COP29 has arrived — another year, another Conference of the Parties.
The annual climate conference has fallen into a stale rhythm of many words and minimal actions. Greta Thunberg said it best at the last COP she attended three years ago: “Blah Blah Blah… This is all we hear from our so-called leaders, words. Words that sound great, but so far, have led to no action. Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and their promises.”
A great deal of activists and members of the climate movement feel similarly. While in theory, these multilateral conferences could make a major difference to the global fight against the climate crisis, they have been criticized for their limitations of civic space, the baffling attendance of fossil fuel lobbyists, and the lack of real movement towards stopping the climate crisis and healing its devastating impacts.
However, there’s hope that this year’s COP29 will be different. Why? Well, it’s all about the money. The 29th installment of the annual event is being called the “Finance COP,” making it a real opportunity for those responsible for climate change, namely high-income countries, to commit to providing adequate climate funding for the countries their environment-destroying actions have impacted.
One of the main aims for this year’s COP is to get all parties involved to agree on a new climate finance goal — you’ll see this referred to as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, or NCQG — to replace the only just met annual $100 billion goal that was agreed upon in 2009.
Getting these countries to commit their financial resources to the cause is more critical than ever. This year alone we’ve seen fatal floods in at least 17 countries, including Japan, India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Spain. Hurricanes Beryl and Helene ripped their way across the Americas, as wildfires raged on in California. We saw a landslide take roughly 2,000 lives in Papua New Guinea and cyclones in Mauritius and Réunion Island. These events are barely even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to climate change’s unceasing wreckage of the world.
With that in mind, here’s what we’re hoping to see at this year’s conference and how Global Citizen is campaigning toward change.
All Countries Must Support An Ambitious NCQG
The New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG) is an agreement on how much money the world should spend on fighting climate change, and a plan for how and when to allocate that money.
We want to see global united support for a bold climate financing target that will be used to keep global warming within the 1.5 degrees Celsius target and to foster adaptation and resilience for ecosystems and communities worldwide. Right now, the planet is on track to warm by nearly 3 degrees Celsius, which could be detrimental to life as we know it (read more here about the different possible levels of warming and their impacts on the planet).
The new climate financing plan must also incorporate systemic reforms, including international cooperation to add taxation as a financing tool, reallocate Special Drawing Rights (SDR) through multilateral development banks such as the World Bank, and bring in the private sector to mobilize its finances to get overall climate cash into the trillions. There’s so much more that countries can do to dedicate funds to tackle the climate crisis, which we explore in our report, “Where Is The Money?” — which you can read here.
All of this needs to be tracked accordingly. So we also need to see the introduction of, and agreement on, a transparent tracking system to ensure accountability across each element of the NCQG.
Develop New, Determined Climate Targets From Each Country
We need all participating countries to develop and implement stronger and more ambitious national action plans against the climate crisis.
The Paris Agreement states that every five years, each country must bring forward new targets and action plans to reduce carbon emissions to keep global warming within the agreed-upon 1.5 degrees Celsius goal. This is referred to as a country’s Nationally Determined Contribution or NDC.
We want to see a lot more ambition in the NDCs of G20 countries this year. They should prioritize ending fossil fuel expansion once and for all and should align with goals set out at COP28 — such as tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 and incorporating loss and damage into financing plans.
Additionally, we’d like to see governments finally phase out fossil fuel subsidies, as the G7 first pledged to do back in 2016. But subsidies (which are simply government-funded discounts to encourage certain activities through things like tax breaks) for oil, gas, and coal production have only ballooned since then and hit $1.5 trillion in 2022 — nearly double global spending on education. Governments need to get serious about putting their money where their mouth is by putting forward clear timelines by 2025 on reinvesting these funds towards the green transition.
We also need the NDCs to consider collaboration from all necessary and impacted stakeholders, particularly Indigenous organizations and marginalized groups. Lastly, the targets for climate adaptation need to be specific, quantifiable, open to evaluation, and linked to systems of accountability.
How Can I Take Action?
Join in on our campaigns, share them with a friend, and keep up to date with all things COP29 on our social media: @glblctzn on Twitter and Instagram.