership was announced last November, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Stratos “represents an incredible investment opportunity for BlackRock’s clients… and underscores the critical role of American energy companies in climate technology innovation”.

But Stratos’ critics have questioned Occidental’s motivations and dismissed its DAC investments as a greenwashing ploy to keep pumping oil and slow down the transition away from fossil fuels.

“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time,” Vicki Hollub, Occidental’s chief executive, told the CERAWeek energy industry conference last year. “This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”

Call for safeguards

While BlackRock’s infrastructure fund deploys its cash largely in the Global North, ALTÉRRA’s promised investments in developing countries are still taking shape.

Brookfield in June launched a new “Catalytic Transition Fund” backed by ALTÉRRA with a $1-billion commitment. The fund’s stated focus is “directing capital into clean energy and transition assets in emerging economies”.

Climate Home asked ALTÉRRA if it had adopted any exclusion policies that would, for example, rule out investment in certain types of fossil fuels.

The UAE fund did not respond to the question, but a spokesperson said its investment approach is aligned with the goal “of accelerating the climate transition, with a focus on clean energy, industry decarbonization, sustainable living, and climate technologies”.

Climate activists protest against fossil fuels during COP28 in Dubai in December 2023. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

350.org’s Sieber called on Al-Jaber – who was widely criticised by green groups for his dual role as president of COP28 and head of a fossil fuel corporation – to “act swiftly to enforce stringent safeguards” for ALTÉRRA’s investments.

“The UAE is on the brink of losing the little credibility it still has left in addressing the urgency of the climate emergency,” Sieber added. “The world, especially communities who are being hit the hardest by climate impacts every day, cannot afford to have one more cent invested in fossil fuels.”

The key question now is whether Azerbaijan – the host of COP29 and itself a substantial producer and exporter of oil and gas – will do things differently. Last week, it announced a new voluntary fund that it said will invest at least $1 billion for emissions reduction projects in developing countries. Baku is hoping to secure contributions for it from fossil-fuel producing nations and companies.

Power Shift Africa’s Adow said developing countries need state-backed climate finance from rich nations, negotiated through the UN climate process, and “not just cooked up in voluntary schemes”. That funding “can be used where the need is greatest, not just where it might make most money for some private profit-seeking businesses,” he added.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; fact-checking by Sebastián Rodríguez; editing by Megan Rowling and Sebastián Rodríguez)

The post UAE’s ALTÉRRA invests in fund backing fossil gas despite “climate solutions” pledge appeared first on Climate Home News.

When G20 finance ministers gather in Rio de Janeiro this week, Brazil and France have a chance to put these powerful countries on track to deliver a global wealth tax that could raise over $680 billion per year in the fight to tackle poverty and the climate crisis. Both countries have been vocal supporters of taxing the super-rich to fund international development and climate action.  

In April, finance ministers Fernando Haddad (Brazil) and Bruno Le Maire (France) announced their intent to tax the wealth of billionaires by at least two percent annually, prompting ministers from Germany, South Africa and Spain to back the proposal. As the current host of the G20, Brazil commissioned an investigation into the feasibility of this global wealth tax – and the results were published by French economist Gabriel Zucman in June, generating further momentum in efforts to fill the funding gap for climate and development.  

Zucman’s findings show that a global wealth tax on the super-rich – billionaires and people with assets worth more than $100 million – could be enforced successfully even if all countries did not adopt it. It is also a popular measure: more than two-thirds of people across seventeen G20 countries show support for making the super-rich pay higher taxes as a means of funding major improvements to our economy and lifestyles.  

This isn’t surprising. Ensuring that billionaires are properly taxed could deliver significant, tangible benefits in people’s lives and go some way to addressing the systemic injustices and inequality reflected by the climate crisis and poverty. 

The world needs a new global deal on climate and development finance

An ambitious global wealth tax, together with higher and permanent tax on oil corporations and extraction, would provide hundreds of billions of dollars/euros each year to properly fund scaling up renewable energy, rolling out heat pumps and insulation programmes to lower the cost of heating or cooling our homes, new public transport links, future-proof jobs and much more – helping communities to thrive.  

It would also end more than a decade of broken promises by G20 states, ensuring that some of the world’s wealthiest countries have enough money in their national coffers to provide adequate finance to pay for those suffering the consequences of climate impacts now. Helping the poorest communities prepare for unnatural disasters like increased wildfires, flooding and sea level rise, and ensuring people can rebuild their homes, infrastructure and places of work when preventative measures are not an option. 

Power to communities

A global wealth tax is a moral imperative. By implementing a fairer system of taxation, the G20 could accelerate a just transition to a low-carbon economy, cutting dangerous carbon emissions and boosting living standards and energy access at great scale, while also tackling deep-rooted injustice. Delivering finance for community-oriented renewable energy projects across Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific would put power back in the hands of communities that continue to suffer from the violent legacy of colonialism and extractive profiteering. 

For this to be achieved France, and other wealthy nations in the G20 like Germany and the UK, must be willing to make concessions and assume historical responsibility for exploiting fossil fuel extraction in the economically poorer countries whose citizens are experiencing the worst consequences of the climate crisis. The emerging French government must deliver concrete plans to redirect its fortune and tax its billionaires towards a renewable energy-powered planet. 

Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation

It is incumbent on both Brazil and France to seize the opportunity presented by growing support to deliver a global wealth tax at the meeting of powerful finance ministers this week. Both countries must do everything they can to build trust and political will around the crucial proposal. But this will be a challenge if they undermine their stance on the international stage with contrasting domestic policy, something both governments are guilty of. 

Brazil has been pushing for new oil projects, including in the Amazon and is gearing up to become the fourth-largest oil producer in the world. France, despite being fined by the European Commission, is still not on track to meet its domestic renewable energy targets and announced in February a two billion-euro cut to the budget allocated for environmental and energy transition programmes. It is high time for both countries to stop the smoke and mirrors approach to international diplomacy, by aligning their commitments at national and international levels. 

Leaders’ summit

This week, ministers Haddad and Le Maire have a responsibility to rally their G20 counterparts around the wealth tax proposal and send a strong and unified signal to heads of state and governments to take concrete action that delivers a global wealth tax on billionaires when they meet in November. 

The stakes are high. The vast scale of global inequality means that nearly one in eleven people around the world live below the poverty line according the World Bank. In addition, this is set to be yet another record-breaking year for climate impacts, in a critical decade to prevent global heating from tipping over the 1.5°C threshold – a limit beyond which the ability of impacted communities to survive and thrive will be put at intolerable risk. We need to see vast quantities of finance mobilised to scale up renewable energy at the speed needed, and billionaires and multi-millionaires need to be forced to pay up.  

We’re all rooting for this one to work – it can take us a long way.

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At COP29 in Baku in November, the world will come together to agree a new target for climate finance. The stakes are huge given record temperatures and heatwaves, floods and droughts wreaking havoc globally.  

Tackling climate change and its consequences – and supporting wider human development – needs urgent investment. But the international financial system is struggling to respond. Is it time now to agree a new framework for international climate and development finance? Can the G20 under Brazil’s leadership, and international leaders meeting at the United Nations in New York in September, prepare the ground for COP29?  

Almost 54 years ago, in 1970, the world came together at the UN to set a target for rich countries to support poorer countries. They promised 0.7% of national income as “official development assistance” (ODA) to improve economic outcomes and reduce poverty. At the Copenhagen climate negotiations in 2009, world leaders again came together and promised to mobilise an annual $100bn to finance climate action by 2020. They said this would be “new and additional” to development finance.  

Hurricane Beryl shows why the new UK government must ramp up climate finance

Since then, with the exception of a few Europeans, rich nations have failed to meet the 0.7% target. In 2022, ODA peaked at $211bn, or 0.37% of combined OECD national income. Almost 15% of this was used to finance refugee-related costs in OECD countries themselves. The climate commitment was met in 2022, two years late. Without ODA levels rising, the 33% of ODA classified as climate-related cannot reasonably be claimed as “additional”.   

 In practice, maintaining this distinction between climate and development finance has proved difficult. For example, is planting trees in an urban landscape a climate investment because it absorbs emissions, a health investment because it reduces street-level temperatures, or a biodiversity investment as it creates habitats for wildlife? 

 The challenge of navigating these distinctions means it is difficult to track commitments or secure meaningful accountability against promises made. And it leaves many countries juggling a false trade-off between investments for the planet and for their people.  

Trillions needed

It is absolutely clear, however, that financing for poorer countries needs to increase dramatically. Despite progress over recent decades, development needs remain significant, with major setbacks through the pandemic. The Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates, presented to the G20, indicate that by 2030 $5.4 trillion a year will be needed for development, climate and nature. Of this, $1 trillion a year will be required in external financing for developing countries for climate and nature alone, of which roughly half will need to come from international public finance.  

International public finance – including new and additional aid finance from rich countries – is needed to provide concessional resources for the poorest and most indebted countries. It is needed to anchor capital increases for international financial institutions that can leverage this at least ten-fold, in part by borrowing from private capital markets. These institutions, together with other development finance institutions and strong policy environments, are key to bringing in private lenders and investors, whether by reducing risk or helping develop investment pipelines. 

The Loss and Damage Fund must not leave fragile states behind

As well as additional finance, poorer countries need money that better responds to their needs. In recent years, the relentless cycle of summits has spawned dozens of initiatives. The landscape is fragmented, with over 80 funds or instruments in the climate space alone. It has become increasingly difficult for poor countries to navigate this. There is an urgent need for a moratorium on new funds and to agree principles and coordination mechanisms for all external finance – building on the aid effectiveness principles agreed in the 2000s. 

