COP29 wasn't about Climate

It's about not disrupting the economic and geopolitical hierarchy

Nov 24, 2024

We spent the last two weeks at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan at what was supposed to be The Climate Finance COP, but the United States and the rest of the Global North showed up empty handed with an intentional agenda of delaying, denying, distracting, blaming the victims, and greenwashing economic traps. In the end, COP29 was not about climate, it was about an economic and geopolitical hierarchy that is not supposed to be disturbed. Why? Because real climate action would imply that climate finance is development finance. Real climate action means high quality transformative climate finance in the form of grants (not loans), cancellation of all climate-related debts (not rescheduling), and the sharing/transfer of life saving technologies to allow the Global South the manufacture and deploy the building blocks of climate resilience and adaptation; and that would unleash the full potential of the Global South as an economic powerhouse that is no longer locked at the bottom of the economic and geopolitical hierarchy (as outlined in our Just Transition report). And that potential is perceived by the Global North as a threat to be managed and eliminated, not as an opportunity for development and climate action. Unless the Global South recognizes that we need to create a geopolitical leverage to pressure the historic polluters to act differently, we will continue to lose in every single multilateral space whether it’s about climate, debt, trade, investment, taxation, finance, technology, or peace & security negotiations.

#PayUp Your Climate Debt

The historic polluters have shown that they came to Baku to intentionally mislead and derail the entire process. This was a climate finance COP and they waited until the last official day of the COP to reveal their climate finance NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance) when, in fact, it should have been announced on Day One so we can start the actual negotiations. They kept using the bracketed term "X trillion" in the draft text, only to go back to the small billions and announce the $250 billion in low-quality finance, which they eventually increased to $300 billion, which is nowhere near the $5 trillion that climate finance experts and civil society groups have suggested, or the more modest $1.3 trillion that the Africa Group of Negotiators (AGN) asked for, or the $1.1 trillion that the Arab Group asked for, or the $1 trillion that the LMDC Group asked for. In other words, we said from the beginning, if the NCQG number doesn’t have a T as in trillion next to it, then it’s not good enough, and if the text doesn’t use the word “provide” (aka grants) not “mobilize” (aka loans), then it’s not good enough.

As I have explained before, the Global South is not asking for charity and is not playing the victim. We are demanding payments for a legitimate climate debt (read my post here) and what my argument below in this recent Bad Faith podcast (full interview is available here). It’s very simple, you exceed your carbon budget, you have appropriated the atmospheric space from other nations, therefore, you owe a climate debt.

The $1.3 trillion per year that the Global South asked for is meant to be a modest and reasonable good faith downpayment towards real climate action by the Global North. The fact that the historic polluters are only going to mobilize (not even provide) $300 billion by 2035 in poor quality financing (aka economic entrapment & market-based false solutions) is disgraceful. For the Global South, climate finance needs to come in the form of grants (not loans and further economic entrapment), cancellation of all climate-related debts, and transfer and sharing of life-saving technologies to manufacture and deploy renewables, clean cooking, clean transportation, and the climate resilience and adaptation infrastructure that we need. What the Global North is offering is not just a joke, it is an insult to all the delegations present at COP29, and symbolizes how unserious they are about the climate crisis. Let's remember that the United States alone gifted the equivalent of $1.3 trillion in today's money via the Marshall plan after a very expensive WWII and a Great Depression (read this for background). The U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world can surely afford more than that to pay for the climate crisis they created. In fact, a recent report demonstrates that the historic polluters can indeed provide $5 trillion per year for climate finance.

100 Million Global South Workers

More than 100 Global South Trade Unions representing more than 100 million workers signed a joint declaration at COP29 saying that climate finance must reclaim and restore public assets and services, calling for a just and equitable transition, and supporting the $5 trillion/year #PayUp campaign. Read the full declaration here and watch the press conference recording from Baku here. This is an explicit call to fight against the “Privatize to Decarbonize” neocolonial model that is being forced on so many countries in the Global South (including via the JETPs program). To lear more about this, please follow the work of our colleagues at Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED). I will post more on this subject soon.

Global North Coercion

Instead of delivering real climate solutions at COP29, the historic polluters led by the United States decided to use their economic and geopolitical weight to force a last minute agreement on the final text without allowing even for a debate or objections. As was made very clear by India and Nigeria, there was no consensus on the final text. it was pure bullying by the historic polluters. I joined hundreds of climate activists in Baku and around the world to call on all Global South delegations to stand strong, stand united, be firm, and be ready to walk out if necessary. We said it loudly and clearly: No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal. Yet, despite the brave resistance of our negotiators, including the LDC and AOSIS groups that actually walked out at some point during the negotiations, we saw a classic power play behind closed doors, backroom dealings, pressure to compromise, calls to capitals to override negotiators in Baku, and the surprise gaveling through of a final text that many Global South countries actually wanted to object to.

