Finance is the only way to achieve global climate action that will limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, enable adaptation, and address the now unavoidable loss and damage from climate change impacts falling on those least responsible.
We are calling for a climate debt repayment package of US$5 trillion annually in public funding. This would begin to address the years of climate injustice the Global South has endured – and continues to face.
The Global North must start repaying this overdue climate debt, beginning with a COP29 agreement that prioritises direct grants over loans, with at least US$1 trillion annually in public finance as part of the overall US$5 trillion per year commitment. This repayment is essential to cover the escalating costs of climate impacts, loss and damage, adaptation, and a just transition.
“While the climate crisis is a global challenge, its impacts fall hardest on those who contributed the least. This isn’t just injustice – it’s immoral. As richer countries’ broken promises are hurtling the planet to the brink, the new climate finance goal is an opportunity to reset. COP29 must be the moment wealthier countries step up with dedicated public funding, or risk the further erosion of trust with the Global South, deepening inequality and leaving millions of ordinary people to bear the costs of their inaction.“
– Tasneem Essop, CAN Executive Director
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COP29: It’s time to pay up the Climate Debt!
Climate Action Network International is demanding governments coming to Baku to uphold the Paris Agreement they ratified by agreeing to an ambitious new climate finance goal that directs public funds from developed to developing nations, which are unjustly bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
To ensure COP29 is successful, developed countries must prioritise:
• Grant-Based Public Funding accessible to frontline communities to enable real action in climate-vulnerable regions and communities, instead of loans and private finance that further increase the debt burden, with qualitative elements such as access and affordability, and recognition of the principles of tax justice and ‘polluter pays’ principles.
• Explicit public finance goals for loss and damage, adaptation and mitigation.
• Transparency and accountability, in order to know where and how the finance is mobilised and distributed, resisting further marginalisation of the communities most affected by climate change, and a clear definition of what the climate finance framework includes and excludes.
• Respect for Human Rights and Justice should be core principles in the climate finance outcome at COP29 guaranteeing that rights-based approaches will be adopted in the mobilisation and distribution of finance.
COP29 will be tough to win these demands but developed countries must, can and should deliver.
There can be no climate justice without human rights and the cessation of global conflict.
COP29 also comes at a time of devastation and major geopolitical tensions.
Over the last year, we’ve witnessed Israel’s campaign displace millions of Palestinians and the death toll is over 41,500 – 56% of deaths have been of women and children. Recent weeks have seen southern Lebanon also under Israeli attack with nearly 3000 civilians already killed.
We are witnessing a genocide taking place live.
The complicity of Global North governments in Israel’s crimes illustrates the reality already being faced by many of our communities on the frontlines of climate violence in the Global South. Peoples and territory are sacrificed to protect the interests of powerful elites and big business.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which started in February 2022, has led to almost 12,000 deaths, with no real signs of a ceasefire or peace in sight.
Sudan is stuck in a brutal power battle between the country’s two warring factions. Mediation efforts between the two groups have so far failed. Since the conflict began in April 2023, almost 15,000 people have been killed, and more than 8.2 million have been displaced, giving rise to the worst displacement crisis in the world. Nearly 2 million displaced Sudanese have fled to unstable areas in Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. The UN continues to plead for more support as over 25 million people need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security risks are triggering the “world’s largest hunger crisis.”
While in the Democratic Republic of Congo, fuelled by the extraction of critical minerals, large-scale attacks against civilians by armed groups and the Congolese security forces continue, fuelling a humanitarian crisis in which nearly 7 million people have been internally displaced and thousands of others fleeing the country. In 2023, armed groups killed thousands of civilians, and the army carried out extrajudicial executions, while sexual and gender-based violence remained prevalent.
Repression Epidemic
The world is in the throes of unprecedented repression against climate activists, human rights defenders, journalists, academics and others who express opposing views to their government, with recent extreme violations taking place in so-called democratic countries in the West.
Climate activists and human rights defenders have borne the brunt of this repression. Over 1,500 climate and human rights defenders have been murdered since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015.
This repression ironically extends to countries who have hosted COPs. In 2024 in Azerbaijan, the country witnessed its most severe repression yet, with a sharp rise in political prisoners, targeting of academics, and the harshest media restrictions in its history as a member of the Council of Europe. As of September 2024, Azerbaijan had 319 political prisoners. This repression is not unique to Azerbaijan.
During COP28, on 7 December 2023, Emirati officials began a mass trial, prosecuting more than 80 people, including renowned human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience – some of whom had already spent a decade behind bars, due to a previous mass trial.
Egypt played host to COP27, despite the country’s president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi relentlessly cracking down on dissent through arrests and persecution for years. Since the 2013 military coup, Egyptian authorities have arrested or charged probably at least 60,000 people, forcibly disappeared hundreds for months at a time, handed down preliminary death sentences to hundreds more, tried thousands of civilians in military courts, and created at least 19 new prisons or jails to hold this influx. Alaa Abdel Fattah is Egypt’s best-known political prisoner and who went on hunger strike during COP27. He remains in prison, and Laila Suief, his mother, went on hunger strike in September 2024 when his latest release date passed.
For the Glasgow COP, there were concerning reports of police containing protestors using the tactic of ‘kettlingʼ, employing excessive force, cracking down on peaceful direct action, and abusing stop and search powers, while COVID19 restrictions were heavily employed against Global South delegates and activists.
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