With only days remaining before the United Nations annual climate conference, COP 30, begins in Belém, Brazil, developing countries are working hard to ensure a key climate finance topic is included in the agenda.
The topic in question is Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, which requires developed countries to assist developing countries financially in their climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. Mitigation refers to the reduction or removal of greenhouse gas emissions, while adaptation involves building resilience to climate impacts.
But Meenakshi Raman, head of programmes at independent non-profit Third World Netowrk (TWN) and long-time attendee of the UN’s COPs, expects much opposition from developed nations.
“I’m not so optimistic because given the current geopolitics, a lot of these developed countries are actually in retreat in terms of climate finance because much of their budgets are going to military expenditure and security,” she told the Eco-Business Podcast.
Meena has been to more than 15 COPs and with TWN, supports developing country governments and young negotiators who are new to the COP process. TWN also follows negotiations and reports on COP proceedings via its Third World News update, and is part of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, a coalition of civil society organizations and social movements around the Global South.
The United States was the main objector to adding Article 9.1 to the agenda at last year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. But as it has since left the Paris Agreement, Meena hopes that other developed countries would be open to having such discussions.
Pressure will also need to come from more voices in the Global North to drive their governments to take accoutability for climate finance provisions, said Meena, referencing global solidarity with Palestine.
Tune in as we discuss:
- The key climate finance issues at COP30
- The US’ role after leaving the Paris Agreement
- How civil society voices might influence COP
- Brazil’s new financing facility for forests
- China’s climate leadership
This transcript, which is the first part of a podcast that also features World Resources Insitute chief Ani Dasgupta, has been edited for clarity.
What are the key issues is TWN focused on this year?
One of our priority areas will definitely be finance. Last year, it was the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on finance. This year, we know there is a new agenda item on Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, which is a finance obligation of developed countries to provide finance for mitigation and adaptation.
The Like-Minded Developing Countries (LDMC) presented this agenda item but it’s likely to be controversial because the developed countries would not want this agenda item adopted. So we will probably see a lot of back and forth on this issue.
This came after what was seen as the weak outcome of the NCQG, which is seen much more as a finance mobilisation goal, because it doesn’t refer to specifically the provision of finance. It also says that the developed countries will take the lead, which means they will be expecting the private sector, the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and everybody else to contribute. That’s what the developed country agenda always has been.
That’s the same also with this US$1.3 trillion Baku-to-Belém Roadmap. This is an aspirational target, which is from all sources of finance. It doesn’t say that it is a provision of finance from developed to developing country.
From what I understand, the roadmap consists of business-as-usual kinds of proposals, which includes financing from the private sector, MDBs and so on. It’s not the real kind of climate finance that developing countries want to see, which is not overseas development assistance, not charity. Climate finance is an obligation which was born out of the historical responsibility of developed countries for their historical emissions. There is a climate debt owed by the developed world to the developing world.
The Article 9.1 proposal is a proposal for a work programme to focus on the provision of finance – to see what has been provided, how it’s going to be provided and if we can get more certainty and predictability.
But we are sure that this will be met with a lot of opposition.
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It would be a lack of of good faith if [the United States] are in the room and they talk, because you are not a party and you cannot be dictating anything, especially when you don’t believe in climate and you are not going to contribute a single cent to developing countries.
How far do you think work on the provision of finance could get at COP30?
The thing is, the US is no longer in the Paris Agreement. They were the ones in Baku last year who were very opposed to the mention of Article 9.1. They’re not there this time.
I hope the other developed countries would be much more amenable to have this discussion because they keep saying that they have always been providing finance and they’re not averse to the provision of finance.
But I’m not so optimistic because given the current geopolitics, a lot of these developed countries are actually in retreat in terms of climate finance because much of their budgets are going to military expenditure and security.
And given the geopolitics with the US out of it, I’m sure that the developed world is not going to be very forthcoming in terms of wanting to move forward on this agenda, especially when the United States is absent.
The US is out of the Paris Agreement, but they are still part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Would they will be excluded from negotiating rooms?
If they’re no longer a party, they can be in the rooms but they cannot negotiate. They will attend as observers.
