COP29: What did agri-food gain from Baku?

Civil society organizations at the COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo from PANAP Facebook page)

By ARNOLD PADILLA
Bulatlat.com

Media and climate advocates dubbed the 29th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as the “Finance COP.” Ultimately, the two-week climate talks in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku produced a finance deal that falls way too short of what is required to address the crisis, specifically the poor countries’ funding needs for adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage. COP29 derailed in a significant way the momentum that the world required in the run-up to the 2030 deadline of the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (o C) and pursuing efforts to keep it at 1.5 o C.

A paltry sum for climate actions

For the agri-food sector, especially in the Global South, the rich countries’ adamant refusal to pay up for their historical and continuing role in climate change delivers a terrible blow, considering how the crisis disproportionately affects agriculture and the rural poor. Note that agriculture in the Global South absorbs 23% of the overall loss and damage due to the climate crisis affecting the livelihood of some 2.5 billion people and, therefore, should be among the primary beneficiaries of climate compensation from the wealthiest industrialized countries and their transnational corporations (TNCs) behind the crisis.

COP29 aimed to determine a new financial target to support poor countries in their climate actions post-2025 under the Paris Agreement’s New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). It sought to replace the target of USD 100 billion per year by 2020. Rich countries first committed the amount at COP15 (2009) before its formal adoption at COP21 (2015) as part of the Paris Agreement. They reportedly reached this target only in 2022 amid claims of double-counting and inflated loan-based support. In Baku, the NCQG was pegged at USD 300 billion per year by 2035.

The negotiators know how paltry the latest NCQG is. The official decision document “highlights that costed needs reported in nationally determined contributions of developing country Parties are estimated at USD 5.1–6.8 trillion for up until 2030 or USD 455–584 billion per year, and adaptation finance needs are estimated at USD 215–387 billion annually for up until 2030.” All these add up to USD 670 billion to USD 1.24 trillion per year to cover the costs of poor countries’ climate actions, thus their demand of at least a trillion US dollars annually for NCQG. Factoring inflation since 2009, the money that the rich countries pledged in Baku is only USD 203.50 billion in real terms today, underlining the gaping disparity between financial needs and commitments for meaningful climate actions.

To respond to this massive gap, COP29 negotiators looked to source the money elsewhere other than public funding. The final decision document from the extended talks called on “all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country Parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035.” With just USD 300 billion committed as public funds, this implies that a trillion US dollars in potential climate funding will come from big corporate investments, foreign debt and grants from multilateral development banks, philanthropic contributions, and climate finance mechanisms such as carbon markets, green bonds, and other financial instruments.

Consequently, the so-called Finance COP produced a finance deal designed to perpetuate false climate actions that profit-motivated private interests peddle through their investments or allow the rich countries and their TNCs to sidestep actual reductions in their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through carbon trading. Note that COP29, in a separate decision, also finalized Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which governs international carbon markets. Worse, the Baku climate summit legitimized the controversial carbon market with vague guidelines, risking approval of projects that may not meaningfully reduce emissions while counting transactions made as part of climate finance.

Big corporate investments and false climate solutions

The deal forged in Baku is an appalling development for the climate and planet, especially for the agri-food systems and all the vulnerable and marginalized social sectors that rely on it for their life and livelihood. According to a report that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and others released in time for COP29, the agri-food systems alone need USD 1.15 trillion per year until 2030 to achieve emissions reduction and climate resilience targets by 2050. Even the costs identified by governments to implement their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), national plans that countries make to fight climate change, peg the amount for agri-food at USD 201.50 billion a year or two-thirds of the total climate finance pledged in Baku.

Over the past three decades, climate disasters have caused an estimated loss of USD 3.8 trillion in global crop and livestock production, said the FAO in a separate report. This equates to an average annual loss of USD 123 billion, representing approximately 5 percent of the global agricultural GDP yearly. The amount, which represents an estimation of the direct economic loss and damage to agriculture, is more than a third of the overall amount that rich countries committed at COP29.

Such a colossal financing gap opens a massive opening for TNCs to come in and, with their capital, peddle their technology and commodities not to address the climate crisis (actually, in many cases, even exacerbate it) but to consolidate and expand their monopoly control over the agri-food systems. At Baku, we have seen this trend and scheme continue with the COP29 presidency under Azerbaijan, in collaboration with the FAO, launching the Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmers. The initiative aims to streamline over 90 global and regional climate and agri-food networks

The COP29 presidency and FAO present the Harmoniya Initiative as a tool to help farmers navigate the complex landscape of climate-related agri-food programs. However, its true purpose is to guide corporate interests in identifying the most lucrative investment opportunities within over 90 global or regional initiatives, networks, and partnerships on climate and agri-food systems. The initiative also plans to mobilize the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to make investments in agriculture more attractive, which, for many in the Global South who embraced agricultural structural programs bankrolled by these institutions, means greater poverty, hunger, displacement, and destruction.

Grassroots mobilization, not COP

The 2030 deadline is approaching rapidly, yet obviously, there seems to be no urgency from the governments of the Global North – wealthy nations and their monopoly corporations, which bear significant responsibility for the crisis – to increase their efforts toward genuine climate action significantly. The inadequacy of public climate finance pledged only deepens the injustice faced by billions of climate crisis victims in the Global South. This situation is unacceptable and casts further doubt on the credibility of the COP process.

We must not give up hope. COP may not deliver the long overdue climate justice that we demand, but our direct political actions will. It is essential to return to our communities, persistently educate, organize, and mobilize the people to advocate for climate justice and hold governments and corporations accountable. We must build global solidarity among our communities. Grassroots actions and initiatives and global peoples’ solidarity for our common struggles and demands remain our most effective pathway out of the climate crisis and our best hope to challenge the global monopoly capitalist system that caused and perpetuates the crisis.

Arnold Padilla is the Deputy Executive Director of PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP). He was part of PANAP’s delegation through the Asian People’s Exchange for Food Sovereignty and Agroecology (APEX), including partners from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Sri Lanka, that took part in official events and peoples’ protests at COP29 held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22, 2024.

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