IN 2015, the Paris Climate Accord, a legally binding international treaty, established a structured plan for climate action with step-by-step targets for emission reductions, aiming for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It acknowledged that reducing GHG emissions alone would not be enough to control climate change: mutually supportive adaptation policies would be necessary to protect vulnerable people from its impact. According to the Intergovern­mental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, some 3.6 billion people, almost half the global population, are highly vulnerable to climate change.

The Paris Agreement, therefore, established a Global Goal on Adaptation to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change in the context of its goal to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This benchmark was based on the IPCC’s analysis that crossing this threshold would unleash harsh environmental impacts, including severe heatwaves, frequent droughts and heavy rainfall — which are becoming common. Sadly, the Global Goal on Adaptation is yet to be operationalised.

For developing countries, the treaty also laid down a framework for financial, technical and capacity-building support, and “reaffirmed that developed countries should take the lead in providing financial assistance to countries that are less endowed and more vulnerable” for mitigation and adaptation. Developed countries had pledged, in 2009, to raise $100bn by 2020 for this purpose. Belatedly mobilised in 2022, this amount fell short of requirements, which are estimated at $600bn annually. Distressed by debt, most developing countries find it difficult to take climate action. They need sufficient financial means to raise adaptation to a level that guarantees a better degree of protection against the climate crisis.

In 2021, the Glasgow Climate Pact called for the doubling of “collective provision of climate finance for adaptation”. But funding needs kept surging. Last year, UNEP estimated that the financial needs of developing countries for adaptation would soar from $215bn to $387bn by 2030. These figures are expected to be overtaken in this year’s UNEP Adaptation Gap Report, due next month.

Climate COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, next month, has been dubbed the ‘finance COP’, and will seek to agree on a new global goal for climate finance to replace the unmet $100bn adaptation target. The new goal is expected to be broad-based and open to contributions from the private sector and others.

COP29 in Baku next month has been dubbed the ‘finance COP’.

Precariously perched, developing countries are expecting concessional finance to be prioritised by COP29, as more loans will only add to their debt burden. Discussions in Baku will be informed by the report of the Independent Expert Group on Climate Finance, tasked by COP to assess how the climate finance system can support the implementation of the Paris Accord. The report notes that insufficient investment in developing countries in key areas — a just energy transition, adaptation and resilience, conservation and restoration of nature, etc — was the primary reason that the Paris Agreement went off track. The report concluded that developing countries and emerging economies, minus China, would need around $2.4 trillion annually by 2030 to invest in climate change and nature.

The expert group recommended that immediate debt constraints and lack of fiscal space impeding the ability of poor and vulnerable countries to invest must be tackled urgently. It said that country leadership was crucial for co­­mmitted engagem­ent with the private sector, MDBs, donors, and priva­­te philanthr-opy to unlock inv­estment at scale. An integ­rated ap­­pr­­­oach is required to mobilise all sou­rces of finance — public and private, do­­me­s­tic and int­e­rnational. Dom­es­tic resource mobilisation is needed to anchor the macro­­­-

economic sustainability of all finance, while the elimination of harmful subsidies and imposition of carbon taxation are crucial to revenue generation.

Insufficient concessional climate finance for developing nations would render international efforts ineffective, aggravate the climate crisis, and deepen mistrust between the developed and developing countries. The expert group has urged developed coun­­tries to triple bilateral concessional finance by 2030.

Nearly a decade after its adoption, the Paris Agreement remains instrumental in spurring climate action and promoting low-carbon solutions across economic sectors. Overall, however, the agreement risks missing its goal of keeping the temperature rise under 1.5°C, unless fresh vigour, stronger political commitment and adequate financial resources are urgently pumped into its pipelines.

The writer is director of intergovernmental affairs, United Nations Environment Programme.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2024