But given fact that the US President Donald Trump very clearly said that he believes that climate change is a scam and a hoax and they’re denialists, I’m not sure to what extent they have any mandate to say anything, even if they are party to the convention.
There are people who believe that they might even believe the convention because they don’t believe in climate change as a problem at all, under the current Trump administration.
So it would be a lack of good faith if they are in the room and they talk, because you are not a party and you cannot be dictating anything especially when you don’t believe in climate and you are not going to contribute a single cent to developing countries.
There’s a US$1.3 trillion goal countries are looking towards but at last year’s COP, it was US$300 billion annually that was agreed on. Given the way global finance has shifted away from climate, do you think that even meeting that previous US$300 billion is a challenge or something that needs to be revisited?
Well, there is no agenda item at COP to revisit the US$300 billion per year, until a review that will happen just before 2035. That is already a 10-year delay in terms of reviewing this goal, which is really sad.
Just to give some context, there’s the US$1.3 trillion per year [that is aspirational] and the US$300 billion per year, which is the NCQG [that has been agreed on].
That’s up from US$100 billion per year, which was agreed on in 2009 at COP16 in Cancun, and then in Paris at COP21, it was extended to a hundred billion until 2025.
While the developed countries will take the lead in mobilising this amount, we won’t know for sure what will be delivered. The US is no longer in the Paris Agreement; they won’t contribute anything at all. So the other developed countries will probably have to fork out something.
But they just pledge – there is no top-down definition of how they share the US$300 billion burden.
And even that US$100 billion per year was a goal that developing countries believe that not been achieved. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) came up with a report and they count everything, even loans in that US$100 billion.
That is the problem – how can loans, which are not concessional, be counted as climate finance, which developing countries have to pay back? The lack of a climate finance definition has also been very contentious. These issues will keep being the battleground for the demand on climate finance.
Azerbaijan climate negotiators, standing around the sitted COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, celebrate upon the adoption of the new collective quantifed goal. Image: COP29 Azerbaijan, via Flickr
Another issue we’re going to be following closely this year is also the Just Transition Work Programme. It’s an agenda that developing countries are pushing for and the G77 [a UN-affiliated intergovernmental organisation of developing countries] is very much in the forefront of this fight.
Traditionally, developed countries see the just transition only as an energy transition. That means that if you are currently fossil fuel-based, how do you ensure that in the transition to renewables addresses adverse impacts on workers, for instance, in the coal and oil sectors?
But the developing countries have broadened the scope to all sectors, to cover what a just transition means for sustainable development, poverty eradication and adaptation.
This programme was launched at COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. The developed world wants to shut down the programme next year but developing countries are saying no, it should continue until we know that the transition is just. The proposal by the developing countries is for a continuation of the program beyond next year.
The other topic we will be watching is the Global Goal on Adaptation. Adaptation is key, particularly because developing countries are adversely affected by climate change, especially when you have Trump asking everyone to buy more fossil fuels from the United States.
In such a scenario, we will have much more adverse impacts of climate change, so countries must adapt faster. The GGA is supposed to have some hundred indicators that every country can use to measure whether adaptation is moving in the right direction.
On the just transition work program, this is the first time in a while that the COP presidency has approved a People’s Summit and encouraged more civil society engagement. Will this have a significant impact on the way negotiations are going to be held, and sway them in favour of climate justice?
Usually, the two don’t go hand in hand, but the People Summit’s is something that even the Brazilian government is supposed to be supporting.
But there’s no mechanism to connect this to the formal negotiating process. You can have all the declarations and demands coming out from this summit, but the Paris Agreement and convention discussions are all about negotiating the text. So they will probably, not be synchronised.
They are also not in the same venue. Negotiators are often very deep in negotiations and little (from the outside) trickles in. But who knows? I mean, I’m sure they will see the marches and so on.
My own feeling is that until and unless there is huge pressure from the Global North, [nothing will change]. We saw that in the case of Palestine – when demonstrations happened in Italy, in London, in New York, then there is some kind of political shift. Otherwise, whatever Global South countries say doesn’t really count.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility, proposed by COP30 host Brazil, aims to raise US$125 billion to protect, tropical forests. What are your thoughts on this?
