I think it’s fair to say that things got off to a pretty poor start in Baku. None of the main world leaders bothered to attend – not President Biden from the USA, not President Xi from China, no Von der Leyen from the EU, no Modi from India, no Scholtz from Germany, and certainly no Putin from Russia. Even some of those who did attend were recalled by their President amid rumours that Argentina will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. President-elect Trump almost certainly will do just that, and his recent election cast a long shadow over a jamboree that seemed much more sombre than usual, even if 66,778 people still attended.

The BBC reported that the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussed “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a man posing as a potential investor.

“We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed,” he says.

Which shouldn’t really surprise anyone, given that the President of host country Azerbaijan described oil and gas as a gift from God, and the Guardian reported that over 1,700 coal, gas and oil lobbyists were granted access to COP29; furthermore that over 100 fossil fuel bosses got the red carpet treatment.

Before the conference even started, the Guardian reported that the host country was arresting journalists and climate activists in readiness for the summit which, somewhat amusingly, the Guardian then seemed to think would take place in September. The actual event (in November) brought a report from the BBC that Azerbaijan is accused of “detaining climate defenders”.

To top it all, the BBC (as well as many others) also reported that:

The United Nations’ COP climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and need an urgent overhaul, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief have said.

So much for the background. What actually happened? According to the BBC a huge deal was done (though, in fairness, that article does contain – as it should – quite a few caveats). According to the Guardian, it was a case of “Backroom deals and betrayal: how Cop29’s late $300bn deal left nobody happy. While an agreement on climate finance was eventually reached in Baku, many poorer countries were outraged”. And according to the United Nations press release: “COP29 UN Climate Conference Agrees to Triple Finance to Developing Countries, Protecting Lives and Livelihoods”, which rather implies a tremendous success. For those who are interested, the press release makes reference to some of the subsidiary topics also covered at Baku, such as carbon markets; transparent climate reporting; adaptation; gender and climate change; and civil society participation, children and youth.

However, the big deal was with regard to money. And as we know, press releases (and especially their headlines) can be misleading by perhaps seeking to put an unduly positive spin on things. Consequently, it always pays to look behind the press release to see what actually happened. Given that this COP, possibly more than ever before, was all about money (developing countries want it – lots of it – and developed countries are increasingly loath to part with it), we should look at the text (still in draft form at this stage) relating to the “agreement” relating to the “New collective quantified goal on climate finance”.

Previous COPs have produced agreements of copious length, but not the one held in Baku, despite the by now traditional dramatic end, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, walk-outs and time over-runs. This one runs to just 38 numbered paragraphs, including the ones setting the scene by referring back to earlier agreements.

After the usually introductory blurb, recalling what has gone before, particularly the Paris agreement, it starts (paragraph 1) by affirming that the new collective quantified goal on climate finance is aimed at “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”. This is so as to reduce the risks and impact of climate change; to increase the ability to adapt to it; and to foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emission development in a manner that does not threaten food production (my emphasis – is this the first recognition that climate mitigation and/or adaptation measures might threaten food production?

Where paragraph 1 affirmed things, paragraph 2 re-affirms the outcome of the first global stocktake and stresses the urgency of action “to address the gaps in the implementation of the goals of the Paris Agreement” in this “critical decade”. So much for the “binding” Paris Agreement – there are, we are here told, gaps in the implementation of its goals.

Paragraph 3 highlights the importance of money. The needs reported in nationally determined contributions of developing country Parties are estimated at USD 5.1–6.8 trillion up until 2030 or USD 455–584 billion per year and adaptation finance needs are estimated at USD 215–387 billion annually up until 2030. It notes with concern the gap between “finance flows and needs”.

Paragraph 4 notes the findings of IPCC AR6, and that governments are key to closing the global investment gap by both public funding and clear signals to investors.

Paragraph 5 actually makes a decision. It runs to eight lines, but the gist is that the “new collective quantified goal on climate finance” will support developing countries, whether it be for adaptation, increasing ambition, or reflecting their special needs. Of course, it may be a decision, but – as is the way of COP agreements – it doesn’t actually commit anybody to anything.

Paragraph 6 is wonderful – lots of words recognising the problems developing countries face in raising money, without saying that anyone will do anything to solve them. It:

Reiterates the importance of reforming the multilateral financial architecture and underscores the need to remove barriers and address disenablers faced by developing country Parties in financing climate action, including high costs of capital, limited fiscal space, unsustainable debt levels, high transaction costs and conditionalities for accessing climate finance.