Binding 0.7% commitment?

Taking these elements together, is it time now to drop the voluntary framework of ODA crafted in the last century to meet the problems of the last century? Can countries come together now to agree a new framework for official climate and development assistance, with a binding commitment for rich countries to finally meet the 0.7% national income promise by, say, 2030?  

Such a target, negotiated under a UN framework, would double the flow of aid finance. That funding would anchor multilateral, public and private investments that are needed to close the financing gap. A negotiated process could also bring in emerging countries like China that already provide significant finance. It could clarify definitions and shift arrangements for monitoring climate and other development spend from the OECD to the UN to improve accountability. And it could begin to consolidate the range of instruments and make them more responsive to the needs of poor countries. 

With public finances under strain around the world, many will say this is simply unaffordable. But international polling indicates that people are willing to contribute 1% of their income to fight climate change. Will politicians have the courage to engage their electorates? And at the G20, in the UN, in the lead up to Baku and beyond, will they have the vision to collaborate internationally to agree a new deal that delivers both development and climate justice? 

The post The world needs a new global deal on climate and development finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

This month has been unprecedented, even in a news cycle that has grown increasingly immune to ever-worsening climate catastrophes. After Beryl, a powerful category five hurricane, smashed its way across the Caribbean, an alarming report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service found that the planet has breached 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming for the twelfth month straight.  

For a new UK government pledging to take strong climate action at home, this must be a wake-up call for it to act on its historic responsibilities as a major global greenhouse gas polluter. These two alarming events alone show why it must put climate finance at the heart of its climate agenda as COP29 rapidly approaches. 

In Hurricane Beryl’s shadow, loss and damage fund makes progress on set-up

The Caribbean is one of the regions most at risk of climate change, with 70 percent of its population living or working in coastal areas surrounded by ever-warming seas that make hurricanes like Beryl more common and more violent. While a category five hurricane is unprecedented this early in the year, forecasters have already predicted that the region could experience up to seven severe hurricanes between now and the end of October.  

Extreme climate shocks are not only wreaking havoc, claiming lives, and destroying whole communities – they are also severely affecting the region’s tourism-dependent economies. Already it’s been estimated that the clean-up alone will cost tens of millions of dollars – a cost that doesn’t even begin to factor in what’s needed to rebuild destroyed communities still paying the price of previous disasters – crises that are gendered in their nature.  

Costly damage

Women and girls are more than 14 times more likely to be killed by climate shocks, according to Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, while our own research found that women also face an increased risk of non-economic impacts such as gender-based violence and forced child marriage.

Hurricane Maria – the deadliest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the 21st century – cost the island nation of Dominica an estimated 225 percent of its GDP, while Hurricane Irma in the same year cost Antigua and Barbuda more than $136 million in damages, with the tourism industry representing around 44 percent of all losses.  

Even seven years on, the scale of the destruction has meant that communities are still rebuilding while dealing with hurricanes that worsen with intensity and frequency with each passing year. Yet, despite this, small island nations that have only contributed around 1% of all global carbon emissions, have struggled to unlock climate finance, accessing a mere $1.5bn out of the $100bn pledged in total to Global South countries.   

Negative debt spiral

To make matters worse, countries across the Caribbean have no choice but to turn to international financial institutions and take on eye-watering levels of debt to help communities regain their footing. Debt laden with restrictive repayment conditions further locks countries into a negative spiral – forcing governments to shape their economies and societies in order to service their debts.  

All this means that small island nations are left to play catch up, forever stuck on the back foot. Instead of spending the meagre levels of finance pledged to resilience-proofing their economies and communities, loans are used to service debts while interest rates for repayments globally remain at a record high.  

In its manifesto, Britain’s Labour Party spoke about “tackling unsustainable debt” as a “priority area” in its global commitments – indeed a positive step forward. But in power we need it to act and end the colonial debt system and support countries in the Caribbean and beyond move towards a just and climate resilient future. 

The Loss and Damage Fund must not leave fragile states behind

For a new government keen to show global leadership on climate, this year’s COP summit is a vital moment for the UK to play a much stronger role on climate finance than its Conservative predecessors. As the fourth-highest historic carbon emitter in the world, the UK has a moral and historic responsibility to address climate change, but its actions haven’t matched its words so far. 

During its election campaign, Labour failed to pledge new funds to address the huge gulf in climate financing for losses and damages, opting instead to simply deliver the previous government’s low-ball commitments to spend £11.6bn between 2021-2026. With nations set to meet at COP this year to define new annual climate finance commitments for Global South countries – known as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) – Labour needs to be much more ambitious in Azerbaijan. The future of communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis depends on it. 

Now, in the words of Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickson Mitchell, is not the time for countries like the UK to “sit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.” Now is the time for radical action and for the new UK government to stand up and deliver for the billions of people facing a runaway climate emergency. 

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“The level of damage is apocalyptic,” said Henrietta Elizabeth Thompson from Barbados, among the countries worst hit by the natural disaster, at the start of the four-day session in Incheon, South Korea.

The board needs to create a fund that “reflects the scale of the magnitude, of the risk, the damage and devastation faced by people across the world and the urgency required to respond to it,” she added.

But before the fund starts handing out any money in future, board members have to agree on procedural matters.

A name and a place

On the opening day, the Philippines was picked as the host of the fund’s board in a secret vote by members. The Southeast Asian nation defeated bids from seven other candidates: Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Barbados, Eswatini, Kenya and Togo. 

Selecting a host country was one of the most pressing priorities for this week’s meeting. It represented a first necessary step for the board to take up a legal personality and enter into formal agreements with the World Bank, set to host the loss and damage fund on an interim basis. 

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While the administrative staff of the fund will be based at the World Bank, the board will carry out some of its meetings in the Philippines in the future, likely in the capital Manila. The country’s proposal scored particularly high thanks to its abundant transport options and accommodation facilities and its visa free entry for short stays for most visitors, according to a background paper. 

A man stands in a home where the roof was ripped apart, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, July 5, 2024. REUTERS/Maria Alejandra Cardona

The somewhat thorny issue of what to officially call the fund also landed on the table in South Korea. 

For nearly all climate talks participants, it’s simply been the “loss and damage fund” since it was adopted at COP27, but the United States have made various attempts at a rebrand. At COP28 in Dubai, for example, then U.S. climate envoy John Kerry kept referring to the “fund for climate impact response” – a more neutral label that softened the suggestion of developed countries’ historical responsibility. 

In consultations ahead of the meeting, the co-chairs of the board collected various options, from the minimalistic “the Fund” to the highly technocratic “Fund referred to in decisions 1/CP.28 and 5/CMA.5”.

Ultimately, members decided to go with “Fund for responding to Loss and Damage”, abbreviated as FLD, without spending much time debating the matter. 

Beware the ‘billions’

Divisions cropped up when the discussion turned to the process of selecting the executive director (ED). Hoping to announce the name of the executive director at COP29 this November, the board had to agree at this session on the criteria for picking the fund’s boss, including the roles and responsibilities.

Several board members from developing countries wanted the ED’s job description to mention efforts to find additional money for the fund at the scale of billions. “If you have someone running a fund of 100 million, this is totally different from 10 billion, 55 billion, or 100 billion,” said Egypt’s Mohamed Nasr, “the scale of this fund is not confined to where it is”.

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Countries have pledged around $700 million to the fund so far, with Italy, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates among the biggest contributors. The United States has pledged only $17.5 million. South Korea pledged $7 million at this week’s meeting. The residual costs from loss and damage is projected to reach a total of $290 billion to $580 billion by 2030, according to a 2018 study.

But some developed country board members, including the US, rejected the proposal of including a reference to “billions”, according to observers.

“It is clear that developed nations…remain non-committal about scaling financial mobilisation,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, who attended the meeting. “The initial commitments of a few hundred million dollars are merely a drop in the ocean compared to the real and escalating costs of climate change that developing countries endure,” he added.

Eventually, board members found a compromise wording. The ED will be asked to lead efforts to grow the fund’s resources “towards contributing to a response at scale to respond to climate-induced loss and damage”.

Global goal of tripling renewables by 2030 still out of reach, says IRENA

The recruitment process will now go underway with the goal of putting a shortlist of candidates in front of the board by the next meeting scheduled for September 18-20 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Legal agreements

Between now and then, there will be little time for a summer break.

After approving last June the conditions of hosting the fund, the World Bank now has until August 12 to share with board members the draft text of the agreements detailing how that will work in practice. It will include things like provisions to handle the money and give access to recipients and the rules governing the relationship between the board and the World Bank.

Developing countries and civil society groups are eager to see guarantees that communities in hard-hit countries will be able to access funds directly without going through various intermediary agencies.

“Agreeing and certifying these agreements will be the most important decision at the next board meeting”, said Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington who attended the board meeting. “The World Bank has shared an outline of what they will include, but we are talking about legal agreements so the devil is in the detail”.

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At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, nearly 200 countries committed to tripling global renewable energy capacity – measured as the maximum generating capacity of sources like wind, solar and hydro – by 2030, in an effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to figures published on Thursday by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), renewables are the fastest-growing source of power worldwide, with new global renewable capacity in 2023 representing a record 14% increase from 2022.

But IRENA’s analysis found that even if renewables continue to be deployed at the current rate over the next seven years, the world will fall 13.5% short of the target to triple renewables to 11.2 terawatts.

