Live from COP29: putting rights at the heart of the climate finance debate
Our Executive Director Phil Bloomer reports live from COP29 in Baku.
Talking in the corridors and meetings of COP29 with everyone from Mayan Q'eqchi activists and Brazilian workers’ leaders to renewable energy business leaders, the central question for the Summit is: “who pays for the climate crisis and its solutions?”
One week into COP29 and where are the global negotiations on climate? Speaking optimistically, there is recognition of the urgency of action; there is drive to deliver finance to Global Majority countries (this is the ‘Finance COP’ after all); and the just transition to green economies is becoming key to solutions.
These are important provisional advances, but they can obscure knotty disputes that will sorely test global diplomacy in the Summit’s final week. These tough negotiations will not be helped by the Chair of the talks, Azerbaijan, being a petrostate whose vested interest is almost entirely in the long term continued extraction of fossil fuels, rather than their rapid phase-out. Mary Robinson and Ban Ki-moon are right to call for no future COP to be hosted in a petrostate.
“The finance question has become the South-North litmus test of trust in the COP process.”
Many poorer countries have contributed minimally to carbon emissions, yet now face enormous climate costs (as I write, the Philippines is clearing up after its sixth typhoon in the last month).
Poorer countries are now expected to rebuild after this loss and damage, adapt their roads and buildings to extreme weather, and decarbonise their economies, but with meagre international support from rich countries whose historical emissions have created the climate crisis. They argue that a just transition demands at least a $1 trillion transfer each year from rich to developing countries.
In response, rich countries’ governments plead that they face austerity after a pandemic, rising defence costs, and far right authoritarians capitalising on the public fear of job losses from a transition that requires investment.
Phil Bloomer
They are not wrong, but they are also not convincing to vulnerable and poor countries that see the wealth rich countries created while pouring greenhouse gases into the environment. Any solution will likely depend on innovative ways to increase finance, of which some are emerging.
“Rich countries want all forms of finance to be counted... poorer countries respond that this is moving the goalposts”
Rich countries want all forms of finance to be counted, including private sector investment flows. They argue that their public fund-transfers could be used to de-risk and “crowd-in” far larger private finance (thus relieving them of responsibilities).
Poorer countries respond that this is moving the goalposts from clear funding commitments made in 2015. They want international private investment, but not at the expense of the public funding they need to rebuild bridges and roads washed away, or the investment in new education and training.
Equally, they want to be able to avoid irresponsible investment that could become a new wave of ‘green colonialism’. After all, transnational companies will be happy to splash cash on unregulated mining of cobalt, lithium, and nickel for high-return and low-risk investments. They’ll be less keen on funding social protection and retraining for coal miners losing their jobs.
How can the just transition build public trust?
The inspiring part of the COP is always the drive and commitment of so many civil society organisations to promote a just transition that builds public trust, rather than squanders it. This requires recognition of the human and environmental rights to ensure that private investment cannot ride roughshod over the rights of workers and more vulnerable communities such as Indigenous Peoples.
It requires a transformation of business regulation and incentives to insist that investors and companies build in three key principles upstream into their project design and in the life of the mines or renewable energy mega-projects:
- shared prosperity to ensure decent work and long-term revenue streams into communities;
- due diligence to identify human rights and environmental risks and mitigate them;
- fair negotiations including free, prior and informed consent for Indigenous Peoples, alongside workers’ rights.
While there is a very long road yet to travel, we are seeing increasing recognition from governments like Brazil and Colombia, investors, and leading companies that we cannot achieve a fast transition to green economies if we do not strengthen public trust.
This in turn requires respect for the rights of communities and workers. Brazilian and Colombian ministers, renewable energy CEOs and Indigenous activists were racing between the official negotiations and side meetings to get this message across wherever they could.
But getting that wording of respect for human, Indigenous and workers’ rights explicitly into the text of the just transition draft feels like pulling teeth. The debate goes round and round in the official negotiations.
Leading governments like Colombia and Canada see this as essential. But others want no mention of ‘rights’ lest it emboldens their own Indigenous peoples, workers and communities to insist on fair treatment in the transition from governments investors and companies.
What can we expect from the final week at COP29?
The final week of negotiations will be critical. The science and the climate are warning that we cannot avoid any further delays. There are so many people of good will and drive in the negotiations, but a petrostate Chair, combined with some of the most powerful and wealthy vested interests for inaction means that a decisive breakthrough at COP29 is unlikely.
Most of the voices for progress see this COP in Azerbaijan as a key moment to set the scene for a breakthrough in 2025 – in the runup and at the negotiations at COP30.
Brazil, as an active and committed Chair, will make a great difference, despite the enormous challenge that is likely to emerge from the next US Administration.