Robin Guenier’s comments on another thread, can’t be bettered by me, so I’ll slot them in here, regarding paragraphs 7, 8 and 9. These are in many ways, the nub of the agreement, if it can be said to have a nub. Paragraph 7 issues a call for “all actors” to to work together to increase climate financing from public and private sources to developing countries, so that it reaches at least USD 1.3 trillion per annum by 2035. Robin’s comment:

…‘actors’ working together, is almost completely meaningless: who are these ‘actors’? And the USD 1.3 trillion p.a. they’re supposed to find is to come ‘from all public and private sources’ – i.e. there’s no need for it to come from developed countries and certainly not from their governments. This is hugely significant: where might it come from? And then there’s the extraordinary provision that nothing has to happen until 2035 – a decade from now!

Paragraph 8 is so ineffectual as to be almost meaningless. It reaffirms Article 9 of the Paris Agreement and decides to set an additional goal, with developing countries taking the lead, of at least an extra USD 300 billion by 2035 for developing countries. The money is (a) to come from a wide variety of sources, is to be (b) in the context of meaningful and ambitious ,mitigation and adaptation and transparency in implementation [which I take as a nod to complaints that some money might otherwise be misappropriated] and (c) [this is a brilliant underminer of everything that goes before] “[r]ecognizing the voluntary intention of Parties to count all climate-related outflows from and climate-related finance mobilized by multilateral development banks towards achievement of the goal set forth in this paragraph”. As Robin says, it:

merely sets a ‘goal’ – in no sense a commitment. And the goal is that USD 300 billion a year is to be paid to developing countries (no definition of which such countries) ‘for climate action’, whatever that means. And as above nothing has to happen until 2035. Note that developed countries merely have to take a lead: what does that mean – and who is supposed to follow? Then note:

8 (a) that the funds can come from almost any source – governments need not pay a penny. (As Miliband has said.)

8 (b) that any funds will it seems only have to be paid in return for evidenced ‘ambitious’ mitigation and adaptation. That’s most significant and doesn’t seem to have been mentioned elsewhere.

8 (c) I’ve no idea what this is supposed to mean except that it seems to be another qualification of the ‘goal’.

Paragraph 9 (possibly aimed at China and others) encourages developing countries to make contributions – on a voluntary basis, of course. Robin seems to share my guess as to what this is about and suggests that it:

seems to be an answer to my who is supposed to follow question above. I think the intention is to answer criticisms that big developing emitters don’t have to contribute. If so, it’s not much of an answer.

If it’s possible, things go downhill after that. Paragraph 10 merely affirms that nothing in paragraphs 8 and 9 affects the development or recipient status of any parties (Heaven forfend!). Paragraph 11 underscores the importance of using bilateral channels, while paragraph 12 encourages parties who are shareholders in multilateral development banks to “continue advancing efforts…”. Paragraph 13 recognises the importance of various multilateral climate funds in supporting developing countries and encourages parties to work through their governing bodies to enhance climate finance. Paragraph 14 acknowledges fiscal constraints and increasing costs of adaptation and acknowledges the need for concessional finance for developing countries that are worst-affected by climate change.

Paragraph 15 “underscores the critical importance” of significantly reducing the cost of capital by 2030 and using innovative financial instruments and encourages the scaling-up of innovative sources and instruments of finance.

Paragraph 16 purports to make a decision. Not that it means anybody has to do anything to implement it. It decides that a significant increase in public resources through various mechanisms and funds and to endeavour to triple outflows from those funds from 2022 levels by 2030 at the latest. Paragraph 17 says that these scaled-up resources should aim to achieve a balance between mitigation and adaptation. Yet paragraph 18 recognises the need to dramatically scale-up adaptation finance. Is this a sign that it’s beginning to dawn on them that mitigation isn’t going to happen?

Paragraph 19 acknowledges significant gaps in responding to [alleged] increasing scale and frequency of loss and damage, and the need to avert or minimise this. Paragraph 20 recognises the importance of “just transitions” and paragraph 21 sounds like a repetition of some of the stuff earlier in the document – the need to reduce constraints etc to accessing climate finance and urging “all climate finance actors” to strengthen their efforts in this regard.

