The Philippines and Malaysia are holding out to receive funding from the new climate fund rather than receive technical assistance and aid offered as an alternative by some developed countries, according to civil society organisations at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan.
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“We had direct communications with Philippine and Malaysian official delegations and they assured us that they are holding the line on receiving funding from the new climate finance fund through public financing by multilaterals,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), a regional alliance for people-centered development and economic and climate justice.
The Philippines’ negotiating team for the new climate finance goal is led by Megan Barte, division chief of the climate finance policy group of the finance department.
The multilateral approach in obtaining climate funding must be followed, said Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, Malaysia’s minister of natural resources and environmental sustainability, when queried by Eco-Business in a discussion in the Malaysian pavilion.
“It is in the interest of all countries for this process to be followed. At the end of the day, this is a United Nations (UN) convention. If we give up on that process, it does not bode well,” he said.
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We had direct communications with Philippine and Malaysian official delegations and they assured us that they are holding the line on receiving funding from the new climate finance fund through public financing by multilaterals.
Lidy Nacpil, coordinator, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD)
Other Asian governments that are maintaining their stand against bilateral agreements include Bangladesh and Nepal, Nacpil told Eco-Business on the sidelines of protest actions on Thursday morning when the draft text was released by the COP29 presidency.
Nearly 200 countries at the UN talks have been locking horns over a climate finance deal for developing economies, with negotiators trying to find consensus on more than a trillion dollars annually by 2030, to pay for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage.
Known as the new collective quantified goal (NCQG), it is meant to replace a US$100 billion annual funding target by 2020 that poor countries were promised by wealthy nations 15 years ago.
The latest text left out the most contentious issues not yet decided including which countries pay, the amount they should pay, and how much should of the funding should be dispersed as grants instead of loans. It also included scant references to transitioning away from fossil fuels, which was a landmark agreement at last year’s summit. Another round of negotiations resumed until late Thursday evening.
“We are calling on developing country parties to stand up for their rights. We are hearing of several countries capitulating to lower the numbers [for the NCQG] because of the fear that they will be left with nothing at the end of COP,” said Nacpil.
The veteran climate and human rights activist did not want to reveal which specific countries may be accepting deals from developed states, so as not to “antagonise” them.
Some least developed countries and small island states are breaking away from the Group of 77 (G77) and China, the biggest negotiating bloc of low-income countries at the conference, because they believe that the probability of getting the trillions needed to contend with global warming will not be forthcoming, said Ian Rivera, national coordinator of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice, an alliance of 150 national networks.
“They’re saving their own countries instead of coming together as one solid bloc to achieve one global solution,” Rivera told Eco-Business.
The NCQG amount will be used to transform the energy system and address loss and damage. If it is done bilaterally, the fund will go directly to these countries, not to the bloc as a whole, Rivera added.
This climate finance will go towards the managed phase out of fossil fuels, like the energy transition mechanism (ETM) which is a fund that will buy coal power plants in order to shut them down early, replacing them with renewable energy alternatives, he said.
It is a separate source of funding from the COP28 goal of tripling renewable-energy capacity by 2030.
As the climate talks come to a close, civil society groups say they would rather have no climate finance deal than one that will lock poor nations into debt for years to come.
Nacpil said: “We are facing a better reality for these negotiations not to finalise if it will result to a weak goal, and instead continue in COP30 to get a better deal.”