A higher annual growth rate of at least 16.4% is required to reach the 2030 goal, IRENA said.

Renewable electricity generation by energy source

Chart courtesy of IRENA

IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera warned against complacency. “Renewables must grow at higher speed and scale,” he said in a statement, calling for concrete policy action and a massive mobilisation of finance.

The United Arab Emirates’ COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber called the report “a wake-up call for the entire world” and urged countries to add strong national energy targets to their updated national climate action plans (NDCs) due by early next year.

Geographical disparities

Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance, a coalition of private-sector organisations working on renewable technologies, highlighted imbalances in the global picture of record renewables deployment.

“We shouldn’t be celebrating,” he said. “This growth is nowhere near enough and it’s not in the right places.

Africa saw only incremental growth of 3.5% in new renewables capacity last year compared with around 9% growth in Asia and North America, and 12% growth in South America.

And despite those higher increases in Asia and South America, data released last month by international policy group REN21 shows that less than 18% of renewables capacity added in 2023 was in Asia (excluding China), South America, Africa and the Middle East, despite these regions collectively representing nearly two-thirds of the global population.

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Slow growth in Africa is failing to live up to the huge potential for renewables on the continent, whose leaders last year pledged to scale up renewables more than five-fold by 2030, to 300 gigawatts.

“The justice piece is huge and too often overlooked,” Douglas said, adding that finance is “by far” the biggest challenge to getting renewables off the ground in the Global South.

Africa, for example, has received less than 2% of global investments in renewable energy over the past twenty years, according to IRENA.

“That’s not acceptable in terms of an equitable transition,” Douglas said, noting that when countries miss out on renewables financing, they are also missing out on the development benefits, jobs creation and improved access to affordable energy that clean energy can bring.

Finance not flowing

The scarcity of financing for renewables in developing countries is in large part due to investors being put off by the high borrowing costs and risk profiles of many such markets, Douglas said.

William Brent, chief marketing officer at Husk Power Systems, which installs and runs solar micro-grids in rural communities in Nigeria and Tanzania, explained: “Most sources of big capital in the West seem largely uninterested in Africa.”

“Despite being home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world, Africa is perceived as having a much higher risk profile and returns that cannot match the Americas, Asia or Europe,” Brent said.

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Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council, a body that represents the solar industry, told Climate Home that financial incentives provided by the public sector could help de-risk renewables projects for private investors.

“We need to get MDBs (multilateral development banks) leaning into big renewables projects and taking on some of the risk, which can then attract private finance,” she said, adding that governments in all countries must also play their part in creating policy environments that support and incentivise investment.

Grids and permitting barriers

Grids and permitting for renewables projects also pose major practical challenges, particularly in developed countries.

According to REN21, the potential renewable capacity that is ‘stuck’ waiting to be connected to grids around the world is equivalent to three times the amount of wind and solar power installed in 2023.

For Dunlop, the solution to grid congestion is more storage – batteries for short-term storage and other technologies for longer-term storage, such as storing electricity as heat or pumping water uphill that can then be released to produce hydroelectricity.

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Complex planning processes can also mean it takes longer to get planning permission for projects, such as wind farms, than it does to build them – if they even get approval at all.

For Douglas, something as simple as hiring more staff to process project applications in grid and planning authorities could begin to unlock thousands of gigawatts of renewable power.

Energy efficiency overlooked

Although renewables are growing faster than any other energy source, companies and governments are boosting investments in fossil fuels at the same time.

The use of fossil fuels for electricity generation continues to grow, while renewables only provide 6.3% of the energy required for heat, which is mainly used in buildings and industrial operations.

Electricity generation by energy source

Chart courtesy of IRENA

“We are not moving fast enough to fully meet the staggering rise in energy demand, let alone replace existing fossil fuels,” said REN21 Executive Director Rana Adib in a statement on the group’s recent statistics.

Another – neglected – solution is energy efficiency, experts said. The Global Renewables Alliance is running a ‘double down, triple up’ campaign, which calls on countries not only to triple renewables by 2030, but also to double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency, to reduce emissions and help stem energy demand – another goal countries signed up to at COP28.

“We absolutely need that doubling of energy efficiency as well,” said Dunlop. “That isn’t discussed enough.”

(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)

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European investors hold shares worth at least $65 million in major coal firms across China, India, the United States, Indonesia and South Africa within funds designated as “promoting environmental and social” goals under EU rules, an analysis by Climate Home and media partners found.

Taken together, these companies emit around 1,393 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere every year, putting them among the world’s top five polluters if they were a country.

The investments are owned by major financial firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Fideuram, a subsidiary of Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo. Most firms analysed are signatories of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), whose members pledge to align their portfolios with climate-friendly investment.

The asset managers told Climate Home their coal holdings do not contradict EU green policies or the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.

At the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, countries agreed for the first time to accelerate efforts “towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”. “Unabated” means power produced using coal without any technology to capture, store or use the planet-heating CO2 emitted during the process.

But rather than shrinking, global coal capacity has grown since the signing of the Glasgow Climate Pact with a fleet of new coal plants firing up their boilers, primarily in China, India and Indonesia. Coal miners in those countries have also boosted their operations to keep up with the increasing demand.

European leaders have heavily opposed this, with EU president Ursula von der Leyen saying the bloc is “very worried” about coal expansion in China.

“Light green” funds

The investments analysed by Climate Home have been made by funds classified under Article 8 of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), which the European Commission hoped would discourage greenwashing and promote sustainable investments when it was introduced in 2021.

Article 8 – known as ‘light green’ – refers broadly to a fund that has “environmental and social characteristics”, while the ‘dark green’ Article 9 refers more directly to sustainability.

The rules were also intended to offer members of the public more clarity on where asset managers invest their money and enable them to make an informed decision on whether they want their savings or pension pots to prop up climate-harming activities.

Workers shovel coal onto a truck at a coal yard near a coal mine in Huating, Gansu province, China. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

But a group of European financial market watchdogs warned this month the rules are having the opposite effect and called for an overhaul of the system.

“Status as ‘Article 8’ or ‘Article 9’ products have been used since the outset in marketing material as ‘quality labels’ for sustainability, consequently posing greenwashing and mis-selling risks,” they said in a joint opinion to the European Commission.

“The general public is still being misled when it comes to sustainable funds,” Lara Cuvelier, a sustainable investments campaigner at Reclaim Finance, told Climate Home. “The regulations are very weak and there is no clear criteria as to what can or cannot be included. It’s still in the hands of investors to decide that for themselves.”

Funding coal expansion

Climate Home identified investments in the biggest-polluting companies in the coal sector as part of a wider investigation led by Voxeurope, which tracked holdings by funds that disclose information under the EU’s sustainable finance directive.

These “green” funds include investments in mining companies like Coal India and China Shenhua – the respective countries’ top coal producers – and Indonesia’s Adaro Energy, as well as in giant coal power producers such as NTPC in India and China Resources Power Holdings.

All of these companies are planning large-scale expansions of their coal output, according to the influential Global Coal Exit List compiled by German NGO Urgewald.

No new coal mines, mine extensions or new unabated coal plants are needed if the world is to reach net zero emissions in the energy sector by 2050 and keep the 1.5C warming limit of the Paris Agreement “within reach”, according to projections by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

State-owned Coal India is the world’s largest coal producer, with fast-growing output topping 773 million tonnes in the latest financial year. It is targeting 1 billion tonnes of annual coal production by 2025-26 by opening new mines and expanding dozens of existing ones.

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In its latest annual report, Coal India cited “pressure of international bodies like [the] UN to comply with [the] Paris Agreement” as one of the main threats to its business. Coal India’s share value has more than doubled over the last 12 months on the back of stronger coal demand in the country, as extreme heatwaves have fuelled the use of air-conditioning among other factors.

State-run mining and energy giant China Shenhua plans to invest over $1 billion in 2024 to expand its fleet of coal power stations and build new coal mines. “We will keep a close eye on climate change to improve the clean and efficient use of coal,” its latest annual report said.

Big investors

The funds with stakes in those coal-heavy companies are managed by Fideuram, an arm of Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, US-based AllianceBernstein and Mercer, a subsidiary of the world’s largest insurance broker Marsh McLennan.

Coal investments in Fideuram’s Article 8 funds – worth at least $16 million – also appear to breach the company’s own coal exclusion policy, designed to rule out holding shares in certain coal firms.

Two of its flagship “emerging markets” funds claim to promote environmental and social characteristics including “climate change prevention” and the “reduction of carbon emissions”, according to information disclosed under EU rules. To achieve their ‘green’ objectives, the funds claim to exclude any investment in companies “deriving at least 25% of their revenues” from the extraction, production and distribution of electricity connected with coal.

But Climate Home found the funds include investments in at least six major coal companies exclusively or primarily involved in coal mining or power generation.

A coal-fired power plant under construction in Shenmu, Shaanxi province, China, in November 2023. REUTERS/Ella Cao

Fideuram did not answer Climate Home’s questions about the funds’ apparent breach of their own policy. But a company spokesperson said in a written statement that “investments in sectors with high-carbon emissions do not conflict with the objectives of the SFDR, which concern the transparency of sustainability investments, nor with the Paris Agreement, which promotes a transition to a low-carbon economy”.

A spokesperson for Mercer said its Article 8 fund, which holds shares in NTPC and China Resources Power Holdings. has an exclusion policy to avoid investing in companies that generate more than 1% of their revenue from thermal coal extraction. “Based on the data provided by ISS [a provider of environmental ratings], no groups involved breach the 1% threshold, and therefore, the fund is not in violation of its SFDR commitments,” they added.