Paragraph 22 ups the ante by urging bilateral climate finance providers to apply access enhancements; but paragraph 23 reverts to type by inviting international financial institutions to carry on doing pretty much what they are currently doing. Paragraph 24 calls on multilateral climate funds to strengthen their efforts, and paragraph 25 calls on “Parties to enhance their enabling environments, in a nationally determined manner, with a view to increasing climate financing”.

By paragraph 26 we know we’re nearing the end, because it makes its usual nod to “women and girls, children and youth, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, migrants and refugees, climate-vulnerable communities and people in vulnerable situations.”

Paragraph 27 decides to launch a roadmap to try to deliver on the limited aims set out above; paragraph 28 reminds developed countries that the Paris agreement requires them to provide consistent and transparent information regarding their support for developing countries and paragraph 29 recalls the way in this information should be supplied. Paragraph 30 requests the Standing Committee on Finance to prepare a report biennially [but only commencing in 2028 – there’s no rush].

Paragraph 31 invites submissions on the information on financial support, and paragraph 32 requests that the Standing Committee on Finance take such submissions into account in assessing progress towards its belated report. Paragraph 33 recognises the importance of transparency in measuring progress, and paragraph 34 decides to undertake a special assessment of access to climate finance in 2030. Paragraph 35 invites the Standing Committee on Finance to consider in its report the regional balance in efforts to increase finance in line with paragraphs 7 and 8. Paragraph 36 decides to take stock periodically of the implementation of the decision. As Robin Guenier observes, this:

…simply emphasises the absurdity of having a 2035 goal – the only certainty about that is that the world will be an utterly different place by then.

As I noted at the outset, the whole thing is completely absurd and essentially meaningless: there’s no call for any payment before 2035 nor is anyone responsible for paying anything anyway.

Paragraph 37 takes note of the budgetary implications of all this for the secretariat. It ends with paragraph 38 requesting the secretariat to undertake the necessary actions “subject to the availability of financial resources.

In my title to this piece I described all this as a fudge, but perhaps it would be better described as desperately thin gruel. It’s time this expensive and greenhouse gas-emitting farce was put out of its misery. But of course that isn’t going to happen. Developing countries still have hopes of shaming developed countries into handing over lots of dosh (climate justice, and all that), and anyway, it’s going to be in Brazil next year. Much better than Azerbaijan, after all. What’s not to like?

(With thanks to Robin for kindly allowing me to cite his comments in full).

29 Comments

  1. Or there’s this version of events…:

    “I’m glad we got a deal at Cop29 – but western nations stood in the way of a much better one

    My negotiating team tried in vain to push up support for the global south. Lessons must be learned before the next summit in Brazil”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/25/cop-29-western-nations-global-south-brazil

    Nine years after the Paris agreement, and after 11 months of multilateral diplomacy and two weeks of the most intense negotiations at Cop29 in Baku, we have a deal. Under the terms of the Baku breakthrough, the world’s industrialised nations will provide $300bn (£240bn), which, combined with resources from multilateral lending institutions and the private sector will reach $1.3tn in climate financing. Cop29 also finalised, after years of failed attempts, a global framework for international carbon markets trading, a critical mechanism for less polluting and less wealthy nations to raise climate finance. A fund for responding to loss and damage – another new financial resource for less developed nations – was brought in shortly before the summit, and funds are already being paid into it.

    This deal may be imperfect. It does not keep everyone happy. But it is a major step forward from the $100bn pledged in Paris back in 2015….

    Except that it’s not true, is it? You use the word “will” when talking about finance to be provided – the world’s industrialised nations will provide $300bn (£240bn), which, combined with resources from multilateral lending institutions and the private sector will reach $1.3tn in climate financing…

    But there is no such guarantee, nor even likelihood of it happening. After all, nothing in the agreement imposes an obligation on anyone to do anything.

    …It is critical however and humbling that we did not walk away from Baku without an agreement. The marshalling of 198 parties, through arguments, tears, and even cheers to take just a modest step towards saving the planet we all call home is the achievement of my life – and it was an honour for my country to have played a part in it. There was a deal at Cop29 because the people of the world demanded one and in the end politicians of all countries in their own way, though faced with their own limitations, did the best they could to deliver it.

