A missed COP-portunity
The shortcomings of the New Quantified Collective Goal
By Kathleen Euler Thu, Dec 5, 2024
To understand the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), we must look back to Denmark. At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit (COP15), world leaders made a commitment to raise $100 billion in public and private finance each year by the end of the next decade.
However, Copenhagen was only the beginning. It wasn’t until Paris that the New Collective Quantified Goal grew some teeth.
In 2015, the world agreed on one of the most significant pieces of international climate policy: the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a historic piece of legislation, in large part because it is a legally binding treaty. At its core, it outlines three major priorities for climate action:
- Limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius;
- Review and assess national progress on emissions reductions every five years; and
- Mobilize climate finance, directing it to those countries on the frontlines and most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
The Agreement is a path forward. It calls for very specific actions and for a clear framework to evaluate and report on progress. It recognizes the unequal burdens of climate change, but also notably recognizes the critical need for robust and accessible climate finance.
At the same conference, the parties also agreed to set a new collective climate finance goal that reflected the needs of developing countries. They acknowledged that the $100 billion target set six years earlier was a floor and would likely not cover the growing and exacerbating needs. In Paris, they put pressure on world leaders to raise that floor by 2025.
In Paris, world leaders reasserted the important role of climate finance and acknowledged its unequal impacts. The goal calls for developed countries to provide climate finance to developing countries. Under the UN system, there are 37 countries with “developed economies,” including the United States, Australia, and Japan. By its very existence, the NCQG recognizes that developed economies are disproportionately contributed to emissions and global warming. It is on them to mobilize climate finance.
What happened in Baku?
At COP29, the gravity of negotiations shifted. Each and every conversation was seemingly pulled back to one item: defining an ambitious yet realistic climate finance target. Despite this critical recognition, negotiations on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) fell short of expectations. While the goal tripled to $300 billion per year, it fell far short of the $1.3 trillion dollar ask that developing countries had put on the table.
The COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev blamed developed countries for this gap. In a piece he authored after negotiations concluded, he wrote, “Azerbaijan sought to reach and surpass that minimum total by proposing a blended number of $1.3 trillion in financing, combining the $300 billion contribution from developed governments with funds from intergovernmental financing institutions and the private sector. No one realistically doubts that all three funding sources and more must row together to finance our way out of this crisis. But the global south was right that the industrialized world’s contribution was too low and that the private sector contribution was too theoretical.”
It is difficult to find a single, consistent number for climate finance needs. But the gap between the trillion dollar estimates and the new goal is vast.
In fact, the adaptation gap alone is estimated at up to $359 billion per year. And the world is woefully off track to meet either of those goals. The world committed six billion more dollars in public adaptation financing flows in 2022. Notably, this was the “largest absolute and relative year-on-year increase since the Paris Agreement.” However, this only brought the annual total to $28 billion.
Even more sobering, the NCQG should also cover mitigation needs, which make that gap even wider. So, it is clear that this agreement must serve as a starting point. It cannot become a milestone benchmark for the next decade of climate finance.
Nevertheless, there is reason for cautious optimism. As former climate negotiator and senior director Jorge Gastelumendi notes, any agreement is a critical political signal. “In its ability to set a precedent, the agreement itself can inspire action not only in the public sector but also the private sector,” he said in the midst of negotiations.
In a similar vein, the UN Secretary General António Guterres hoped that this new goal would serve as a base. He called it a “glimmer of hope—but only if commitments translate into swift action.”
What does Article 2 of the Paris Agreement say?
The text reads: “This Agreement […] aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty, including by:
- Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
- Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production; and
- Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”
What does that mean for Brazil?
Many parties left Baku disappointed. Key conversations were tabled and pushed to COP30 in Belém, Brazil. The finance goal set at COP29 falls far short of the commitments needed to cover the increasing costs of the climate crisis.
Now, the pressure is still on climate finance. Brazil—the host of COP30—is also acutely aware of this. Brazil’s climate chief Ana Toni noted that the NCQG is “not for developing countries, it’s for the sake of all of us. Because if we are able to achieve our ambitions and see who is going to benefit, it’s not just Brazilians, it’s everybody.”
The country has also signaled a strong commitment to action as the countdown to COP30 begins. Already, local think tanks partnered with the European Union to form a bilateral forum. However, as the world has seen from previous negotiations, ambition without action is meaningless. Many of the discussions from this year’s conference—like that on National Adaptation Plans—were tabled. Further, while the NCQG resulted in an agreement, it has been called a floor. In fact, the COP presidencies will continue to meet in a series of dialogues entitled “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T.” These actions are a clear signal that there is still a lot of work to be done.
With less than a year before climate negotiators gather again, the pressure must remain high. Leaders need to mobilize climate finance across the public and private sectors to scale the solutions that work. The world is counting on it.