AllianceBernstein did not respond to a request for comment.

Coal-hungry steelmaking

While excluding investments in so-called thermal coal used for electricity generation, several ‘green’ funds put their money in companies producing coking coal – or metallurgical (met) coal – which is used to make steel.

Goldman Sachs’ Article 8 funds hold shares worth several million dollars in Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa, Europe’s largest coking coal producer, and Shanxi Meijin in China. BlackRock offers exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking indexes that include investments in SunCoke, a leading met coal producer in the US and Brazil, Alabama-based Warrior Met and Shanxi Meijin.

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Reclaim Finance’s Cuvelier said that, up until recently, the focus has been on pushing thermal coal out of investor portfolios because the alternatives to met coal in steel production were “less developed”.

“There are now increasing calls on financial institutions to cover met coal as well in their exclusion policies as alternatives exist,” she added. “It’s becoming very important because there are new projects under development that should be avoided”.

A spokesperson for BlackRock said: “As a fiduciary, we are focused on providing our clients with choice to meet their investment objectives. Our fund prospectuses and supporting material provide transparency as to the methodology and investment objectives of each fund”.

Goldman Sachs did not reply to a request for comment.

Reforms on the horizon

At the end of 2022, the European Commission began a review of the SFDR’s application with a view to updating its sustainable finance rules.

Future reforms may include changes to the ways funds are categorised. “There are persistent concerns that the current market use of the SFDR as a labelling scheme might lead to risks of greenwashing… partly because the existing concepts and definitions in the regulation were not conceived for that purpose,” the Commission said in a consultation paper released last year.

It also indicated that the existing categories under Articles 8 and 9 could either be better defined or scrapped entirely and replaced with a different system. The new Commission, yet to be formed following last month’s elections, will decide if and how to move forward with the reform process.

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Separately, the EU’s market supervisory authority, ESMA, has recently issued guidelines to prevent funds from misusing words like “sustainability”, “ESG” – environmental, social and governance – or “Paris-aligned” in their names. A handful of the funds with coal investments analysed by Climate Home have used those labels.

Under the new guidelines, asset managers wanting to slap climate-friendly labels on their funds will have to exclude companies that derive more than a certain percentage of revenues from fossil fuels.

Climate Home produced this article with data analysis contributions from Stefano Valentino (Bertha Fellow 2024) and Giorgio Michalopoulos. This article is part of an investigation coordinated by Voxeurop and European Investigative Collaborations with the support of the Bertha Challenge fellowship.

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In a new study quantifying how gender shapes people’s experiences of climate change, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found that, by 2050, higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns could mean women globally spend up to 30% more time collecting water.

PIK guest researcher Robert Carr, the study’s lead author, explained how this results in more physical strain, psychological distress and lost time that could otherwise be spent on education, leisure or employment.

“Even when people talk about gendered climate impacts, there is very little attention on time poverty and how that affects someone’s ability to improve their life,” Carr told Climate Home.

In addition, the cost of lost working time for women affects economies, and is projected to reach tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars per country annually by 2050, the study said.

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Carr noted that the data underpinning PIK’s study only recently became available and is a valuable tool for connecting women’s welfare issues to climate impacts, with more such analysis expected as new datasets emerge.

“But more still needs to be done to act on, and implement, research findings like ours at the local and national levels,” he added.

For that to happen, research like PIK’s has to resonate in government offices and negotiating rooms at UN climate talks, where gender activists see 2024 as a milestone year. Countries are expected to renew key global initiatives for advancing gender-responsive climate action and improving gender balance in official delegations at UN negotiations.

Gendered impacts of climate change

So far progress has been slow. After more than a decade of working towards those aims within the UN climate process, wilder weather and rising seas are still disproportionately affecting women and gender-diverse people, as global warming continues apace.

For example, female-headed rural households experience higher income losses due to extreme weather events like floods and droughts, through impacts on farming and other activities.

Rates of child marriage and violence against women and girls have been shown to increase during and after climate disasters. And studies have identified a positive correlation between drought-induced displacement and hysterectomies among female farm labourers in India.

At the same time, barriers like caring responsibilities, lack of funding, difficulties in obtaining visas and even sexual harassment in UN spaces persist, standing in the way of women’s equal participation in the climate negotiating rooms.

Yet, despite the mounting urgency, governments made little progress in talks on gender issues at the mid-year UN conference in Bonn this month.

Delegates arrive for a workshop on implementing the UNFCCC gender action plan and on future work to be undertaken on gender and climate change, at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 3, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

Advocates had hoped to leave the German city with a new, stronger version of the UN’s flagship gender initiative, known as the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWP). Instead, discussions were tense and slow, leaving the LWP – which is supposed to be renewed by 2025 – to be finalised in November at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

No rise in women negotiators

Claudia Rubio, gender working group lead for the Women and Gender Constituency at the UN, said the LWP has enabled a better understanding of “what is prohibiting women and other genders from being in [UN negotiating] spaces”.

But Mwanahamisi Singano, senior global policy lead at the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), reminded delegates at a workshop in Bonn that “time has not been the magic ingredient in bridging disparities between women and men in participation”, which has “stagnated or even declined when it comes to COPs”.

According to data from WEDO, women made up only 34% of COP28 government delegations overall, the same percentage as 10 years ago. Azerbaijan’s initial men-only COP29 organising committee – to which women were hastily added after an international outcry – and its line-up of negotiators at Bonn were a case in point.

The UN’s own analysis of men and women’s relative speaking times at the negotiations shows that women often – though not always – speak less, and that themes such as technology and finance see consistently lower numbers for women’s participation.

Progress has been gradual even with programmes like WEDO’s Women Delegates Fund, which has financed hundreds of women – primarily from least developed countries and small island developing states – to attend UN climate talks. Since 2012, WEDO has also run ‘Night Schools’, training women in technical language and negotiation skills.

Gender in the NDCs

Increasing the gender diversity of decision-makers in UN negotiations is important in its own right, but it does not necessarily translate into more gender-responsive climate policy, experts said. Not all women negotiators are knowledgeable about the gender-climate nexus, they noted.

But having an international framework to boost gender-sensitive climate action has also “catalysed political will” at the country level, according to Rebecca Heuvelmans, advocacy and campaigning officer at Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF).

Delegates listen to discussions on the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 4, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

This is evidenced by an increase in the number of official National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points – up from 38 in 2017 when UN climate talks first adopted a Gender Action Plan, to 140 across 110 countries today. While the precise role of these focal points depends on country needs, advocates say they have been pivotal in spurring action on national gender priorities.

So far, at least 23 countries have national gender and climate change action plans, and references to gender in national climate plans submitted to the UN, known as NDCs, have increased since the earliest commitments in 2016. Around four-fifths now include gender-related information, according to a UN review of the plans.

In practice, this ranges from including gender-diverse people in the development of national climate plans to legislation that specifically addresses the intersection of climate change and gender.

For example, nine countries – including Sierra Leone and Jordan – have committed to addressing rising gender-based violence in the context of climate change. South Sudan acknowledged that heat exposure and malnutrition can increase infant and maternal mortality, while Côte d’Ivoire recognised that climate change hikes risks to pregnant women and those going through menopause.

Nonetheless, only a third of countries include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services in their climate commitments, according to a 2023 report by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London, showing how much work is yet to be done.

Next year, countries are due to submit updated NDCs, which campaigners see as a crucial opportunity to embed gender equality more deeply, including by involving women and girls in their planning and implementation, and collecting data disaggregated by sex and gender that can help shape policy.

Cross-cutting issue

Ahead of COP29, gender advocates are pushing for a stronger work programme with new language around intersectionality – the recognition that gender interacts with other parts of identity like race, class and Indigeneity to create overlapping systems of discrimination.

Angela Baschieri, technical lead on climate action at UNFPA, said gender commitments in the UN climate process must be more ambitious and include actionable targets for countries to address gender inequality.

Five things we learned from the UN’s climate mega-poll

Beyond the gender negotiations themselves, the Women and Gender Constituency wants to boost the integration of gender with other streams of work.

“Whether you’re talking about green hydrogen, climate finance or low-carbon transport, there is always a gender dimension,” said Sascha Gabizon, executive director of WECF International, a network of feminist groups campaigning on environmental issues.

“We have so much evidence now that climate policies just aren’t as efficient if they are not gender-transformative,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post UN action on gender and climate faces uphill climb as warming hurts women appeared first on Climate Home News.

Opinion polls predict that voters are set to back the left-wing Labour Party over the incumbent Conservative government by a significant margin, a BBC tracker shows.

Lammy told an event during London Climate Action Week that he supports the green reforms of the global financial system that have been proposed by the leaders of Kenya, Barbados and the World Bank.

Clare Shakya, climate lead at The Nature Conservancy, a green group, told Climate Home that Lammy’s comments were “massively ambitious” and “exactly what the world needs to hear right now”.

But promises on climate finance to developing countries in the Labour Party manifesto are the same as the ruling Conservative Party. Lammy argued that “all across the world, a cost-of-living crisis is making it hard to make the case solely for taxpayers’ funds” to support climate action in developing nations.

The Conservatives and Labour have both pledged to restore the overseas aid target from 0.5% to 0.7% of gross national income when “fiscal circumstances allow”. Both have committed to providing £11.6 billion ($14.7bn) in international climate finance between 2021 and 2026.

Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator for Brazil’s Climate Observatory, commended Lammy “for being so vocal about the need for the UK to step up” on climate multilateralism.

But, he added, the Labour politician “doesn’t seem to offer anything new on climate finance and now, with four months left until COP29, we desperately need a breakthrough”.

IEA calls for next national climate plans to target coal phase-down

At the COP29 climate summit in November, governments are due to agree on a new post-2025 goal for international climate finance. Developed and developing countries have been divided so far, with developing nations proposing targets of $1.1-$1.3 trillion a year but wealthy governments refusing to openly discuss figures until the issue of where the money will come from is addressed.

Outside the UN climate talks, a coalition led by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley – partly backed by the US, Germany and others – has been pushing for multilateral development banks to lend more money to green projects. Kenyan Prime Minister William Ruto has called for taxes on polluters to raise money for climate finance.

Lammy told a forum on climate politics, organised by think-tank E3G on Tuesday, that the global financial system’s rules “were set up in a different age, a different century – they don’t work today”. “We want to work with [World Bank president] Ajay Banga and others to bring about the changes that are required,” he added.

Angelo said he supports the need to shake up the system, but described Lammy’s references to reforming multilateral development banks while limiting public finance as “standard developed-country talking points”.

Five things we learned from the UN’s climate mega-poll

Asked about the Labour manifesto promise to “audit” its relationship with China, Lammy said Labour would “engage appropriately” with the world’s biggest emitter on key policy areas, adding “there is no more important issue in so many ways than the climate issue.”

He praised the EU, US and Australia for their efforts to talk with China, and said a Labour government would “cooperate with China when we can”. The previous day, he told the India Global Forum that he would also work with India on climate change.

Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington DC, told Climate Home that “the UK has been quite self-absorbed and quickly disappeared from the list of interlocutors with Beijing since COP26 in Glasgow”.

“The desire to restart engagement is a welcome development,” he added. “This is particularly true if the US election goes south. Much of the rest of the world will need to hold the fort.”

On domestic energy policy, Lammy reiterated Labour’s pledge not to issue any new licences for oil and gas production in the North Sea.

The party’s manifesto outlines further national climate policies, including decarbonising electricity by 2030 – five years earlier than the current government’s plans – by doubling onshore wind, tripling solar and quadrupling offshore wind.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague and Joe Lo; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

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Europe’s first comprehensive climate risk assessment, published in May, sent a clear and unequivocal message: climate risks facing Europe have reached a critical level and urgently require decisive actions from European policymakers.  

Yet the recent EU parliamentary elections – which delivered significant gains for Europe’s far-right and dealt a blow to its green parties – alongside a recently leaked list of EU Council priorities for the next five years, indicate a marked U-turn in the EU’s commitment to climate action.  

The EU has faced a dramatically changed geopolitical situation over the past few years, marked by the upsurge of far-right political forces in several member states, growing trade-tensions with China, and a humanitarian disaster and heightened energy security risk caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine.  

Against this backdrop, EU policymakers have had to make tough decisions on strengthening security in Europe, diverting their attention to defense, security and migration issues, although this has come at the expense of the EU’s much flagged international climate leadership and green agenda.  

IEA calls for next national climate plans to target coal phase-down

We argue that the EU should stay the course on climate action. Despite geopolitical turns and a backlash from some industries over legislation brought on by the Green Deal, European policymakers have a responsibility to follow through on climate commitments – and thereby avoid the tremendous risks that face us if they do not. 

Exacerbating geopolitical risks 

Protests have included those by European farmers against sustainability provisions in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Recently, the EU Council only just managed to approve the highly anticipated, but embattled Nature Restoration Law, thanks to a rare display of political defiance by the Austrian environment minister.  

The law provides critical policy levers for improving Europe’s much degraded ecosystems, strengthening their resilience towards climate change. Hence this vote was critical, although it may still face a legal challenge.  

Despite dilution, officials say new nature law can restore EU carbon sinks

There is ample irony in the notion that political efforts and financial resources should be diverted to enhance Europe’s defence and security capabilities and strengthen the EU’s external borders from human migration. Climate change is certain to exacerbate the impacts and risks from geopolitical conflicts and wars and will be the mega-driver of migration over the coming years. 

And while legislation that requires businesses to take action on climate change and biodiversity loss is certainly going to be burdensome for some, these costs pale in comparison with the effects that climate change will have on the European economy.  

Corporate credit rating downgrades due to companies’ exposure to climate risks have already accelerated, according to S&P Global. And climate-induced disruptions of supply chains are likely to cost the global economy up to $25 trillion over the next 35 years under the current trajectory. Much of this cost will be borne by businesses. 

Ways to protect Europe 

EU-level policies are currently dangerously inadequate to safeguard European lives and livelihoods from the majority of the potentially catastrophic threats that will loom over Europe in the coming years and decades.  

But there are solutions, if bold action is taken in the following areas: 

• Protect and restore marine and coastal ecosystems by minimising pressures from overfishing, agricultural runoff and other industrial activities to avoid disastrous degradation of marine ecosystems. 
• Conserve and restore Europe’s forests through the recently passed Nature Restoration Law to safeguard Europe’s ecosystems and their many services on which the European economy and wider society heavily depend. 
• Leverage the Common Agricultural Policy to strengthen incentives and policy certainty for transforming and adapting Europe’s agricultural sector to extreme heat and drought. 
• Shore up the preparedness of healthcare systems and resources against the impacts of heat waves on vulnerable populations and outdoor workers, especially in southern Europe.  

• Bolster investments in climate adaptation abroad. This support will also be critical to reduce cascading climate risks that originate beyond Europe’s outer borders.   

With this comprehensive body of scientific evidence and advice at hand, European policymakers must resist the urge to adopt a tunnel-vision approach and focus solely on near-term risks, but rather approach climate change as a systemic threat to European’s economy, society and natural capital.  

The scientific community already has called on policymakers to reverse the current course of retreat from the EU environmental agenda, in an open letter to the EU’s legislative bodies.  

EU warns “delaying tactics” have made plastic treaty deal “very difficult”

The actions taken by the incoming group of elected lawmakers and appointed officials will determine the level of harm and damage European citizens will have to endure over the coming decades. It is critical that European policymakers take the long view.  

The decisions and actions they take today will lock our children’s future onto a path. Only today’s policymakers can make sure that path takes us towards a world that can sustain a functioning social order and human life.  

The post New European Parliament must act on climate change as a systemic threat   appeared first on Climate Home News.

Speaking on Monday at an old London coal power plant-turned-shopping centre, IEA head Fatih Birol said he would be “very happy” to see new NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) that “include no new unabated coal and also early retirements of existing coal”.

In 2021, the Glasgow Climate Pact, agreed at the COP26 UN climate summit, called on countries for the first time to accelerate efforts “towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”. “Unabated” means power produced using coal without any technology to capture, store or use the planet-heating carbon dioxide emitted during the process.

Birol, a Turkish energy analyst, said that stopping coal-plant construction was “as our North American colleagues would say, a no-brainer”. Yet, he added, while “the appetite to build new coal plants is in a dying process, some countries still do it”. He singled out China’s plans to build 50 gigawatts (GW) of new coal plants.

Shutting down existing coal plants, particularly young ones in Asia, is more difficult because the companies that have built and operate them would lose money, Birol noted. There is almost $1 trillion of capital to be recovered from existing coal plants, “so who is going to pay for this?” he asked, calling it “a key issue”.

Birol praised the Just Energy Transition Partnerships that have been set up between wealthy countries and several coal-reliant emerging economies like South Africa and Indonesia to help address the problem. He added that “there are some countries in Asia who can, in my view, afford to retire their coal plants earlier”, without mentioning which.

Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Fadillah Yusof announced at the event organised by the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which includes 60 countries, that Malaysia aims to reduce its coal-fired power plants by half by 2035 and retire all of them by 2044. It will also tackle social and economic challenges through reskilling programmes for workers and promoting renewable energy adoption, he added.

Speaking later at London’s defunct Battersea power station, Indonesia’s deputy minister for maritime affairs and investment, Rachmat Kaimuddin, explained some of the challenges his country faces in phasing out coal.

Kaimuddin (right) speaks alongside Germany’s climate envoy Jennifer Morgan (centre) in London on June 24, 2024. (Photo: Powering Past Coal Alliance)

After China and India, Indonesia has the world’s biggest pipeline of new coal power plants under construction. Kaimuddin said the state energy company would not build any more but added that cancelling existing contracts is “very, very difficult” unless the company constructing the plant wants to pull out – which none have yet.

In addition, shutting down existing power power plants is expensive, he said, because many coal power plants have “take or pay” contracts signed in the 1990s under which the government pays them whether their electricity is required or not.

Another concern is that the Southeast Asian nation does not want to lose its energy security in the switch to renewables, Kaimuddin noted. Indonesia currently mines domestically most of the coal it uses. “We’re trying to partner with other people to try to build [a] renewable supply chain in the country,” he said.

Millions of people in Indonesia work in the coal industry, he added, so a shift towards clean energy will need to include new jobs for them. “It doesn’t have to be green jobs – it has to be jobs, right?” he said.

Five things we learned from the UN’s climate mega-poll

Singapore’s climate ambassador Ravi Menon told the same event that the economies of China, India and Indonesia are growing and so are their energy needs, meaning that renewables have to be rolled out rapidly to meet demand.

Energy storage is also required to smooth intermittent supply from solar and wind, while electricity transmission infrastructure, including power lines, is needed to transport power from solar and wind farms to cities that account for a large share of consumption.