    The task of the Cop29 presidency does not end here. There are another six months before we hand over to Brazil as hosts and lead negotiators of Cop30. What we agreed in Baku will help slow the effects of human-made climate change, but it was not enough. It does not end the debate over who pays. It does not change the fact that the longer we delay, the more the costs will rise. But at least to the Amazonian city of Belém we take something vital and tangible: a deal that very nearly never was.

    As I said – thin gruel.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. It seems the Guardian doesn’t agree, dispute publishing that article:

    “The Guardian view on Cop29: poor-world discontent over a failure of rich countries to deliver

    A rushed final text in Baku strains trust between nations, as inadequate climate finance commitments leave vulnerable countries calling for justice”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/24/the-guardian-view-on-cop29-poor-world-discontent-over-a-failure-of-rich-countries-to-deliver

    The hasty imposition of a deal at the UN climate conference, Cop29, in Azerbaijan, over the objections of poorer nations has fractured global trust and undermined recent progress. This was supposed to be the “finance Cop” when two dozen industrialised countries – including the US, Europe and Canada – promised to pay developing nations for the damage caused by their rise. Instead, developing nations – led by a group including India, Nigeria and Bolivia – say this weekend’s agreement for $300bn a year in 2035 is too little, too late. Worse, rich-world governments will be able to escape their obligations by being able to rely on cash from private companies and international lenders...

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  3. Sixty six, seven hundred and seventy eight thousand people. Thats a lot of hot air.

    (I’m not even sure I ‘ve written that correctly).

    How could anyone in their right mind even justify that?

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  4. Nobody can justify it, lordelate. They can’t possibly contribute anything useful, it’s just a jamboree. I don’t even understand why they all go, unless it’s because of the quasi-religious nature of all this, a bit like performing the Haj by visiting Mecca.

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  5. Whatever the agreement actually says, I’m sure it will evolve over time so that the Guardian’s impression of it becomes general. Industrialised countries committed to providing $300 billion in climate finance per year. That sort of thing.

    Paragraph 39: Notes the large carbon footprint of the COP annual meeting, and commits to reducing the total representation of the Parties to below 1,000 delegates in all future meetings.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. I liked the use of the term “disenablers” in paragraph 6 recalling that the modern euphemism for “disabled” is “differently abled”. I interpreted those “high transaction costs and conditionalities” to be guarded references to donors’ resistance to provide funds on account of the certainty that cash will disappear into the pockets of corrupt officials.

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  7. Jit, if only there had been such a paragraph 39. It would be the only thing in the agreement suggesting that they’re serious about reducing emissions. Of course, as is becoming increasingly clear, this is no longer much about reducing emissions, and all about money.

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  10. This article is a good match with Tony Thomas’s coverage of the rather cynical wealth and power dynamics of the COP gathering.

    As to Mark’s article here about the worth of the declaration itself: Long ago, I was a “policy officer” who wrote briefings for “The Minister”. I was a dab hand at citing policy documents in support. After that, I was a consultant writing reports that always looked to couch a new initiative within a policy setting, including overarching international agreements (such as the old MDGs).

    I don’t think, having read Mark’s summary, that this was a “meaningless” declaration. Sure, it doesn’t hold anyone’s feet to the fire. But for governments whose administration has been captured by virtue signalers, this provides all the manna that I, as a once Policy Officer, would have rubbed my hands together at, as I said something like “hold my beer”.

    Because all this COP stuff is, for the right audience, like tablets of stone delivered from the mount: the inscribed Word from the mightiest of high priest councils, the primary Edict on the Moral Issue of Our Time. It’ll filter throughout bureaucracies in the UK and Commonwealth countries all the way from the national to the local council levels, as the virtuous prepare even more ways to spend other people’s money in penance for the sins of (white and cis heteronormative) mankind.

    On the other side of the ledger, flooding weak states with hot money for “climate reparations” will be a form of the so-called resources curse, where societies that have no functioning mechanisms to control appropriation and (mis) use of common-good resources end up in a power dynamic where the most powerful people blow the money on themselves. In this case, bureaucratic and NGO elites will wastefully blow the money on really stupid un-implementable ideas and nest-feathering, with lots of international travel to “workshops” with enormous, and ever-popular, “daily sustenance allowances”. It’s all completely predictable.

