Rich nations need to pay the climate finance debt they owe

Mohamed Adow is a climate justice advocate and director of energy and climate think tank Power Shift Africa.

The world is just days away from a global climate summit where the primary focus will be to decide how the historic polluters of the Global North will provide climate finance to countries that need it.

This great moment has been made possible by the concerted efforts of negotiators from the Global South, whose forceful determination has led to the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, being designated the “finance COP”.

While there is widespread consensus over what must be achieved in Baku, it is sad that the world had to wait until this year to do the right thing.

Because rich nations have for so long refused to deliver on their previous finance promises or even to make space for serious discussions on funding at previous summits, the Baku talks are being hailed as a make-or-break moment for the global climate movement.

It is easy to see why.

Had those previous commitments been honoured, we would be further along the road towards ending the scourge of climate change. Many of the victims of the crisis would have long ago received the support they need to adapt. Countries in the Global South would have accelerated their energy transition to renewables.

Sadly, the rich world failed to meet its own target of delivering $100 billion of climate finance by 2020, and when the funds finally came, they were a messy, hard-to-access grab bag of rebadged development aid, split across numerous pots, often tied to onerous conditions, and, worst of all, largely in the form of loans, shackling poor countries with yet more debt that they cannot afford to repay.

The history of rich nations trying to shirk their finance responsibilities has been one of the most shameful episodes of global climate diplomacy, and such behaviour must end in Baku.

Far from being generous benefactors, these countries owe a climate debt to the rest of the world. Their historic and current emissions, after all, have plunged the world into this existential crisis and caused the decades of destruction we have already lived through. Not to mention the future horrors that await us unless we start to see money flowing quickly.

Traditionally, the perception at COP summits has been that Global North countries have cared more about agreeing on emissions targets so that they can avoid the coming impacts of climate breakdown while simultaneously trying to deprioritise finance because, as they see it, they pay the price while others reap the benefits of any funding.

However, that’s a deeply flawed and short-sighted view that threatens to undermine progress on the second cycle of five-year national climate plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), set to be submitted in 2025. 

These plans include details of how each country will decarbonise its economy, reduce fossil fuel use, boost clean energy deployment and enhance climate resilience. If the rich world wants to see developing countries put forward ambitious NDCs next year, leaders need to show up at Baku ready to deliver serious long-term climate finance.

Ultimately, this diplomatic failure by countries that claim to be climate leaders, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, Australia and the European Union bloc, is entirely their own doing.

Had the Global South been given better assurances on climate finance, indeed, had they already received what had been promised, then maybe they would have been willing to spurn the offers from petrostates, like Saudi Arabia and others, who are threatening to offer cash in return for diplomatic support in favour of fossil fuels at COP summits. 

We know this to be the case because we have already seen it happen – at last year’s COP28 meeting in Dubai.

After all, these countries don’t want to support a weakening of COP outcomes, because they know the havoc climate change is wreaking.

But the historic polluters of the Global North have been such unreliable climate ‘allies’ that their promises are understandably now not worth much. At least not anymore. 
This bungling of international diplomacy poses a grave threat to the climate progress made in recent years and it is one that everyone will live to regret if it slows the transition to a world powered by clean energy.

Thankfully, these nations have the perfect opportunity to fix their mistakes in Baku this month and show the Global South that they can be trusted to pay their climate debt.

If they don’t, then others, who seek to undermine climate action, will eagerly take their place.