First of all, we need to realise that this is not a negotiated outcome, meaning it’s a Brazilian initiative and not one which comes out of the COP or Paris Agreement.
The Brazilians seem confident; they’ve said there are countries from the Global North who are interested in contributing to this facility. They are planning to raise US$25 billion, which will then be invested in the fund and with that, they’re going to mobilise another US$100 billion from the issuance of bonds and so on.
We understand that the idea actually came from someone working in the World Bank, or something like that. So we are a bit sceptical…many developing countries will not be in [positions of governance] and much of the contribution will also come from developing countries, because they’re raising money from a bond market which includes developing countries.
The devil is in the details. The World Bank is thought to be the implementer of this, but it seems like the same old people involved in business-as-usual to suddenly save the rainforest. Many criticisms are coming from social movements and civil society on how it will be implemented.
By the way, it’s only US$4 per hectare that tropical countries get for keeping their forests intact – and they’re supposed to do satellite monitoring and all that to ascertain that there’s no deforestation. How exactly will this be an incentive compared to all the other drivers of deforestation? That’s point number one. US$4 per hectare doesn’t seem like very much.
Secondly, how you going to implement it in countries like Malaysia, where the rights of Indigenous Peoples have long been disrespected?
So there are a lot more questions we have than we have answers to for now. But it’ll have to be seen whether it works or not.
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Pay up and fill the fund. That’s what we have been calling for. Money has always been the big fight in terms of ensuring that there is real [climate] ambition.
Speaking of the World Bank, I understand they’re also the secretariat for the Loss and Damage Fund. Will that be covered or be discussed at COP30?
Not likely because it’s already adopted. The trustee of the secretariat is the World Bank and they have an interim role of four years, so it’s not a topic for this year.
But we have been following the board meetings of the Loss and Damage Fund, and it’s not going very well. The pledges have not been translated into real commitments and there’s still very little money which has been translated to real contributions.
The campaign by civil society and social movements is [for developed nations to] pay up: pay up and fill the fund. That’s what we have been calling for. Money has always been the big fight in terms of ensuring that there is real ambition.
The other thing you would hear is about the Nationally Determined Contributions, the new climate targets that all governments are supposed to put forth for the 2031-2035 period. Not many have contributed.
The focus will be on how we are way off track in terms of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C. Who’s going to fix the gap? You can’t expect developing countries to do it because they are still developing – there’s the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR).
Many developing countries are already doing what is called ‘within their fair share’. In terms of historical emissions and their capacity and capability, they’re already doing what they can.
The other point I want to raise is that many countries have talked about net zero. We have said that you cannot have net zero for every country because the Paris Agreement talks about a global balance of emissions. It doesn’t talk about net zero for every country because there is no carbon budget. The carbon budget is being exhausted. Three quarters of the carbon budget have already been used up by the developed world, so you can’t have net zero for the United Kingdom or Australia. It’s doing too little, too late – the numbers don’t add up.
There is no way of ascertaining that the NDCs [of those developed countries] are 1.5°C aligned. They can announce, but there’s no way of verification. These are all the games being played, and for those of us who are used to these games, we call that these are games of smokes and mirrors and not really the truth.
Are there any countries that you think have come up with good NDCs or climate targets?
Not from the developed world. They have either very late net zero targets or are expanding fossil fuels in real terms.
But I think one country that we have to look at is China – despite the second largest population in the world, it has in a short amount of time made renewable energy cheaper than ever, scaled up renewable energy production and gone into battery storage production.
China is leading the way in a lot of ways, but still they will be condemned as not doing enough.
But the problem is the size of their population. When you blame China, when you blame India, what is not seen is the per capita emissions. Their emissions are high because of the size of their population – historically, they don’t have high per capita emissions.
This has always been the fight. Do you look at cumulative emissions or do you look at per capita emissions? We say that for developing countries, you have to look at their per capita emissions. Those of us who talk about climate justice bring these perspectives in.
Even on adaptation, China has been doing so much. There’s a lot to learn from their energy sector, from their adaptation responses and so on. That’s one country that, I think we all need to learn from.
This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