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  11. ianalexs,

    Many thanks for that analysis. If you are right (and I concede that you might be), then that explains a lot. I can imagine COP50 producing the same inane outcome, producing the same anger at the lack of progress, then everyone happily jetting off to COP51 the following year to do it all again.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. “The Cop29 agreement failed island states. Now the UN’s top court must act on climate harm

    The shortcomings of Cop29 increase the urgency for the ICJ to issue an advisory opinion on the legal obligations of states in respect to climate harm”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2024/nov/29/the-cop29-agreement-failed-island-states-now-the-uns-top-court-must-act-on-climate-harm

    The UN climate conference in Baku has ended with an agreement for $300bn annually, by 2035, to be provided in global finance to help less wealthy countries develop clean economies and adapt to damage from climate change. Estimates by independent economists have said the need will approach $1.3tn annually by 2030. The $1.3tn was acknowledged in the deal in Baku, but there were no firm commitments to reach that figure. The difference of $1tr each year sounds absurd, but is true.

    This is why we brought a climate change case to the international court of justice (ICJ), to seek an advisory opinion on climate obligations. Hearings on the case begin next week in The Hague and the shortcomings of the Cop29 agreement make this unprecedented action – to clarify the legal obligations of states under international law in respect of climate change and the legal consequences for breaches – even more urgent....

    …No country is on track to reduce emissions so that we can hold global warming to 1.5C and only 10 countries are projected to come close. The UN’s annual climate change talks still do not provide an answer. The commitments made in Baku are far from enough. They were never going to be enough. And even then, based on our experience with such pledges in the past, we know they will not be fulfilled.

    The limitations of the UN process motivate our ICJ case, which will begin on 2 December. We are part of a large coalition of UN member states seeking an advisory opinion to clarify the legal obligations – obligations which we argue have existed and been disregarded for too long. This would strengthen the Paris agreement framework, and obligations to finance adaptation and mitigation in vulnerable countries and to address loss and damage.

    We are also asking the court to clarify that obligations from other sources of international law – including human rights, general principles of international law and customary international law, which apply to all states independently of their treaty ratifications – are also applicable.

    In this way, the advisory opinion can ensure that climate action and commitments are grounded in the rule of law, meaning states can be held responsible and accountable for their failures to adequately address climate change. This could help close the glaring gaps in climate finance that the UN talks once again left unresolved.

    The ICJ advisory opinion can help set a moral compass for UN member states to address their climate change obligations. After all, no country, no matter how wealthy, can borrow its way out of this storm.

    • Ralph Regenvanu is special envoy for climate change and environment in the government of Vanuatu

    The problem with this, of course, is that even if the Court hands down the requested opinion, it remains advisory and non-binding, just like the COP29 (and many earlier) agreements.

    Liked by 2 people

  13. Thanks Mark, for the Guardian excerpt (I did keep an eye on them for a while myself, but the constant nagging to subscribe became just too intrusive).

    You know these people aren’t in the least serious — or at least, aren’t moored to worldly realities — when they propose that billions of dollars quite suddenly begin to flow into weak states, without any consideration of accompanying governance reforms that would be needed for those states to properly handle those funds.

    Not that anyone with experience of working in a weak state governance environment would expect those reforms to work that well; but to not even acknowledge the need for such mechanisms to shield the funds injection, shows an alarming level of naivety.

    Then there’s the “unintended consequences”. For one: when you release enormous new funds into a weak state’s economy, you get inflation and a surge in capital city housing rental prices. The elite are given extra help from the state’s international sponsors to cope. Everyone else — the poor and the struggling lower middle classes — suffer from inability to afford food, and inability to find a house to live in. There is some “trickle down”, or crumbs from the feast that drop from the elite table, and that incentivises more people to come into the city from rural areas to try and get a slice of the new pie, building whatever housing they can in squatter or unregulated urban fringe settlements, where they join the people displaced by surging rental costs. This happens for example when a “peacekeeping mission” moves in, and would certainly happen under any COP bonanza.

    Governments — or the virtuous elites in control of them — such as yours in the UK seem intent on throwing your entire national estate onto this particular bonfire of the vanities. So even without a binding COP agreement for this wealth transfer, states like the UK will try to implement this wealth transfer anyway.

