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COP 29: 300 billion to support climate change, a controversial agreement reached at the end of the night

Countries participating in the UN climate conference in Baku (COP29), Azerbaijan, have reached an agreement. If 300 billion dollars have been released, the gesture is insufficient according to poor countries.

Countries attending the UN climate conference in Baku (COP29), Azerbaijan, reached agreement on Saturday on the global financing target to provide help to developing countries to combat climate change . The amount of the financing plan for the fight against climate change by 2035 has been set at 300 billion dollars (287 billion euros) per year, the agreement shows.

Some developing countries, however, considered this agreement insufficient. “I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion,” said the representative of the Indian delegation, Chandni Raina, during the closing session of the summit, minutes after the announcement of the agreement.

“(This agreement) will not, in our opinion, respond to the enormity of the challenge that we all face.” Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, welcomed it, describing the text as an insurance policy for humanity. “It was difficult, but we reached an agreement”he said.

“This agreement will enable the clean energy boom to continue and protect billions of lives. It will help all countries share the far-reaching benefits of courageous climate action: more jobs, stronger growth, cleaner energy. cheaper and cleaner for everyone.”

The sale of carbon credits

“But like any insurance policy, it only works if premiums are paid in full and on time.”

The outgoing American president, Joe Biden, welcomed a “historic agreement”, specifying, however, that much remained to be done. “While there is still much to do to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome brings us significantly closer”he said in a press release.

The countries also agreed Saturday evening on the rules for a global market for buying and selling carbon credits that supporters say could mobilize billions of additional dollars in new projects to combat carbon dioxide. global warming, ranging from reforestation to the deployment of clean energy technologies.

This new objective aims to replace the commitment made by developed countries to provide 100 billion dollars per year to the poorest countries to finance the fight against climate change by 2020. This objective was achieved with two years of delay, in 2022, and expires in 2025. The summit was scheduled to end Friday, but continued as negotiators from nearly 200 countries failed to agree on the plan to financing the fight against climate change for the next ten years.

Objective: +1.5°

The COP29 negotiations have exposed the differences between the governments of rich countries, constrained by tight national budgets, and developing countries, shaken by the skyrocketing costs induced by climate change, storms, floods and even drought. The latter, however, pay the consequences of the way the former operate: over the last 25 years, the richest 1% of the world's population have been responsible for more than double the C02 emissions than the poorest half of humanity. .

Countries are seeking more funding to meet the 2015 Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally to 1.5°C by the end of the century. Climatologists now say that the world is likely to cross this 1.5°C threshold, beyond which even more catastrophic climate effects could occur, in the early 2030s or before.

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