Many headlines in multiple news media and analytical pieces across developing countries have loudly proclaimed -- the 29th Conference of Parties (CoP-29) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has miserably failed to address the fast increasing climate change Crisis on all fronts. This 29th conference of Parties to the Convention and the simultaneous 6th Conference of the parties serving as Members of the Paris Agreement (CMA-6 , 6th after the Paris agreement in 2015 ) was billed as the "Finance CoP", and as one which will help and empower poorer developing countries address the severe impacts of Climate Crisis, through financing their adaptation measure and their transition to low-carbon low-emission  economies, by substantially increasing the climate finance flows to them, as part of the long accepted 'climate justice' principle. On both fronts, CoP-29 miserably failed to meet expectations of developing and poor countries.

To better understand the above statement, we need to bring in a little background information. As is well known, the global convention to tackle 'climate change', UNFCCC, was created in 1992, in the famous Rio Earth Summit. The same Earth Summit gave birth to two other connected global environmental conventions, United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity or UNCBD and the less talked about United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification or UNCCD. The first climate change CoP-1 of UNFCCC took place in Berlin in 1995. And first decision that the rich polluting countries will have to bring down their climate threatening Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, was agreed upon in CoP-3 in Kyoto, Japan. Much 'proverbial water' has flowed through the UNFCCC CoP processes since then.

The well understood and accepted principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility and Respective Capacities (CBDR & RC) was the foundation based on the Climate justice concept. The rich countries have emitted the major part of cumulative GHGs in the post industrial revolution era (1850-1900 average to present, while poorer countries with much larger populations also emitted, but at much smaller percentage). This has created the fast-rising global warming, driving major disruptive changes in climate and other Earth Systems, by extracting, burning and dumping the 'lions share' of global cumulative fossil fuels extraction of Coal, petroleum (oil) and (natural) gas, they have the most responsibilities for creating the Climate Crisis and for its redressal (CBDR). These same rich countries have built up their economic (& technological & infrastructural) capacities by this use of fossil fuels etc, so they have much higher capacities (RC part of CBDR & RC) to tackle it too.

Based on this globally accepted Climate Justice concept of CBDR & RC, the CoP-15 (Copenhagen, Denmark 2009) and CoP-16 (Cancun, Mexico 2010) finalized a "Fast Start (climate) Finance" of USD 10 billion a year to poorer / developing countries from 2010-2012, and an arbitrarily decided (by the developed countries) figure of USD 100 billion per year starting from the year 2020. This was reinforced in the Paris CoP-21 and Paris Agreement in 2015. Many studies (including by that Icon of Capitalism, the World Bank) even at that time have shown that the real minimum climate finance need of the developing countries even in 2008-2010 period was over USD 600 billion per year. So, the USD 100 billion /year from 2020 was far lower than needed even when first proposed. And it was decided that by the year 2025, a much higher and more democratically assessed climate finance goal, the so called "New Collective Quantified Goal" or NCQG will come into force by 2025. This CoP-29 in Baku in 2024, had that task cut out for its success.

In between, the long-standing demand of the poorer countries, for a separate "Loss and Damage Fund", was accepted in principle in the CoP-27 in Sharm el-Shaikh, Egypt in 2022, and was operationalised with a small capitalisation of about USD 700+ million, in CoP-28 in Dubai 2023. The Loss and Damage concept acknowledges that even with some adaptation and resilience building measures, all countries are already suffering extensive losses and damages from sharply increased climate extreme events and also what are called climatic "slow onset events". The poorer (and heavily indebted) countries are unable to cope with the necessities of additional finance needed to address these new challenges, and require financial (and technological) assistance from rich countries that have created this crisis.

Well before the CoP-29 started on the 11th of November in Baku, the capital (& host) city of Azerbaijan, several studies have highlighted the massive gaps in essential climate finance. As per estimates of the International Renewable Energy Agency IRENA and the International Energy Agency IEA, the financial need for the global Energy Transition from a carbon-based fossil fuels energy economy to non/low carbon economy, is about USD 6,000 billion (one billion USD being roughly equivalent to Rs.8,450 crores in today exchange rate) each year (or about 5% of global GDP today). The present level of financing (market based, concessional, grants, all included) for Energy Transition is about USD 1.3-1.4 trillion, leaving a gap of about USD 4.7 trillion each year. The global need for adaptation exceeds USD 1,000 billion each year, while the actual financing is much below USD 100 billion. Given all these, the various developing country groupings, including the biggest, G77 + China, were demanding the NCQG to be at least USD 1,300 billion per year, with USD 600 billion as Grants and the rest as concessional loans . As indicated, their realistic expectations were somewhat close to USD 1 trillion.