    Liked by 2 people

  14. ianalexs,

    Thank you for another interesting analysis. Of course, it depends on the funds even reaching the intended recipients. I suspect a lot will disappear, hoovered up in funds, by international consultancies, along the way. Then there’s corruption in some (not all, by any means) of the developing countries who are demanding money. In the end, I fear that the planned wealth transfer will be from poor people in developed countries, to rich people in developing ones.

    As for this, from you, spot on:

    Governments — or the virtuous elites in control of them — such as yours in the UK seem intent on throwing your entire national estate onto this particular bonfire of the vanities. So even without a binding COP agreement for this wealth transfer, states like the UK will try to implement this wealth transfer anyway.

    Here’s what our government’s latest announcement involves:

    “UK increases World Bank contribution, boosting climate finance prospects

    Government puts forward £1.98bn in funding over three years, an increase of about 40% on last pledge”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/29/cop29-uk-increases-world-bank-contribution-boosting-climate-finance

    The UK has increased its contribution to the World Bank, in a move that will boost prospects for climate finance.

    Next week, at a meeting in Seoul of the International Development Association (IDA) – the body that funds the World Bank’s support for low-income countries – the UK will put forward £1.98bn in funding over three years, an increase of about 40% on the previous pledge.

    Anneliese Dodds, the development minister, said: “Britain is back with a voice on the world stage. When we said we would take a new approach to development, built on genuine partnerships and based on respect, we meant it. Leaders of low-income countries around the world called for stronger IDA contributions and we listened.”…

    Tin-eared doesn’t begin to describe them. They have royally hacked off pensioners and farmers in the UK by taking winter fuel allowance from the former and increasing taxes on the latter – they had no choice, they said, difficult financial circumstances made for difficult financial choices. Hmmm.

    Liked by 2 people

  15. Mark: I don’t know who thought up that “from poor people in rich countries to …” phrase, but it’s striking. I’m sure to use it myself sometime.

    On aid wastage: a colleague and I did a pub-table estimation years ago (in a Port Moresby hotel bar) of how much international aid money actually got through to operational programs in Papua New Guinea. We were government advisors there at the time. We thought about a third got through. I haven’t seen any official estimate.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Perhaps this sort of thing should offer food for thought:

    “Money trail: questions over deposed Bangladeshi elite’s £400m UK property empire

    Associates of former Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina have spent millions buying up top-flight property assets in the UK”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/30/money-trail-questions-over-deposed-bangladeshi-elites-400m-uk-property-empire

    …Bangladeshi authorities believe a handful of powerful families and businesses linked to Hasina’s Awami League party acquired billions of pounds by illicit means, including huge loans from state-owned banks that have never been repaid.

    These funds, investigators believe, may have been siphoned out of Bangladesh using the hundi system of money transfer popular in South Asia.

    The destination for some of that money has been, according to investigators and the new regime, a familiar home for illicit funds: the UK.Dhaka’s interim government has enlisted help in tracking down about £13bn of assets, following a global paper trail they believe leads to hiding places that include London property...

    Liked by 2 people

  18. Above all, Lord Bauer argued, there would be no concept of the third world at all were it not for the invention of foreign aid. Aid politicised economies, directing money into the hands of governments rather than towards profitable business. Interest groups then fought to control this money rather than engage in productive activity. Aid increased the patronage and power of the recipient governments, which often pursued policies that stifled entrepreneurship and market forces. Indeed, aid had proved “an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”

    Peter Tamas Bauer (1915-2002) speaking in the House of Lords, quoted in The Economist

    Liked by 2 people

  19. Chris M., looks like you have provided an earlier origin for that impressive phrase. But it would still be interesting to know in which year P.T. Bauer gave the address.

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  20. Yes thank you Chris M. I was unawares of that quote, but accept that I can’t claim credit for it after all. If I were in an arrogant mood, I would say it shows that great minds think alike. 😉

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  21. According to one of the AIs,

    Peter Bauer made the statement that aid was “an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries” in his 1972 book titled “Dissent on Development.” Bauer was a prominent economist and a critic of foreign aid, arguing that it often failed to achieve its intended goals and could perpetuate dependency rather than promote genuine development.

    I’ve just been reading some of his contributions in the Times, which are somewhat prescient.

