COP29: Crucial Climate Finance Deal Depends On Moral Backbones Of Wealthy Countries’ Leaders

Baku, November 20, 2024:- As the COP29 climate summit draws towards its final days, the Global Climate and Health Alliance today called on wealthy countries to end their blockade of the climate finance deal, and commit to provide at least one trillion USD of grants-based finance annually in order to protect people and their health health from the worst impacts of climate change. This week, delegations including the US, EU, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, France, and Japan have been blocking a deal on climate finance claiming that an investment-centric approach is required rather than the significant public grants and concessional finance they are obliged to provide, under article 9 of the Paris Agreement. 

Dubbed the “finance COP”, a key COP29 agenda item includes a decision that must be made on a major new climate finance commitment -- the “New Collective Quantified Goal” (NCQG) – in order to aid developing, climate vulnerable countries in addressing the impacts of climate change on their populations’ health, infrastructure and economies, in making their health systems and other sectors more resilient to climate change, and in ensuring full access to safe, clean, low carbon sources of energy while reducing greenhouse emissions. 

“Before COP29 ends, governments must agree to an ambitious and updated climate finance commitment, the New Collective Quantified Goal”, said Jess Beagley, Policy Lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, a consortium of more than 200 health professional and health civil society organisations from around the world. “Without adequate climate finance, climate action across sectors will not be viable, which would have catastrophic implications for human health. In addition, finance agreed on during COP29 must be predominantly based on grants and not loans, to avoid perpetuating cycles of debt, poverty and disease. COP29’s decision on the NCQG will not only ultimately determine the summit's success but will significantly determine the degree to which people’s health is protected by decision makers. This is the moment - leaders of developed countries must step forward to deliver adequate finance. Failure to do so will mean a death sentence for millions.”

“It is unconscionable that developed countries, including Canada, the US, Australia, the EU, Switzerland, France and Japan are blocking a deal on climate finance, or deflecting responsibility onto private financial entities”, said Dr Jeni Miller, Executive Director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “It’s time for their decisionmakers – like Australia’s climate change minister Chris Bowen, Canada’s environment and climate change minister , Steven Guilbeault, Japan’s environment minister, Keiichiro Asao, Albert Rösti, Swiss minister for environment, France’s Minister of Ecological Transition, Energy, Climate and Risk Prevention Agnès Pannier-Runacher, EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Podesta – to demonstrate true leadership by agreeing to deliver public finance, primarily in the form of grants, to support developing countries to weather the impacts of climate change on their people’s health, and to hasten the end of the fossil fuel era. It is time to step up to your countries’ responsibilities to climate finance, as committed to under the Paris Agreement.”

“By delivering public finance in the form of grants, decision makers would be acting in the best interest of not only the people of developing countries but also of developed and wealthy countries themselves”, continued Miller. “A world where we have countries impacted by climate change, crippled by debt, and wracked by public protests over lack of healthcare, is a world that is less stable. We’ve already seen, with Covid19, the impacts a global health crisis can have on every country’s economy. By meeting their financial responsibilities to aid developing countries to address climate change, wealthy countries will ensure better global cooperation on climate, health, trade, and an array of other issues essential to all of our well being, in our globally interconnected world.”

“In the Pacific and the world over we are seeing accelerated impacts”, said Dr Sindra Sharma, PICAN/L&DC. “The climate crisis is a public health crisis. Our communities are increasingly facing heat related illnesses, mental health impacts, vector-borne diseases, food insecurity and malnutrition amongst other things. In addition, access and delivery of health-care is being disrupted. All this in a world that is fast approaching that critical 1.5C threshold which will only worsen impacts. Without progressive climate finance from developed countries of at least $1 trillion in public provision - that is just and of quality - we will not be able to limit warming to 1.5C and this fundamental threat to our right to health of current and future generations. Developed countries, as the primary contributors to this crisis, must deliver a fit for purpose NCQG which is necessary for the wellbeing and thriving of all communities worldwide but especially the most vulnerable amongst us.”

A United Nations report released in September 2024 found that several sub-Saharan African countries were paying more on interest and repayment on international loans than they were able to invest in health and education, significantly setting back progress on addressing HIV/AIDS while weakening these countries' health systems.

“Many developing countries on the front lines are feeling the brunt of climate impacts, but have limited resources with which to prepare or respond in order to protect the health of their populations - it is outrageous that these high interest rates of loans mean that several SubSaharan African countries, such as Zimbabwe and Kenya, spend more servicing their loans than on health”, said Benson Simba, Director for Social Determinants of Health, Amref Health Africa.“If COP29 agrees to climate finance that results in yet more loans to developing countries, their health systems will continue to be decimated. Even worse, to respond to a crisis they have not caused, governments would have to weaken health systems to pay back loans. And they’ll be doing so because the wealthy nations that did cause the crisis are not facing up to their responsibilities and their promises.” 

“From the severe cholera outbreak experienced by Malawi, to Zambia - where over one million hectares of maize, the country’s staple crop, was destroyed resulting in over 6 million people facing hunger, the people of developing countries are facing serious impacts on their health from a climate crisis they did not cause. The health community is calling on wealthy and developed countries to make a robust deal at COP29 that provides financial support to these countries; the alternative is not only morally bankrupt, it's politically boneheaded”, concluded Miller.

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