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Murad Sezer

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed early Sunday in a nonbinding commitment that wealthy nations would aim to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035 to help poorer nations <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/02/south-sudan-climate-floods-war/">suffering the most</a> from climate change.

But many delegates from developing countries blasted the agreement minutes after it was adopted, capping an acrimonious U.N. Climate Change Conference, known this year as COP29.

The deal requires no specific pledges from any countries and falls short of the $1.3 trillion poorer nations say they will need every year a decade from now.

While it triples rich nations’ current commitment to help vulnerable ones cope with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/02/south-sudan-climate-floods-war/" target=_blank>mounting climate disasters</a>, the new vow comes after more than a decade in which they struggled to meet that $100 billion pledge.

After spending two weeks inside a labyrinthine, windowless soccer stadium, sleep-deprived diplomats agreed to the finance deal at 2:40 a.m. Sunday — with many feeling outrage rather than relief and labeling the sum insufficient. In the most blistering critique, Indian delegate Chandni Raina called the finance target “too little, too distant,” and said her country could not support it.

“This document is nothing more than an optical illusion,” Raina said to cheers and applause.

The $300 billion coming from the governments of rich countries would help developing countries transition to cleaner energy by installing sprawling fields of solar panels and other projects. It also would help them become more resilient to escalating extreme weather, including rising seas, destructive droughts and stronger storms.

The deal embodies the disappointment and distrust that many developing nations have  expressed at these annual climate negotiations. After three decades, the talks have put the planet on a safer trajectory in terms of its overall temperature rise. And yet humanity is still on track to blow past its goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels, ushering in an era of increasingly frequent and costly climate disasters.

Scientists say they are virtually certain <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/11/06/hottest-year-earth-temperature/">2024 will rank as the hottest year</a> on record.

Rohey John Manjang, Gambia’s minister of environment, climate change and natural resources, said in a statement Sunday, “This COP has shown how developed countries want to shirk their climate finance responsibilities to vulnerable countries. It is sad that after months of negotiations, they have waited till the last official day of COP to table a dismal figure, leaving no sufficient time for deliberations amongst parties, and to make it worse, the figure is shockingly too low.”

Negotiators for the United States, the world’s biggest historical emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases, made no firm commitment to contributing to the new finance target. President-elect <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> and the Republican-controlled Congress are unlikely to approve more international climate aid, with many GOP lawmakers already <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/20/gops-big-gamble-ending-ukraine-aid-what-comes-next/">balking at sending more U.S. military aid</a> to Ukraine.

The deal also declines to require contributions from China, which ranks as the biggest annual emitter of greenhouse gases. Instead, the agreement merely encourages emerging economies like China to pitch in, despite their classification as developing countries by the United Nations.

Less than 24 hours before the agreement was struck, the talks  seemed to be on the brink of collapsing.

On Saturday afternoon, delegates from many developing countries and low-lying island nations stormed out of the negotiating room in protest of an earlier draft deal. The chaos spilled into a large hall where many of the last remaining participants had gathered. Activists chanted “No deal is better than a bad deal.” Journalists swarmed around any minister willing to share their complaints.

Sean Gallup

“At the moment, we don’t feel like we are being heard,” Cedric Schuster, Samoa’s minister for natural resources and the chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, told reporters.

Though this year’s climate conference had a narrow focus — finance — the questions over who would supply the money, and how, played on mistrust and geopolitical tensions that had been building for decades. Developed countries did not marshal $100 billion in annual climate aid until 2022, two years late, and much of that money came in the form of loans that swelled poor countries’ debt.

Poorer countries said they were being left alone to deal with deadly heat waves, droughts, floods and fires, while nations that had built modern economies by burning fossil fuels could afford to withstand them. Wealthy Western countries — some worried about strained budgets or possible political backlash — said they wanted to commit to a realistic sum.

Again and again, U.N. officials framed the money given to the Global South as an investment, not as charity, given the cataclysms that proper funding might prevent: unchecked migration flows, ever costlier disasters or even a breakdown in the global economy.

Even $300 billion pales in comparison to what independent assessments say is needed. The deal — which says that developing countries should receive a total of $1.3 trillion from “all actors” by 2035 — also leaves plenty of latitude about who will provide the money. Financing can come from a “wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources,” it states.

Poorer nations had hoped for language primarily calling for public contributions, as a symbol of the responsibility facing nations that grew wealthy while burning fossil fuels. They had also hoped the money would be primarily grants, rather than loans that could saddle them with additional debt.

European Union Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra described the $300 billion goal as “realistic” and “achievable.” He predicted the target would be met.

“No country got everything they wanted,” said Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. “So this is no time for victory laps.”

Taxpayers in wealthy countries will ultimately foot much of the bill for the finance deal. Negotiators from rich nations had to consider the possibility of voters’ resistance to a high amount, especially in the European Union, where farmers have held <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/06/europe-climate-emissions-protests/">recent protests against climate regulations</a>, and the United States, where Trump could refuse to send more climate aid overseas.

In an email, Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), who led a delegation of House lawmakers to COP29, called the final agreement a “horrible deal.”

“China, the world’s largest polluter, self-identifies as a ‘developing country,’” Pfluger said. “The last thing we need is to be shackled by another harmful, America-last climate pipe dream.”

While delegates approved the final deal on climate finance, they declined to adopt another text that centered on the contentious issue of curbing fossil fuel use. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, had successfully blocked that text from including language on the need to phase out fossil fuels, which first appeared in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/12/13/cop28-fossil-fuels-climate-deal/" target=_blank>final agreement at last year’s climate talks</a> in Dubai.

“The Arab Group will not accept any text that targets specific sectors, including fossil fuels,” Saudi Arabia’s senior negotiator, Albara Tawfiq, told delegates Thursday.

Speaking on the negotiating floor, Switzerland’s ambassador for the environment, Felix Wertli, said,  “We regret that the draft was significantly watered down by some.”

COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev proposed Sunday that “in view of these concerns from the parties,” countries should take up the fossil fuel language again at next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.

In his closing remarks after 4 a.m. local time, Babayev added that “we have reached the end of a defining chapter in the climate crisis.”

Gerald Loeb Award, finalist, beat reporting, 2017

Gerald Loeb Award, finalist, feature writing, 2016

Madeline Dane Ross Award, Overseas Press Club, “Disaster in Japan,” 2011

Syracuse University

Chico Harlan is The Washington Post's global climate correspondent. Previously, he was The Post’s Rome bureau chief, covering southern Europe as well as the Catholic Church. He has also been a member of The Post's financial and national enterprise teams, as well as East Asia bureau chief. 

Chico Harlan

Dateline Award from the D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, 2021

Brown University, BA in English

Maxine Joselow is a staff writer who covers climate change and the environment.

Maxine Joselow

U.N. COP29 talks reach finance deal on climate aid for poor nations

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COP29 climate summit in Baku

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