    Liked by 2 people

  22. “Climate realism – time for a re-set”

    https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/climate-realism-time-for-a-re-set/

    Dieter Helm is always thoughtful, intelligent and interesting and, as ever, this is well worth a read. I could have posted this under several articles where it would be relevant, but I have put it here because of his observations on the COPs process:

    …Why COPs keep failing

    The COP process is supposed to provide a path to holding the global temperature increases to 1.5⁰C, to be achieved through two tracks of significant emission cuts from developed countries, and with funding and finance from developed countries to developing ones. The cuts are on territorial carbon production, not consumption, and the financial transfers are trivial.

    Given that so much political capital has been sunk into the COPs, why has so little been achieved? At the heart of the UN-driven COP process lies an ambition that has little chance of being realised. The aim has been to arrive at a legally binding set of targets, to form the basis of an international legally binding agreement. This was bound to fail, since no US Senate is ever likely to allow the UN or other international bodies to interfere legally in its domestic affairs. It was even less likely to be achieved when the US, but not China, was asked to make significant cuts, as the latter was (and still is) treated as a developing country, despite being the largest greenhouse gas polluter globally.

    As the Kyoto Protocol wound its way forward, the focus concentrated onto the Europeans, who were in the happy position from a territorial emissions perspective of both having the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1990, as the baseline, and being in the process of a three-decades-long deindustrialisation process. The EU could meet its targets relatively easily, and it further bolstered its enthusiasm with Germany’s Energiewende (energy transition)and the ambition to create global renewables companies. Indeed, the EU went so far as to back Russia’s application to join the WTO in exchange for Russia ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and hence enabling it to come into force. Japan and Canada dropped away, leaving the COP processes concentrated on the EU. China and Russia would never allow the UN to interfere in their domestic energy industries to enforce emissions reductions.

    At the Durban COP in 2012, the parties failed to agree to legally binding targets and passed this task onto the Paris COP in 2015. Despite all the hype about Paris, the two main outcomes were a failure to impose legally binding targets, and in the context of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) which exceeded the 2⁰C target, the adoption of the 1.5⁰C target. More excitement followed at the Glasgow COP, yet the path to growing emissions and growing concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere marched on regardless.

    COP28 and COP29 are when realism began to sink it. Though there were unenforceable fine words about methane at COP28, and also about the fossil-fuel problem, at COP29 even a phase-out of fossil fuels was too much to ask. At COP28 and COP29 the meetings moved onto the more central and longer-term UN agenda – about how to get money from the global North transferred to the global South. The arguments are about how much money should be transferred (funding) and how much finance would be forthcoming. The answers have been pathetic relative to the challenges ahead and they probably always will be. The big growth in emissions is coming from India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South East Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions, not the EU or the US. The biggest current emissions are coming from China. These countries demand that the developed countries put in large sums, and the developed countries, mindful of their electorates, are reluctant to play ball, especially when the COP classification of countries still regards China as a developing nation, and leaves out money from Saudi Arabia.

    At COP29 China voluntarily added some money, but there can be little confidence that the $300 billion by 2035 per annum will be forthcoming, given that targets in the past have been missed. More importantly, the emphasis on finance rather than funding raises the question of who is going to pay the interest and the dividends and repay the capital. Funding is a transfer of money; finance is more lending. They are not the same thing. Nor is including carbon credits and offsets necessarily going to bridge the gap, even if counted into the $300 billion number. Much of this is vulnerable to greenwash, and paying countries not to make emissions, and then using a “credit” from this not to reduce emissions so much back in the developed countries, is at best questionable.

    Given years of experience of foreign aid budgets and the pressure in many European counties to reduce them in the face of severely impaired public finances, if the answer to global warming depends upon these transfers, then it will probably be a long wait, if ever delivered.

    Expectations were so low at COP29 that the main world leaders did not attend. It is no longer a political photo shop where world leaders can present themselves as taking climate change seriously. The critical political mass has gone. Some suggest that this was because of the peculiar and difficult features of holding the COP in Baku, a major oil and gas producer. The suggestion is that many more will show up at Brazil for COP30.

    The trouble with this argument is that Brazil has declared its intention to become a major global oil producer and exporter, alongside its green ambitions. More of the Amazon is still being burnt and opened up for development. The process might be slower than under Bolsonaro, but it continues. It is highly unlikely that Brazil will offer to stop its oil developments at COP30, whilst neighbours in Columbia and Guyana are developing their fossil fuels fast, and Argentina is following the Trump line. The absence of the US and the US policies of the Trump Presidency aimed at “drill drill drill” mean that the US will be unlikely to participate, with Russia bent on increasing oil and gas outputs and China continuing its reliance on coal, as is India, another COP is unlikely to be much more successful.

