In the wake of a disappointing COP29 outcome, Pakistan will have to effectively attract badly needed climate finance. Failing to do so will only keep burdening its already frail economy with rising climate costs.
Fifteen years ago, during the Copenhagen climate summit or COP15, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on behalf of the developed world, committed to providing $100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020 to help developing countries deal with the impacts of climate change.
This figure was never reached. According to Oxfam’s “Climate Finance Shadow Report”, which was published last year, rich polluting countries provided much less support than reported numbers suggested and this support came mostly as debt that had to be repaid.
Today we live in a severely climate impacted world with record-breaking wildfires, catastrophic floods, and unbearable heat waves being witnessed all over the planet. According to the World Meteorological Organisation’s recent “State of the Climate Update”, the year 2024 is on track to be the hottest on record. The adaptation cost of climate change will certainly dwarf the $100 billion that was once promised.
COP29, recently held in Baku and dubbed the ‘Climate Finance COP’, managed to mobilise only $300 billion in climate finance to help developing countries transition to clean energy and combat the impacts of climate change. Delegates to COP29 also agreed to an overall climate financing target to reach “at least $1.3 trillion by 2035”. The target, or New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), will replace the existing $100 billion goal that is due to expire in 2025.
Despite this COP having over 60,000 delegates, making it the second largest COP after last year’s climate summit in Dubai, the uncertainties about the future due to the recent election of Donald Trump (an avowed climate sceptic) and the prevalence of big oil and corporate influence in the oil rich state of Azerbaijan created an atmosphere with much less excitement and optimism than usual.
Developing countries disappointed
Many in the Global South felt disappointed with the final COP finance goals given the number required for them to address climate change by 2035 is estimated at over $1 trillion per year.
According to Tasneem Essop, Executive Director of the largest global network of civil society organisations, Climate Action Network: “This has been the most horrendous climate negotiations in years due to the bad faith of developed countries. This was meant to be the finance COP, but the Global North turned up with a plan to betray the Global South. In the end, we saw the same story play out, with developing countries being left little choice but to accept a bad deal.”
Pakistani climate finance expert Kashmala Kakakhel concurs: “The NCQG agreed at COP29 is a stark reminder of the failure to meet the $100 billion goal promised over a decade ago. Despite its rebranding and a new target, why should developing countries like Pakistan believe this will be any different? The $100 billion target wasn’t just missed; it fell short in quality too – failing to prioritise grants, adaptation finance, and concessionality, while burdening vulnerable countries with debt.”
In her view, the NCQG continues this legacy by focusing on numbers. “What we need is not just a bigger number but better finance – accessible, predictable, and equitable. Without addressing this, the NCQG risks being another hollow promise, serving very narrow priorities while neglecting those on the frontline of climate impacts like Pakistan.”
Earlier this year the World Bank warned that Pakistan is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with extreme events frequently resulting in fiscal shocks for the economy. “An estimated population of 49 million is residing in areas at risk of 4-5 per cent decline in quality of life by 2030. Climatic shocks have caused significant loss of life, economic damage, and reversal of development gains over the last 15 years” says the World Bank note on the economy.
Pakistan’s role at COP29
Zulfiqar Younas, Additional Secretary, Climate Finance, at the Federal Ministry of Climate Change, who attended COP29 as a member of the official Pakistani delegation, prefers to focus on the wins for Pakistan. He says that the initial text in Baku focused only on providing climate finance to the least developed countries and small island states ignoring countries like Pakistan. “We managed to get vulnerable countries like Pakistan included in the final text,” he points out.
He says Pakistan also played an active role in the carbon markets negotiations, which resulted in the approval of Article 6 and particularly of 6.2 that allows countries to exchange emissions reductions and removals through bilateral agreements – country to country. “The passing of Article 6.2 was important for Pakistan as we are ready for investments in our carbon markets. We are still not entirely happy with the text, however, but it will be discussed again in the inter-sessional in Bonn,” he adds. This year Pakistan has developed its own National Carbon Market Framework.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covers the creation of a UN-regulated carbon market. After many years of delays, Younas was happy to see any agreement on Article 6. To strengthen the Article 6 agreement in the future, guardrails are critical to ensure tangible results on climate mitigation and maximise the benefits to people and nature. A well-functioning Article 6 mechanism that ensures transparency, fairness, and equitable participation is important.
Overall, he says, Pakistan had a productive outcome at the COP with a busy pavilion teeming with visitors including Supreme Court judges and experts from the World Bank and WWF. A green tech hub was launched (in collaboration with the National University of Science and Technology based in Islamabad) and meetings with donors like the Green Climate Fund and Norwegian Fund took place. In his view, the recent election of Donald Trump as President of the US adversely impacted the outcome of the COP.
There was a great deal of uncertainty about future leadership for climate action on the global stage with Trump’s election win and there are apprehensions that the US might pull out of the Paris Agreement next year and even withdraw its participation in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Climate Action Network says: “Developed countries are to blame – they have used the US election result as an excuse to push through this weak outcome. The US has been trying to dismantle the Convention and the Paris Agreement for years, Trump or no Trump”.
Finance failure for climate vulnerable countries
According to former Pakistani Minister for Climate Change Malik Amin Aslam who attended the Baku COP, “COP29 unfortunately proved to be a huge finance flop. The Baku petro-COP coughed up a meagre finance figure, which is definitely too little, too late and too uncertain for countries like Pakistan who are facing up to the climate crisis in real time”.
He points out that Pakistan remains one of the three countries continuously impacted by climate change, which have consistently been amongst the top-10 list of vulnerable countries for over a decade now. “However, just lamenting this climate victimhood is no longer an effective route or strategy for accessing climate finance. What was evident at COP29 is that this finance will increasingly flow towards countries, which can attract it with a solution oriented niche – like Pakistan that successfully managed to do though its nature based solutions approach built upon the visionary Billion Tree Tsunami and Protected Areas Initiatives a few years back or like South Africa that recently did with an innovative and bold energy transition approach” he says.
In Aslam’s view, only a politically bipartisan and innovatively driven climate agenda can now reposition Pakistan to effectively attract badly needed climate finance, which can enhance the country’s resilience to disasters, regain its nature based leadership and fuel a climate compatible energy transition. “Failing to do so will only keep burdening our already frail economy with rising climate costs without getting our just and due share from the carbon polluting world,” he adds.
Climate Action Network says that it “wholeheartedly rejects the outcome of COP29 in Baku. The linchpin of the climate talks was public finance, and developed countries did not deliver despite their historic responsibilities. The figure for the climate finance goal is wholly inadequate, the quality of finance is missing with no equity or justice reflected in the text, and the direction of finance from developed to developing countries did not come through”. In the final analysis, the new finance goal completely missed the mark in responding to the needs of developing countries.
