This year’s global conference on climate change and the controversies that trailed it will resonate for years. It also called to question the developed world’s commitment to solving climate change challenge and energy transition financing, geared towards sanitising the environment and safeguarding the planet.
Countries of the Global South, Africa inclusive, whose demand revolved around the provision of at least $1.3 trillion per year, ended up with a paltry $300 billion offer. There was also no concrete strategy on how to raise the fund except through non-committal “wide variety of sources” including development bank loans and private finance.
The Global South encompasses countries in regions outside of Europe and North America, which are often low-income and marginalised. They include Africa; Latin America and the Caribbean; Asia, excluding Israel, Japan, and South Korea; Oceania, excluding Australia and New Zealand.
However, the term “Global South” can be interpreted loosely. For example, the United Nations (UN) uses the term to refer to developing countries in general, but it doesn’t use the Group of 77”.
Despite the lack of consensus on the right nomenclature, the group was able to conceptualise a working document for climate remediation from the Global North, only to be let down. Yet, they are the biggest polluters who emit 29 million tons of CO2 of carbons each year into the atmosphere and unsettle the environment with devastating consequences on poor countries. China is considered a mismatch in the Global South because of its level of manufacturing, population and development, and therefore may be reluctant to push collectively with others for climate change justice and transition. Suspicion also grows over attempts to contain China, which considers itself an “emerging market and developing country”, and as such a member of the Global South.
Baku, Azerbaijan where COP29 held, was a disappointing moment for countries, experts, researchers, negotiators and activists who put the needs assessment together. One climate change expert, Iskander Erzini Vernoit, executive director of the Imal Initiative for Climate and Development, a think tank based in Rabat, Morocco, said the developed world is not prepared to take tough political decision. COP29 to him was a “betrayal of the world’s vulnerable, of the Paris Agreement, and of common sense.” And so set the stage for disappointment, outrage, frustration for Africa and the rest of the world that bear the brunt of the developed world’s brutalisation of the environment.
For Evans Njewa, Africa’s good faith ended in disappointment: “We leave this COP with both pride and pain. Pride in the resilience of our bloc, which we fought valiantly for the survival of the most vulnerable, but we are pained that our hopes for true climate justice have not been met” especially for the least developed countries that had relentlessly worked on climate change mitigation and now left high and dry without an “ambitious climate finance goal”. He noted that “powerful nations have shown no leadership, no ambition, and no regard for the lives of billions of people on the frontlines of the climate crisis. The conference “has proven what we feared: the voices of our 1.1 billion people have been ignored”. Evans who is the chair of the Least Developed Countries Group at UN Climate Change negotiations described the whole process as a travesty of climate justice.
In a more radical response Fadhel Kaboub, an associate professor of economics at Denison University and president of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, posited that “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”, even as Ambassador Ali Mohamed, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators, reminded the world that “when Africa loses, the world loses its minerals, biodiversity, and stability. The fate of this continent is tied to the stability of the entire planet and ignoring Africa’s call for fair and adequate climate finance risks global repercussions.”
COP29 must have failed to achieve for Africa and other countries of the Global South their goal for the financing of smooth climate change transition, justice and mitigation. Some even attribute the not-so successful outing to incoherent articulation of climate issues, the developed world’s lack of commitment to fund mitigation and remediation, inability of the world to build a consensus around climate change among others. All the same the $300 million, referred to as a “token gesture of charity”, can at least start a global advocacy for diversified funding and amplify the voices of those at the receiving end of environmental degradation.
Africa and other partners in the struggle should build solidarity, more articulation of environmental challenges and solutions. We should be more formidable, united and politically assertive. Collaboration and an opportunity to rebuild trust and unite differing voices to tackle climate crisis is imperative. It is hoped that COP30 will not be a rehash of this year’s. If developing countries release the fund as grant, and not as loan, COP29 would have been considered a stepping stone towards “success and victory” and not a mere talk-shop for reassurance in a global world of mutual suspicion and betrayal.