Baku’s climate talks couldn’t escape the impact of Trump’s US victory
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The CoP-29 climate summit at Baku closed with a measly deal that has deeply disappointed the developing world and civil society in developed countries. So much so that the spokesperson for the Indian delegation to the annual series of UN-mandated climate talks called the final agreement an “optical illusion." India’s voice matters at such forums our delegates make sure it is heard loud and clear.
And no global issue burns more fiercely than climate change and a fair sharing of the response burden. Sadly for most of the world, the rich nations that are almost wholly responsible for causing climate change—China and India, among the top five carbon emitters today, industrialized much later—agreed to pledge just $300 billion annually till 2035 as funds for poorer countries to fight global warming and secure themselves from its fallout. This is thrice the $100-billion-per-year promise of CoP-15 till 2020, which went largely unfulfilled, but still $1 trillion short of the overall need estimated.
While transitions to clean energy are expensive, acquiring resilience against the ravages of climate change, from heat-waves and flooding to crop damage and food inflation caused by volatile weather, will require huge sums too. This slow-burn crisis has been wreaking havoc across the rich and poor alike. Floods in Spain killed some 300 people in the prelude to CoP-29.
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