Climate finance must be COP29 summit priority, UN leaders say

The UN climate summit held in Baku this year must prioritise finance and unlock new sources of funding to tackle climate change, leading veteran participants said.

“This year, it’s finance,” Tina Stege, the climate envoy of the Marshall Islands, told the Financial Times Climate Capital Live audience on Thursday.

“As we spoke about all the things we were going to commit to last year — to have more ambitious [nationally determined contributions] — we knew that we couldn’t do that without finance, as a developing country,” she said. “We have no [other] pathway.”

The UN COP29 summit to be hosted by Azerbaijan in mid-November has drawn critical attention for being held in yet another petro state, with a poor record on human rights.

It will take place the week following the US presidential election, with the potential that a return of Donald Trump to the White House will derail the green agenda of the world’s biggest economy. The previous Trump administration withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord.

However, Nigel Topping, the former UN COP26 high-level champion who represented the UK at the Glasgow summit, said the push to raise capital to accelerate the shift to green economies would continue.

“It’s finance, finance, finance. Every COP from now on is a finance COP,” Topping said. “We’ve really focused on[nationally defined contributions] and NDCs are nice, but you can’t invest in an NDC.”

María Mendiluce, head of the We Mean Business Coalition, also argued that the inclusion of business leaders, which had led to criticisms about the UN climate talks turning into a “trade show”, was necessary for progress.

“The fact that CEOs are going to COPs — it’s because it matters. And we need to cherish that. It would be awful if they didn’t come,” she told the FT audience.

Concerns about the influence of the fossil fuel producers on successive global climate negotiations following the COP28 held in Dubai have also dogged the choice of Baku, which relies on oil and gas for 90 per cent of its export revenues and finance about 60 per cent of the government.

But the COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev has defended the choice, telling the FT that green growth was a priority for the Caucasus country which was suffering from the effects of climate change.

The 200-odd nations that will gather in Baku are expected to bring improved targets for emissions reductions.

The head of the UN’s climate change arm, Simon Stiell, wrote to countries on Thursday asking them to “deliver quantum leaps in the quality and quantity of climate finance” this year.

He called for “ambitious” climate plans to reduce emissions for the period up to 2035, saying these should include all greenhouse gases, such as methane.

The plans would be important to delivering the agreement reached at COP28 last year, where countries agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels, Stiell said. He also called for targets for 2030 to be updated at the same time.

“These 2030 targets — together with your new national climate plans with a time horizon to 2035 — will determine how protected your peoples, economies and national budgets will be from rapidly worsening climate impacts.”

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