Both Kaimuddin and Menon said carbon credits should be used to offset losses for the owners of coal plants that are shut down early. “Retiring [plants] definitely will destroy financial value and… and we also need a better way to compensate them,” said Kaimuddin.

The event’s focus on coal raised concerns among some campaigners. Avantika Goswami, climate lead at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home that “singling out coal” in the NDCs, rather than including fossil fuels more broadly, “equates to giving a free pass to oil and gas-dependent countries, many of whom are wealthy”.

It could penalise many developing countries, where coal is a cheap source of fuel and energy needs are still growing, she warned.

“A global climate policy that allows unfettered use of oil and gas – which together account for 55% of fossil fuel emissions – is incomplete and inequitable,” she added.

Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at advocacy group Oil Change International, said the IEA’s head should know that “the time to focus only on coal as a climate culprit is over”. He pointed to a subsequent agreement at COP28 last year where governments agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels in their energy systems, without setting a deadline.

“We need a full, fast, fair, funded phase-out of all fossil fuels. Setting such a low bar for ambition is out of touch and inequitable, keeping the door wide open for major oil and gas producers,” Ioualalen added in a statement.

He called on rich countries that are “most responsible” for the climate crisis to foot the bill for a just transition. “We know they have more than enough money. It’s just going to the wrong things like fossil fuel handouts,” he said.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

This story was updated after publication to include comments from Avantika Goswami at the CSE and Romain Ioualalen at Oil Change International,.

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The regulation, which tasks the EU’s 27 member states with reviving their land and water habitats and planting billions of trees, was narrowly passed by EU environment ministers.

The controversial law only gained enough backing because Austria’s minister for climate action, Leonore Gewessler, defied her country’s leader and voted in favour of it, a decision which may be challenged legally. 

But, while celebrating the bill’s approval, climate campaigners and scientists warned that its ambition had been diluted and it must be implemented effectively to reverse the destruction of Europe’s natural carbon sinks.

EU warns “delaying tactics” have made plastic treaty deal “very difficult”

The law requires each EU country to rejuvenate 20% of their degraded land and water habitats by 2030 and all of them by 2050, and to plant three billion more trees across the bloc by 2030.

It also requires countries to restore 30% of their drained peatlands by 2030 and 50% by mid-century.

Peatlands that have been drained, largely for farming, forestry and peat extraction, are responsible for 5% of Europe’s total greenhouse gas emissions. 

Climate breakthrough

Belgium’s climate minister Zakia Khatattabi told Climate Home that the law’s passing is “not only a breakthrough for nature but also for the climate”, and would enable the EU to meet its emissions-cutting targets.

Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said that “without it, carbon neutrality in Europe would have been put beyond reach”.

The amount of carbon dioxide sucked in by Europe’s carbon sinks – including forests, peatlands, grassland, soil and oceans –  has been falling since 2010. For forests, the World Resources Institute blames logging for timber and biomass and more wildfires and pests for the decline.

The amount of carbon sucked in is shrinking (black line) when it needs to increase to meet targets for 2030 (orange dot) and 2050 (blue dot)

But the EU’s plan to meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 involves halting this decline and reversing it into a 15% increase on 2021 levels by 2030.

Jette Bredahl Jacobsen, vice-chair of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, told Climate Home the new nature law “can contribute substantially to this, as healthy ecosystems can store more carbon and are more resilient against climate change impacts”.

The law is extremely popular with the EU public, with 75% of people polled in six EU countries saying they agree with it and just 6% opposing.

Watered down

But farmer trade associations were fiercely against it, and it became a symbolic battleground between right-wing and populist parties on one side and defenders of the EU Green Deal on the other.

Several of the law’s strongest passages ended up diluted before it reached ministers for approval, including caveats added to an obligation for countries to prevent any “net loss” of urban green space and tree cover this decade.

A new clause was introduced to deter EU states from using funds from the Common Agricultural Policy or Common Fisheries Policy to finance nature restoration – raising questions as to where money to implement the law will come from.

And, most importantly, an obligation to restore peatlands that have been drained for farming – a major source of emissions – was weakened.

A peat bog under restoration in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, pictured in January 2022. (Photo: Imago Images/Rüdiger Wölk via Reuters)

The original regulation would have instructed countries to rewet 30% of peatlands drained for agricultural use by 2030 and 70% by 2050 – the most effective way of restoring them. 

But, as a concession to farmers, the final version of the nature law mandates rewetting just 7.5% of these peatlands by 2030 and 16.7% by 2050, with exceptions possible for actions such as replacing peatlands drained for agriculture with other uses.

Rewetting usually involves blocking drainage ditches. As well as reducing emissions, this helps an area adapt to climate change, protecting it from floods, and improving the water quality, soil and biodiversity.

But the Commission will also count other actions as peatland “restoration”, such as the partial raising of water tables, bans on the use of heavy machinery, tree removal, the reintroduction of peat-forming vegetation or fire prevention measures. 

That’s despite the European Commission’s own rulebook describing these measures as “supplementary to gain better results” and saying that “peatland restoration should always primarily focus on rewetting”.

Lessons from trade tensions targeting “overcapacity” in China’s cleantech industry

Where rewetting does take place, as with all restoration measures in the final version of the regulation, EU states will be obliged to prioritise action in particular areas known as Natura 2000 sites. These cover around 18% of the EU’s territory, and should already have been restored under existing legislation.  

Environmentalists maintain that the legislation still has tremendous potential, pointing to possible actions such as the restoration of seagrass meadows which cover less than 0.1% of the ocean floor but absorb more than 10% of its carbon.    

EU countries will now draft national nature restoration plans over the next two years showing how they intend to meet their targets, for assessment by the Commission.

(Reporting by Arthur Neslen; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

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“Overcapacity”, a geeky economic term, has recently become the new buzzword for international discussion around China’s solar and electric vehicle industries. It is also becoming one of the thorniest issues in China’s relations with other major economies.

Notably, the word was mentioned five times in the G7 Leaders Communiqué released last week, with the G7 countries framing it collectively as a global challenge.

It is a debate that was initially sparked by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her April visit to Beijing. According to her, China’s cleantech industry has excess capacities that cannot be absorbed domestically, leading to exports at depressed prices. And she stressed that this should be a concern not only for the US, but also for Europe and other emerging markets.

Days after climate talks, US slaps tariffs on Chinese EVs and solar panels

China strongly disagreed with this claim, while Yellen’s concern resonated in the EU, which has long focused on China’s market dominance. In short, there is an overcapacity of “overcapacities”, with neither side finding identical terms of reference. But as this debate is a harbinger of how climate solutions and political agendas will interweave, it’s worth parsing out some lessons for each side, on their own terms.

The US’ “overcapacity” claim as presented by Yellen is a non-starter in China.

China’s clean energy industry is an important point of pride internationally and a source of legitimacy domestically for Beijing. From that perspective countering the “overcapacity” claim is both emotionally and strategically important.

Strategically, this claim is being used to justify trade measures and tariffs against China’s clean energy products. Emotionally, the cleantech industry is a modern-day success story of China’s entrepreneurship and innovation. In China’s public discourse, the US “overcapacity” claims lands as a rejection of that success.

Lithium tug of war: the US-China rivalry for Argentina’s white gold

The result is a political debate in which – by design – no side can convince the other. And the lesson? This posturing is at odds with US-China climate diplomacy as we’ve known it to function in the past. Whatever objectives this approach serves, it does not include closer climate collaboration between the US and China, even as multilateral climate action at the UN level still requires them to take action in concert.

In China, discussion on “overcapacity” emerged from an ongoing conversation about how to manage investment hype. And the answer lies on the demand side.

For investors inside China at a time of challenging economics, few industries are as attractive as the clean energy industry. And business leaders have focused on the risks of hot money and breakneck expansion of clean energy manufacturing capacity for some time now, particularly in the solar industry.

This was probably the origin of “overcapacity”. But in China, this has been a familiar, almost perennial discussion of investment and industrial cycles. While the US argument equates exports to overcapacity, Chinese companies argue that it is demand that determines overcapacity, and they make investment and expansion decisions based on projections of both domestic and global demand.

Q&A: What you need to know about electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries

That said, the size of China’s domestic market means it will remain the “base” for Chinese manufacturers. In the overseas market, the “overcapacity” claim underscores the complexity and uncertainties Chinese companies face.

For Chinese policymakers, one obvious response to the new market dynamics should be taking domestic demand to new levels. That means addressing lingering questions for China’s renewable energy future – namely, how to resolve the impact of coal. China’s power market was designed for a system dependent on coal, but it needs reform to allow wind and solar to take the central role. Injecting new political momentum to accelerate the reform will be key.

The EU has long been concerned about China’s market dominance, and the “overcapacity” debate is pushing it to decide its role in this trilateral trade and climate dynamic.

Even before this debate erupted, the EU had already begun, subtly, to diversify supply chains and build its own industrial strength, reducing dependence on Chinese products. Last week, the EU announced a maximum tariff of 38% on imported Chinese-made electric vehicles, concluding that Chinese EV makers are benefiting from “unfair subsidies”.

At this stage, it’s still unclear if this is the end of the EU’s low-key approach to date. Cultivating an EU-based clean industry hub without compromising the global response to climate change is a challenge, especially as the EU positions itself as a climate leader.

Entering the fray of US-China tension only makes this feat more complex, especially given uncertainties on the US end in an election year. How the EU approaches this climate and trade nexus will ultimately shape the trilateral dynamic among the world’s three largest carbon emitters in the coming years.