Let there be no doubt that the deepening of the climate crisis is the responsibility of the Global North. The failure of COP29 to deliver real climate action is the sole responsibility of the Global North. And let's remember that this was the Biden-Harris administration leading the US delegation, not the Trump administration. The Biden-Harris administration is not only funding a genocide against the people of Palestine, but it was also actively and intentionally waging a climate war against the entire Global South at COP29.

300 Billion Lies & Economic Traps

You will hear a lot talk about the so-called “tripling” of climate finance at COP29 from the original $100 billion as the Global North will continue to spin the narrative about its commitment to climate action. The mobilization of $300 billion/year by 2035 is a misleading figure. Even with a very conservative inflation rate of 5%, the net present value of $300 billion mobilized in 2035 would be worth approximately $175 billion in 2024 dollars. Just for reference, African countries are paying $163 billion in debt service this year alone. Now, let that sink in! That is how serious the Global North is about climate action.

Share Global South Perspectives ~ by Fadhel Kaboub

COP29 also delivered the weakest form of climate finance, meaning it is going to be more of the same: pollution permits (aka carbon credits) to greenwash emissions in the Global North (read my blog on this), loans for further economic entrapment (not grants), de-risking of private sector investments, and more market-based false solutions. Let me focus here for a minute on what I think is going to be one of the most dangerous climate finance combinations for the next decade, the so-called “Global Investment Goal” and CBAM regulations (CBAM is the EU’s Carbon Boarder Adjustment Mechanism).

I explain it in the above interview in less than 3 minutes, but here is the gist of it. We are going to see CBAM-like regulations across the Global North soon, coupled with private sector “climate finance” flooding the Global South to build green “industrial zones”. Then we will see a wave of outsourcing of obsolete technologies and assembly line manufacturing that is no longer needed in the Global North. Green products will be assembled with low-cost labor and low-cost green energy in the Global South, then shipped to consumers in the North. The outcomes of this deadly combination are:

This is an inflation management tool for Global North countries (keeping the cost of their products low, avoiding the carbon tariffs etc.)
This is a trade weapon against the Global North competitors who don’t have green industrial zones in the South yet; and
This locks the Global South again at the bottom of the global value chain.

In other words, this is a greenwash, rinse and repeat of the same old colonial hierarchy that is not supposed to be disrupted.

Finally, COP29 reinforces the role of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) such as the World Bank, which is notorious for its failure to deliver on any of its stated objectives. The fact the most countries that follow the economic prescriptions and conditionalities imposed by the MDBs are in debt traps today means one of two things; either these MDBs are incompetent, or they are engaged in intentional economic entrapment. And when the largest shareholders in a bank (in this case it’s the historic polluters present at COP29) conspire with and cover up for senior management to bankrupt their own clients, we call that financial fraud and embezzlement, but for the colonial financial architecture it is business as usual, and COP29 was yet another opportunity for the Global North to reinforce its hegemony via the MDBs. Allow me to explain in a 2m25s comment I made at the 2024 Social Forum at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva earlier this month.

The Road the Belem COP30

Here is the thing, the Global North knows very well that real transformative climate finance will actually unleash a tremendous development potential in the Global South, and that will disrupt the global economic and geopolitical hierarchy, which is unacceptable for the Global North. That is the bottom line. It's a colonial mentality dressed up in greenwashed diplomatic violence against the global majority.

We are the global majority. We can leverage the complementarity of our resources and capabilities to impose a new international economic order of justice, peace, and prosperity. If the historic polluters of the global minority do not get serious about its responsibilities, then we may have to start restricting access to our strategic minerals and our markets, and start leveraging our collective economic weight to save the planet for all of humanity.

No progress will be made in COP30 next year in Belem unless the Global South creates the geopolitical leverage it needs to level the playing field in all multilateral negotiations. I will write a blog soon about this strategy, but here is what I call the Bargain of the Century, which is designed to reposition the Global South at the center of a new International Economic Order of peace and sustainable prosperity. I explain it here in 7 minutes. Take a listen!

Stay tuned for more blogs soon on COP29 and the road ahead!