Why coalitions of wealthy nations should fund others to decarbonize

Abstract:

In Baku last November, parties to the COP29 United Nations climate summit failed to put in place enough climate finance to keep global average warming below the 1.5 °C limit established in the 2015 Paris agreement. High-income countries (HICs) agreed only to “take the lead” in directing at least US$300 billion to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) each year by 2035. Their own contributions were left unspecified and could be drawn from a variety of sources. Meanwhile, the Baku agreement calls on “all actors” to scale up this total financing to at least $1.3 trillion annually. Although these headline numbers seem to be broadly similar to those that were proposed by climate-finance experts (including some of us¹) before the COP29 meeting, in reality this fudged scattershot approach falls far short of what’s needed — in terms of timing and quality.