Members of Greenpeace International display personal items and symbolic objects impacted by extreme weather and the climate crisis, during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29), in Baku, Azerbaijan November 18, 2024. - Reuters
BAKU (Bernama-dpa): Greenpeace, the worldwide climate organisation, slammed the agreement reached at the UN Climate Conference early on Sunday, saying negotiators had caved to the interests of oil-producing nations, the German news agency dpa reported.
"People are fed up, disillusioned," said Jasper Inventor, the head of Greenpeace's delegation to the COP29 talks, as they are known, in a statement.
He called the agreement for richer nations to provide US$300 billion to poorer ones for their climate needs "woefully inadequate" adding that he and others will look toward COP30, next year's conference in Belem, Brazil, to fix the deal. "We will not give up," he said.
Greenpeace's climate politics expert, Tracy Carty, noted that the finance goal provides no guarantees against loans or private financing from footing the Bill, rather than "the grant-based public finance developing countries desperately need." She and others at Greenpeace called for the fossil fuel industry to pay.
Fred Njehu, the pan-African political strategist for Greenpeace Africa had some of the harshest comments, calling the deal "climate colonialism".
He compared the US$1.3 billion to offering someone "a pipette to fill an ocean”.
"It’s like agreeing someone needs a full reservoir of water to survive, then handing them an eye dropper and saying, ‘Good luck!’”
But there was a tiny bit of optimism among the Greenpeace delegates to the convention.
Maarten de Zeeuw, Greenpeace Netherlands' climate and energy campaigner, noted that COP29 agreed to develop a roadmap for scaling up financing at next year's meeting.
"This must be a roadmap for making polluters pay," he said.
Meanwhile, several countries were also outraged and angry over the compromise reached early Sunday morning at the COP29 summit.
Nigeria's representative described the US$300 billion being asked annually of industrialised countries until 2035 as a "joke" and an "insult".
India's representative protested, stating that they could not agree with the decision because the commitments were far too low.
"We cannot accept this."
The criticism cannot change the agreement, which stands. However the comments are likely to be entered into the record.
At the UN World Climate Conference, host Azerbaijan quickly sealed the crucial text, leaving several states feeling sidelined and ignored.
A Bolivian representative lamented that developing countries are being left to face their plight in the climate crisis alone. He asserted that we are entering an era where everyone will only be concerned about saving their own skin. He said that industrialised nations have a historical responsibility for global warming, and climate aid is therefore not a charitable act, "but a legal obligation".
However, EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra defended the decision. He promised that a "new era in climate financing is dawning" and that the European Union would continue to take a leading role. The new targets are ambitious but realistic, the Dutchman said. - Bernama-dpa
