Uncertainty over the level of funding to be provided by wealthy states to help climate-vulnerable countries risks undermining any possibility of a global agreement when almost 200 countries gather for Cop29 next month, Minister for Climate Eamon Ryan has warned.
Commenting after arriving in Brussels on Monday after four days of pre-Cop negotiations in Azerbijan, Mr Ryan said “the complete injustice of current energy systems”, which meant developing countries were shut off from global financial markets, was leading to mistrust that could prove to be an obstacle to progress.
“It’s not certain we’re going to get agreement ...[There are] significant financial issues we have to address. But we have to get agreement because our world is being hit by climate change in every part of the planet,” Mr Ryan added.
The next annual United Nations climate talks – known as conference of the parties (Cops) – are being staged in Baku. Cop28 in Dubai last year reached a landmark agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable way” and to double renewable energy by 2030. Cop28 in Egypt reached a historic decision on a “loss and damage fund” to help developing countries respond to inevitable climate impacts.
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Speaking before an Environment Council meeting, Mr Ryan said Cop29 critical issue was “providing finance” in a scenario where African countries were being frozen out of private finance to help them transition to clean energy. He cited analysis showing the developed world increased renewables by more than 400 gigawatts (GW) last year but a mere 1.5GW went to Africa – total power usage in the US is about 500GW annually.
Mr Ryan said public finance would not be sufficient; “we need public and private finance at scale to address this”.
There was also a need to broaden the definition of “adaptation” to enable poorer countries avail of more extensive funding to build resilience, said Mr Ryan who was appointed by the UN to lead negotiations in Baku under this heading.
“By bringing climate and development together might be one of the ways of overcoming potential deadlock in Baku, which suits no one,” he said.
The Minister said “geopolitical, multilateral co-operation isn’t exactly flavour of the month”, which made the challenge more difficult.
“There is a real risk you might not get an agreement. It’s our responsibility to avoid that ... It requires political engagement, real diplomacy and multilateral co-operation,” he said.
The EU could play a positive role, he said, but had to first set out how it is going increase its ambition backed by public funding, while ensuring competitiveness and addressing land use and agriculture issues – backed by a just transition.
Trillions of dollars are needed to help address the causes and impacts of climate change, but the lead negotiator of Cop29, Yalchin Rafiyev, said “hundreds of billions” was realistic for a consensus decision.
Negotiators will seek to agree on a new financing goal to replace wealthy countries current commitment to provide $100 billion each year in climate finance.
At their recent meeting, parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change who signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, agreed for the first time that the scale of need was in the trillions of dollars, Mr Rafiyev said.
He added, however, a realistic goal for what the public sector could provide and mobilise was in the “hundreds of billions”.
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