At the midway point of COP29, Teresa Anderson, ActionAid’s Global Climate Justice Lead, says:
“Frontline countries who have been paying the costs of climate change for years came to COP29 hoping for a new climate finance goal that will help keep them and the planet safe. But so far, rich countries have put zero real finance on the table. Instead, they’re cynically trying to turn the climate talks into an opportunity to profit. Developed countries are trying to switch out a grant-based climate finance goal with investment targets for the private sector. It’s not only outrageous, it’s incredibly dangerous to keep denying the planet’s need for real climate finance.
Civil servants spent last week wrangling over a sprawling document with competing visions of the climate finance goal. But they weren’t able to make any breakthrough without their bosses’ say so. This week, the documents defining our planet’s future have now been delivered into the hands of the ministerial gods.
Previous COP decisions about transitioning away from fossil fuels, and setting up a loss and damage fund to recover from disasters, will be meaningless without the money to make these goals a reality. If developed countries are serious about climate action, they need to agree to provide trillions of dollars in grant-based finance each year to the countries on the frontlines.”
Ends
Teresa is in Baku and available for interviews.
For media inquiries, please contact the Press Office at media-enquiries@actionaid.org or +254 722780562 / +263776665065 (WhatsApp Only).
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.