The Canadian city betting on recycling rare earths for the energy transition

For China, where relations with the EU and other countries are concerned, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at the hidden messages in the “overcapacity” debate. Other countries want more than just Chinese products.

Climate leadership is not a buyer-seller relationship, but one between partners who want solutions that create local jobs, develop opportunities, and enable native development of a sustainable future.

China should see its role in the global clean transition as more than a manufacturing hub. The transition requires tools, technology, finance and know-how, and China has much to offer. It is time for China to think more creatively about how to leverage its industrial advantages to provide the solutions with which the world is currently under-supplied.

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There’s no getting around it. The recently concluded climate talks in Bonn have left the goal of limiting global heating to under 1.5C in peril.  The reason: rich countries are backtracking on their financial pledges.   

The crucial deadline for next year’s new national climate plans, known as NDCs – which are the bedrock for the collective global effort to tackle climate change – are now in danger. This is because developing countries have no assurances that the climate finance they were promised, and which fund the NDCs, will be there.  

The theme of this year’s COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, is supposed to be climate finance. It is the meeting where the world is tasked with agreeing a new long-term global finance goal.  

This goal is the key ingredient to tackling climate injustice, and how we help vulnerable people adapt to the climate crisis and fund the transition to a zero-carbon energy system. However, at the mid-year talks in Bonn this month, rich countries dragged their feet, blocked progress and deliberately offered only vague signals about their intentions.  

UN climate chief warns of “steep mountain to climb” for COP29 after Bonn blame-game

They also attempted to unpick the commitment they made at COP28 in Dubai: to have an annual dialogue specifically on climate finance. They are now suggesting it cover other issues.  

Rich countries also used up valuable time arguing about who should pay the bill, trying to get some developing countries to also be included in the donor base. This was something they continued to talk about in the G7 summit communique issued this weekend. Delay and fudging on the new climate finance goal are hugely dangerous because the Bonn session was crucial to ensuring a successful COP29. 

Waiting for US election? 

COP summits take a huge amount of preparation with negotiators taking all year to lay the groundwork for the final landing zones that will be finalised this year in Baku. Leaving it all to the last minute would be disastrous and could result in a failure that derails international momentum on climate change just as Donald Trump is elected US President. 

The infuriating go-slow in Bonn seems to be because countries are waiting for the result of this election before making any finance commitments. This is folly.   

The need for a coalition of the sensible – to counter the ignorance and malice emanating from a potential Trump White House – will only be greater should the Republican candidate win.  

The victims of the climate crisis will need support, and the energy transition will need to be funded, whoever is elected as the next US president. Dragging out the process to the point where Baku might end up being a chaotic rush will only make things worse.  

COP29 host lacks influence 

The horrors of climate change continue to rage daily. Heatwaves mercilessly ravage lives, with over 100 people reported dead in India and over 50 lives claimed in Sudan during the Bonn talks. These are not just statistics; they are human lives from vulnerable countries, who once dared to hope for a better tomorrow.  

The dark clouds forming over Baku are compounded by the fact that the Azeri presidency for COP29 is inexperienced, with few diplomatic allies and lacking in geopolitical or economic weight to knock heads together as needed. The lack of a strong host in 2024 means we need to see leadership from other quarters. 

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Those other would-be leaders must ensure that the negotiators see the coming dangers ahead and work to catch up and avoid them. The crucial opportunities for this are the UN General Assembly summit in September and the pre-COP meeting in Baku. It’s vital that much clearer and more ambitious negotiations take place so that ministers have a streamlined process when they get to Baku in November.   

Without that, we risk getting an underwhelming finance goal or even a failed COP. That would imperil millions of people who need climate finance, as well as taking the wind out of the sails of the NDCs from developing countries, which are due to be published next year.  How can these poorer countries be expected to slay the climate dragon with paper swords, having gotten zero assurances on the long-term finance they need?  

If countries can set a clear and unambiguous path for future finance in Baku, then the world will be set up for a hope-filled and ambitious round of climate action plans next year. This is the best way to protect the world from the volatility of the US election. The work to achieve that starts now.  

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In a letter to German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, seen by Climate Home but not made public, several coalitions of climate activists say that visa barriers exclude many participants from the Global South from the “climate negotiations that will determine the future of their countries and communities”.

Ugandan campaigner Hamira Kobusingye from Fridays for Future Africa, one of those behind the letter, told Climate Home: “This is an example of systemic and climate racism, as most of the affected delegations were primarily from Africa and Asia. This issue is rooted in the lingering effects of colonialism.”

Government negotiators also sounded the alarm, collectively agreeing in formal conclusions at the talks that they “noted with concern the difficulties experienced by some delegates in obtaining visas to enable them to attend sessions” in Bonn and urging “timely issuance of visas”.

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Delegates from Europe and most of the Americas do not need visas for short stays in Germany while those from Africa and most of Asia do.

The German Federal Foreign Office told Climate Home it was “important” to them that all accredited UN conference participants were able to attend.

A spokesperson said they were “in close contact with the UNFCCC Secretariat months before the conference, including on the visa issue, and sensitised the missions abroad at an early stage to the upcoming conference and the potential increase in demand for visas”.

They added that UN accreditation for the Bonn talks “cannot replace the actual examination of the visa application” and there are legal requirements for getting a visa for the EU’s Schengen zone of free movement.

Climate Home has seen seven letters issued by the German government denying visas to African campaigners and negotiators. One other rejection letter was issued on Germany’s behalf by another European Union government, as some EU countries share responsibility for issuing visas in certain nations.

The letters say that the visas were not issued because the delegates had not proved they had the funds to cover their stay or that they planned to leave before their visa expired or that the information or documents provided were not reliable.

Not welcome?

The organisers of the letter to the German government said they have found seven other cases where delegates only had their visas approved after the start of the two weeks of talks, meaning many had to rebook flights.

Bonn makes only lukewarm progress to tackle a red-hot climate crisis

Others reported being unable to get an appointment with visa officials of the German embassy in their country.

One delegate from an African country, who did not want to be named, told Climate Home that they went to the German consulate three times before they received information on how to get a visa.

They were told they weren’t going to get a visa appointment in time and only received one after getting contacts in their own government to help. “Not everyone has those advantages though, so I was pretty lucky”, the delegate said.

Proscovier Nnanyonjo Vikman from Climate Action Network Uganda said she only received her visa five days after the start of the talks and had to change her flight. She said many delegates feel “they are being harassed to enter a country that obviously doesn’t like them”.

No shortage of public money to pay for a just energy transition

As well as limiting access, the visa issues delayed the talks. In the opening session, the Russian government blocked the adoption of the agenda because, they said, several of their negotiators had not received visas. They relented after receiving assurances the visas would be granted quickly.

The German government spokesperson told Climate Home that the foreign office liaises closely with the UNFCCC to find solutions for “queries or discrepancies” including “for visa applications submitted too late during the conference”.

Call to move mid-year talks

Similar issues have plagued previous European climate summits. In 2022, two campaigners from Sierra Leone were left stranded in Nigeria after the Swedish government sent their passports to be processed in Kenya as they applied, unsuccessfully, for visas to attend the Stockholm+50 environment summit.

The UN talks are held in Bonn every June as it is the home of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose secretariat organises the meeting and is permanently based in a riverside tower a short walk from the conference centre.

The mid-year conference is supposed to help negotiators discuss issues in advance of the COP climate summit, a more high-profile event held every November, and to share experiences on how to tackle climate change.

Vikman, who went to Bonn to promote methods of adapting farming to the effects of climate change, said that the talks should be moved from Germany to a place everyone can access.

“We don’t need to die coming to Bonn – let’s move, she said.

Developing countries suggest rich nations tax arms, fashion and tech firms for climate

Kobusingye echoed her call. “It is crucial to remember that the role of the UN is to unite nations. If Global North countries cannot facilitate this process, Germany and the UN should consider moving the conference to a more receptive country that is visa-free for delegates from the Global South,” she said.

She contrasted the German government’s hosting with the UAE’s arrangements for COP28 last November and December when, she said, “every accredited delegate received their visa promptly, demonstrating that it is possible to accommodate all participants efficiently”.

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

This story was updated on June 14 to add comment from the German government received after publication.

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In the closing session of the two-week talks on Thursday evening, many countries expressed their disappointment and frustration at the lack of any outcome on the Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP), noting the urgency of stepping up efforts to curb greenhouse gas pollution this decade.

The co-chairs of the talks said those discussions had not reached any conclusion and would need to resume at the annual climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, unleashing a stream of disgruntled interventions from both developed and developing countries.

Samoa’s lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), emphasised that “we really can’t afford these failures”. “We have failed to show the world that we are responding with the purpose and urgency required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” she said.

Anne Rasmussen of Samoa, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Governments, from Latin America to Africa and Europe, lamented the lack of progress on the MWP because of its central role in keeping warming to the 1.5C temperature ceiling enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

Current policies to cut emissions are forecast to lead to warming of 2.7C, even as the world is already struggling with worsening floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels at global average temperatures around 1.3C higher than pre-industrial times.

Mitigation a taboo topic?

Despite the clear need to act fast, a deep sense of mistrust seeped into talks on the MWP in Bonn, with negotiators disagreeing fundamentally over its direction, according to sources in the room.

Developed countries and some developing ones said that the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), led primarily by Saudi Arabia and China, as well as some members of the African Group, had refused to engage constructively in the discussions.

