The Green Analysis

Introduction

The 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(COP29) recently concluded on November 22, 2024. This conference resulted in a new commitment being agreed upon to give 300 billion dollars per year to developing countries to aid their transition to clean energy and to help them face the many climate challenges present today. This agreement is the largest ever, but many developing countries and critics say that the sum is nowhere near enough to solve these issues; on the other hand, people are celebrating this landmark agreement. Is this deal enough to remedy the issues of developing nations? If not, is the current method for foreign aid flawed? And how does the world get on track to stop climate change?

The Issue

Climate change is not confined to any area of the world, and it does not care whether issues and disasters occur in developed or developing countries. Developing countries face the same costly problems many need help with. Without the aspects synonymous with developed countries, developing countries often can only rely on external aid to address their issues. Having many countries rely on foreign assistance leaves many issues unaddressed since there is only so much aid to go around the world, and budget negotiations in developed countries often result in relatively little foreign aid.

The Agreement

The agreement passed at COP29 aimed to solve this problem by donating 300 billion dollars per year in foreign aid to help developing countries face their climate challenges by 2035. Also, all global parties, including public and private groups, aim to make 1.3 trillion dollars available for developing countries by 2035. These commitments make it the largest climate finance commitment to date. Money from this commitment would be used to recover from natural disasters, build critical infrastructure, and transition to renewable energy.

Shortcomings

Although this agreement shows the progress made on this issue, this plan still has a few things that could be improved. Firstly, this agreement is non-binding, so countries are not explicitly required to meet the agreement’s requirements and won’t receive any repercussions other than potentially some political pressure from different nations. In many past climate commitments, countries have neglected them and not met the requirements, which is also possible with this agreement. Furthermore, many developing countries say that more than 300 billion dollars is needed to address all of their issues and that a minimum of 1.3 trillion dollars from countries alone and more from other organizations to solve these problems adequately.

Looking Forward

It is clear that as climate change worsens, the money raised by these global institutions will only be able to solve an even smaller number of problems for these developing nations. As such, a new system of solving climate problems is necessary, one where solving climate issues becomes an economic opportunity. Foreign countries and private firms are now incentivized to work in these developing countries to prosper financially. Some examples of this could be a firm building new renewable energy plants in a country in return for the rights to sell electricity to the developing country at a specific price or if a developed country helped developing countries bolster their coastlines to rising sea levels of in return for trade agreements for natural resources. Only a few examples were provided, and many more possible approaches to this issue exist. Each has its pros and cons, and even the current method could prove viable with some reform; however, if the current rate of things continues, a change in mindset is the best way to allow developing countries to solve the climate issues they face.