Nations at U.N. climate talks agree on $300 billion for poor countries

Activists stand together and hold up signs about global warming.

By Seth Borenstein, Sibi Arasu, Melina Walling and Michael Phillis

Nov. 23, 2024 Updated 7:34 PM PT

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Tense United Nations climate talks led to the adoption of a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually into humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming.

The $300 billion will go to developing countries that need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat; to adapt to future warming; and to pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times the expiring $100 billion a year agreed to 2009. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, hoping that more money flows in the future.

But it was not quite the agreement by consensus under which these meetings usually operate, and some developing nations said they were being ignored.

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation’s delegation had a chance to speak. When their representatives did, they accused Babayev of being unfair to them, and said that the deal was not big enough and that the world’s rich nations were being stingy.

“It’s a paltry sum,” said Indian negotiator Chandni Raina, drawing rousing cheers as she repeatedly added that India objected to the deal. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”

She told the Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.

Nations express their discontent

A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on. Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, chief executive of the National Council on Climate Change, called the deal an insult and a joke.

“I’m disappointed,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey of the Panama delegation. “It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long.”

He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push the agreement to the finish line.

“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” Monterrey said.

The final package “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence,” India’s Raina said.

“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” she said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”

Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing reservations with the deal. And Cedric Schuster of the Alliance of Small Island States said he had hoped “that the process would protect the interests of the most vulnerable,” but nevertheless expressed tempered support for the deal.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a post on X that he had hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”

After tough talks, some feel relief

Some parties were more satisfied. The European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra said it marked a new era in climate funding to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over his speech in an attempt to disrupt it.

Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”

“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of [a] multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”

U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that, like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”

The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets, due early next year, to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the 2015 U.N. climate talks in Paris.

The Paris agreement set the system of regularly ratcheting up ambitions for fighting climate change as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius ( 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit), and carbon emissions keep rising.

Hope that more climate cash will follow

Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, such as multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to rely only on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further into debt, with which they already struggle.

“The $300-billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”

And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text that had outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling in the final hours of the summit.

Other deals agreed upon at COP29

The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague reference to the Global Stocktake approved at COP28 in Dubai last year. At that summit, there was a battle over first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of oil, coal and natural gas, but it ended instead with a call for a transition away from fossil fuels. This weekend’s talks referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.

Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, aimed at creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights — an idea that was set up as part of the Paris agreement to help nations work together to reduce pollution that causes climate change. It includes a system of carbon credits that allow nations to release planet-warming gases in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a U.N.-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.

Despite their approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan; many experts say the newly adopted rules won’t prevent misuse, won’t work and will give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.

“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate” that limits warming to 2.7 degrees or less, said Tamra Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.

With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.

Borenstein, Arasu, Walling and Phillis write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Ahmed Hatem, Olivia Zhang, Aleksandar Furtula and Joshua A. Bickel contributed to this report.