In face of this massive climate finance deficit, the "finance CoP" at Baku came up with a final figure of USD 300 billion per year, that too - to start from the far off year of 2035! Also, by the year 2035, today's assumed figure of 300 billion will become just marginally higher than today's 100 billion, due to inflation, and will be a miniscule percentage of the then increased GDPs of rich countries. This pathetic finance 'deal' was almost 'graveled' or forced through by the CoP-29 Azerbaijan presidency and president Mr Mukhtar Babayev, in the last night of the extended CoP (as has become the norm over the last decade or so).

While the rich countries indeed conspired with the CoP-29 presidency of Azerbaijan to force this disastrous deal, it leaves some questions unanswered. The UNFCCC (and other) negotiation process works on the basis of consensus decision making. There are enough evidence to show that even if a few small countries strongly oppose any decision, that gets stalled. In the CoPs 15, 16, 17 etc, Bolivia and some other small South American countries strongly resisted similar bad proposals of rich countries, and these were stopped from being accepted as approved text. As recently as in CoP-26 in Glasgow, UK in 2021, the rich countries cleverly proposed a "Coal phase out", leaving Oil and Gas from the phase out proposal. This was okay for them as their economies are coming out of carbon-based fossil fuel coal, and become largely dependent of the two hydrocarbon based fossil fuels petroleum (oil) and natural gas (primarily CH4 or Methane). China and India (along with a host of others), whose economies are today heavily dependent on Coal, objected strongly and the proposal was not accepted. A much diluted (and ineffective) proposal of "Phasing down of unabated coal" was accepted instead.

So, the public complaints of India and other developing countries, about CoP-29 presidency 'graveling down' this pathetic climate finance deal as the NCQG, sounds somewhat hollow. What is more true is that many of the poorer countries thought that this USD 300 billion/year is probably better than the present USD 100 bn/year, in absence of a better deal, and this became the least common NCQG of climate finance. Its sad to see such ignorance and absence of mind in thousands of negotiators from the developing countries, that they failed to understand that USD 300 billion post 2035 has little more value than USD 100 billion in 2020 ! Speaks volumes for our "trained negotiators".

The other major disaster that the CoP-29 created is the complete operationalization of the Article 6 of the Paris Agreement of 2015. "Article 6 of the Paris Agreement consists of nine paragraphs providing principles for how countries can “pursue voluntary cooperation” to reach their climate targets". Article 6.2 and 6.4 sets the rules and norms for "emission reductions through the market mechanisms", a grey area, considering that the so-called "free market" has very predatory and capital accumulation-extraction characteristics. We also have the earlier examples and discouraging learnings about how the Kyoto-protocol derived market mechanisms called "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM), failed to achieve any significant emissions reductions, while adversely impacting many vulnerable communities in poor countries, including in large number of CDM project sites in India.

If we just consider that extremely polluting coal power plants like the Reliance Sasan 4,000 MW Ultra Mega power plant in Madhya Pradesh and the Adani Mundra 4,620 MW coal PP in Gujarat, have received hundreds of crores of rupees worth of "Clean Development Mechanism" finance, the farce of Carbon markets becomes clear. Both projects have devastated the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Adivasis, small scale fishworkers, small salt panners and pastoralists, while spewing deadly air and water pollution in large stretches of the sites. Despite that, they were considered "Clean Development" for India, and gave huge carbon credits to those polluting entities in rich countries who escaped reducing their own pollution. By complete operationalisation of the market mechanisms through Articles 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, the CoP-29 had opened the flood gates of dubious carbon credits, further displacements and exploitation of nature-dependent communities, and lead the whole climate action agenda into false solutions arena.

On top of all these, one must recall that the last 3 (even last 4, including Glasgow CoP26) were hosted by largely petrol States - UK has major oil and gas operations in North Sea, Egypt has a major petroleum sector, the United Arab Emirates depends massively on its Oil and Gas, and Azerbaijan is possibly the world's first petro-State, which is still primarily a petro-dependent economy. And for the last 3 CoPs, from Sharm el-Shaikh in Egypt in 2022 to Baku in Azerbaijan, the democratic space for protests, dissent has shrunk drastically, while the manipulating space for fossil fuels and global financial lobbyists have increased sharply.

The last disappointment was the complete failure of CoP-29 to advance the agenda of decarbonisation of global economies and pushing the agenda of "fossil fuels phase out" to the next CoP, the CoP-30 in Belem, Brazil in November 2025. We can possibly expect a better democratic space there, but looking at the failure of the Brazilian delegation to stand firm in defence of essential justice principles in Baku CoP-29, it's better to temperature our expectations from a Lula led presidency of CoP-30. (Despite drawbacks there should not be any space left uncontested and open) But given all that, there is no scope of leaving any space uncontested and open for the fossil capitalists and finance-capital crooks, the fight must continue to curb their power and bring in people's voices louder and clearer.

[The author is associated with the environmental movement of India and is a key coordinator of MAUSAM (Movement for Advancing Understanding on Sustainability And Mutuality) and Friends of the Earth, India.]