    It might be argued that, notwithstanding these failures of the last 29 COPs, it is good to talk. The trouble is that this crowds out the search for other ways of tackling climate change. All can point to the COPs as the way climate change is being tackled, and in practice this avoids the need for other, better approaches. COPs can become an excuse not to do other things. The top-down UN approach crowds out the bottom-up formation of coalitions of the willing described further below...

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  23. Is this the Guardian’s final take on COP29? If so they’re not impressed:

    “Cop29 gave us a Putin-friendly deal – and a glimpse of the dark future of climate talks

    The Baku Cop29 talks were marked by division and self-interest, with rancorous meddling right until the end”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/03/cop-climate-baku-talks-division

    …Baku was the second worst climate Cop (it stands for conference of the parties, under the UN framework convention on climate change) of the 18 that I have covered. In rancour and division, it was rivalled only by Copenhagen in 2009, which notoriously ended in chaos and discord, though also a partial deal.…

    But much, much more. Worth a read for the excoriating detail. By the by, I wonder why Fiona felt it necessary to visit Baku in the spring as well as for the COP itself? I suspect she has a much larger carbon footprint than me.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. In the Fiona Harvey piece I was struck by this throwaway comment worthy of Extinction Rebellion but hardly from a mainstream journalist:

    But providing climate finance for poor countries to cut their emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather is clearly in the rich world’s real interests. Climate migration is already in the tens of millions a year and is only going to accelerate.

    Tens of millions a year already you say? Fiona does provide a link to back up the climate migration claim:

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/13/barbados-pm-mia-mottley-donald-trump-climate-meeting-invitation

    It’s really compelling stuff – from Mia Mottley, “the climate-championing prime minister of Barbados”

    “Mia Mottley also pointed to climate migration. “If I can’t live because I can’t farm because I don’t have access to water, or floods are now coming with an intensity and a regularity that makes it impossible for me to sustain my way of life, I’m going to shift where I’m living from.

    “Or if I have no ability to access insurance, and insurance is critical to my ability to get a loan, I’m going to have to move from where I’m operating. So the volume of climate migration hopefully will wake up those who have been slow to see that this must be a win-win.”

    So definitely tens of millions then…..

    Liked by 1 person

  25. potentilla,

    The Guardian is a past master at embedding links to another Guardian article as supposed justification for a claim made. I suspect few people bother to follow the link, so for the majority it looks as though the claim is justified and backed-up by objective evidence. I’ve long since been aware of the trick, so I follow the embedded links quite often, and I’m fairly clear that they rarely provide adequate justification for the claims made.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Fiona – “What failed at Baku – where poor countries received a promise of $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035, but only $300bn to come directly from the rich world – is that governments refused to put aside their apparent short-term interests in favour of the real long-term interests they all know are firmly on the side of climate action.”

    What an odd statement, is she saying “poor countries” will reject the $300bn and hold out for the “promise of $1.3tn a year” which will never happen?

    ps – “18 COP’s that I have covered” & still racking up the airmiles/hotel/expenses, what a trooper.

    Like

  27. Bear in mind that Biden, not Trump, is currently POTUS:

    “Fury as US argues against climate obligations at top UN court

    US says current climate rules are satisfactory, prompting condemnation from activists and vulnerable countries”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/04/us-climate-crisis-legal-court

    Climate justice campaigners have condemned the US after the world’s largest historic greenhouse gas emitter argued against countries being legally obliged to combat the climate crisis.…

    Liked by 1 person

  28. “Saudi energy minister sees net zero as scenario that ‘can never happen'”

    https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/120324-saudi-energy-minister-sees-net-zero-as-scenario-that-can-never-happen

    Net zero carbon scenarios are impossible to achieve, with security of energy supplies key to solving the challenges of sustainability and affordability, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said Dec. 3.

    The minister said at the Saudi Green Initiative Forum in Riyadh that the world is currently going through a “reality check” on net zero and energy security. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, has repeatedly pushed back on predictions that fossil fuel demand will peak, including the International Energy Agency’s forecast that this will occur by the end of the decade.….

    Liked by 1 person

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