“The reason is that they fear this would put pressure on them to keep moving away from fossil fuels,” an EU delegate told Climate Home.

Bonn bulletin: Fossil fuel transition left homeless

Bolivia’s Diego Pacheco, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs, rejected that view in the final plenary session, while describing the atmosphere in the MWP talks as “strange and shocking”. He also accused developed countries of trying to bury data showing their emissions will rise rather than fall over the course of this decade.

The EU and Switzerland said it was incomprehensible that a body charged with cutting greenhouse gas emissions had not even been allowed to discuss them.

“Mitigation must not be taboo as a topic,” said Switzerland’s negotiator, adding that otherwise the outcome and credibility of the COP29 summit would be at risk.

Rows over process

Before MWP negotiations broke down in Bonn, its co-facilitators – Kay Harrison of New Zealand and Carlos Fuller of Belize – had made a last-ditch attempt to rescue some semblance of progress.

They produced draft conclusions calling for new inputs ahead of COP29 and an informal note summarising the diverging views aired during the fraught exchanges. For many delegates, the adoption of those documents would have provided a springboard for more meaningful discussions in Baku.

But the LMDC and Arab groups refused to consider this, arguing that the co-facilitators had no mandate to produce them and calling their legitimacy into question – a claim rebutted by the UN climate secretariat, according to observers. Frantic efforts to find common ground ultimately came to nothing.

A session of the Mitigation Work Programme in Bonn. Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Fernanda de Carvalho, climate and energy policy head for green group WWF, said the MWP discussions must advance if the world is to collectively reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 from 2019 levels, as scientists say is needed.

The MWP should be focused on supporting countries to deliver stronger national climate action plans (NDCs) – due by early next year – that set targets through to 2035, she said.

“Instead, we saw [government] Parties diverging way more than converging on hard discussions that never made it beyond process,” she added.

‘Collective amnesia’

Some developing countries, including the Africa Group, pushed back against what they saw as efforts by rich nations to force them to make bigger cuts in emissions while ducking their own responsibilities to move first and provide more finance to help poorer countries adopt clean energy.

Brazil – which will host the COP30 summit in 2025 – said the MWP was the main channel for the talks to be able to find solutions to put into practice the agreement struck at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair way.

But to enable that, “we have to create a safe environment of trust that will leverage it as a cooperative laboratory”, he said, instead of the “courthouse” it has become “where we accuse and judge each other”.

Observers in Bonn pointed to the absence of discussions on implementing the COP28 deal on fossil fuels, which was hailed last December as “historic”.

“It seems like we have collective amnesia,” veteran watcher Alden Meyer, a senior associate at think-tank E3G, told journalists. “We’ve forgotten that we made that agreement. It’s taboo to talk about it in these halls.”

‘Detour on the road to Baku’

After the exchange of views, UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell noted that the Bonn talks had taken “modest steps forward” on issues like the global goal on adaptation, increased transparency of climate action and fixing the rules for a new global carbon market.

“But we took a detour on the road to Baku. Too many issues were left unresolved. Too many items are still on the table,” he added.

The closing plenary of the Bonn Climate Change Conference. Photo: Lucia Vasquez / UNFCCC

Another key area where the talks failed to make much progress was on producing clear options for ministers to negotiate a new post-2025 climate finance goal, as developed countries refused to discuss dollar amounts as demanded by the Africa and Arab groups, among others.

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Developing nations also complained about this in the final session, while others expressed their concern that a separate track of the negotiations on scientific research had failed to address the topic in a rigorous enough manner.

In his closing speech, Stiell reminded countries that “we must uphold the science”, and urged them to accelerate their efforts to find common ground on key issues well ahead of COP29.

The next opportunities to move forward on the new finance goal – expected as the main outcome from the Baku summit – will be a “retreat” of heads of delegations in July followed by a technical meeting in October, including a high-level ministerial dialogue on the issue.

But several observers told Climate Home that highly contentious issues – such as the size of the funding pot and the list of donors – are beyond the remit of negotiators and are unlikely to be resolved until the political heavyweights, including ministers, take them up in Azerbaijan in November.

Rising costs of climate crisis

“Business-as-usual is a recipe for failure, on climate finance, and on many other fronts, in humanity’s climate fight,” Stiell said. “We can’t keep pushing this year’s issues off into the next year. The costs of the climate crisis – for every nation’s people and economy – are only getting worse.”

Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based energy and climate think-tank Power Shift Africa, warned that “multiple factors are setting us up for a terrible shock at COP29″, saying this “ticking disaster threatens to undermine” the NDCs and in turn the 1.5C warming limit.

North Africa’s disappearing nomads: Why my community needs climate finance

In comments posted on X, formerly Twitter, Adow called for justice for those dying from the impacts of climate change such as extreme heat in India and Sudan in recent days, arguing that climate finance remains “a vital part in securing a safe and secure future for us all”.

But, he said, Bonn did not deliver a beacon of hope for vulnerable people. “Developing countries are expected to slay the climate dragon with invisible swords, having gotten zero assurances on the long-term finance they need,” he added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling and Matteo Civillini, editing by Joe Lo)

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A few weeks ago, leaders of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) met in Antigua & Barbuda to discuss our next decade of action. This, for us, is the critical decade, no less. We have a few years to change the tides that are swallowing our islands and extinguishing our culture and our identity.  

Pacific Island communities are unwilling witnesses of the climate crisis – emitting minuscule amounts of greenhouse gases while bearing the brunt of the extreme and devastating consequences of the world’s failure to break its addiction to fossil fuels.  

During that meeting, we heard from some G7 leaders that they will support our priorities, that a fossil fuel phase-out and a just and equitable transition is necessary. But these cannot be hollow words. As the single greatest security threat for our region, it is time to implement your commitments or be held accountable for your lack of inaction by carrying the loss of our future generations on your shoulders. 

Just a few months ago, at the UN climate talks in Dubai, countries around the world finally agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. This week in Bonn, any talk of how countries plan to implement this agreement was noticeably absent.

Bonn bulletin: Fossil fuel transition left homeless

But now, G7 nations – Canada, Japan, Italy, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France – are gathering at a historic time for climate politics, holding one of the first opportunities to show their leadership by putting the COP28 decision on fossil fuels into action. 

This will also be the last time these countries meet before they are required to submit updated and enhanced climate plans through to 2035 under the Paris Agreement. It is a final chance for G7 nations to adopt the measures that are necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C. 

Despite having both the capacity and the responsibility to be leaders driving forward a full, fast, fair and funded phase-out of fossil fuels, these countries are not walking the walk – at home or abroad.

Islands as “collateral damage”?

Some G7 countries have plans to massively expand fossil fuel production at home despite science telling us that no new oil, gas, or coal projects are compatible with a safe climate, while others are using billions of the public’s money to finance more fossil fuel infrastructure abroad. 

We are urging G7 nations to demonstrate true leadership at the upcoming negotiations, immediately halting the approval of all new fossil fuel projects and committing to 1.5°C-aligned timelines for phasing out existing fossil fuel reliance in a just and equitable manner.  

This transition must prioritise the needs of developing countries, which bear the brunt of climate change impacts despite contributing the least to its causes. 

G7 coal charade: Funding the fire they claim to fight

G7 countries have already committed to end international public finance for fossil fuel projects but continue approving billions of dollars for fossil fuel infrastructure. They are giving the fossil fuel industry a lifeline, indebting vulnerable countries, and delaying a just energy transition.  

In the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: “The idea that an entire island state could become collateral damage for profiteering by the fossil fuel industry is simply obscene.” 

There is no shortage of public money to enable a just and equitable transition to renewable energy and turn the COP28 agreement into a reality. It is just poorly distributed to the most harmful parts of the global economy that are driving climate change and inequality: fossil fuels, unfair colonial debts, and the super-rich. 

We need G7 countries to pay their fair share on fair terms for fossil fuel phase-out and the other crises we face. Climate finance remains the critical enabler of action – over the course of our meetings in Antigua & Barbuda we heard some G7 countries make commitments and pledges; we also heard a lot of solutions and options that will exacerbate our debt burden.  

But for us, it is clear. Climate finance must be scaled up to meet the trillions of dollars needed for adaptation, mitigation, and addressing loss and damage; and sent to where it is most needed – on fair terms that do not further burden our economies with debt. 

Hold fossil fuel firms to account

The members of the G7 are among the world’s most powerful and wealthiest nations. They have a responsibility to lead the way both at home and abroad. Anything less is hypocrisy and gross negligence, and risks endangering the implementation of the COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels. 

The Pacific Island nations have been vocal advocates for ambitious climate action and have led by example for decades. In 2023, our leaders aspired to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. We embedded the language of phase-out and transition in our leaders’ declaration.   

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

We have felt the impacts of climate change more acutely than most and have consistently called for comprehensive and equitable global action for the very survival of our nations and for the good of all people and species.  

For Pacific Island nations, the transition to clean and renewable energy is not just a goal but a necessity for survival. We call upon the G7 to reflect the highest possible ambition. These countries must acknowledge and support our aspiration for a fossil fuel-free future, setting an example for sustainable development that prioritizes the well-being of people and planet over profit – and ensure that the fossil fuel companies responsible for the climate crisis bear the cost of their actions. 

The time for action is now. The fate of our planet hangs in the balance, and the decisions made by the G7 nations will shape our collective future. We implore them to heed the call of the Pacific Island nations and rise to the challenge of the climate crisis with boldness, ambition and urgency. Our shared future depends on it. 

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