COP29 Needs To Reach Agreement On The New Collective Quantified Goal Of Climate Finance

PICTURE COURTESY : aircenter.az

COP29 in Baku needs to reach an agreement on a new climate finance goal. The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) will be an agreement between parties on climate finance post 2025.In 2009, developed countries agreed that by 2020, they would collectively mobilize $100 billion per year to support developing countries’ climate action. According to the OECD, this goal was met for the first time in 2022 — two years after the initial deadline.

This commitment, first made in 2009 in Copenhagen, was reaffirmed in 2015 as part of the Paris Agreement and covers the period from 2020 to 2025. The $100 billion goal is meant to be replaced with a “new collective quantified goal on climate finance” (NCQG) at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan in November.

The new finance goal will channel greater funds toward urgently needed climate action in developing countries.The people in countries most vulnerable to climate change are facing widespread devastation from the world’s changing climate. Despite contributing the least to climate change and with limited resources to combat the crisis, climate-vulnerable nations in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia and the Pacific, are hit with the heaviest burdens: from cyclones in Bangladesh, to floods in Libya, to wildfires . As global temperatures continue to soar – May 2024 standing out as the hottest ever.
Climate extremes are poised to unleash even more havoc in Asia.

However increasing financial support should enable developing countries to step up their climate ambitions in the next round of national climate plans (NDCs), which are due in 2025. By early 2025, countries are due to unveil new national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Yet NDCs to date fall well short of what’s needed to avert increasingly dangerous climate impacts and hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F).urrent commitments put the world on track for a catastrophic 2.5-2.9 degrees C (4.5 – 5.2 degrees F) of warming by 2100. Now most countries are aiming for net zero targets by 2050.

The NCQG aims to mobilise financing to support the energy transition in developing countries, and essentially provide clarity on the funding available for developing countries to implement their next National Climate Plans (NDCs) which are due by February 2025.

The writer of this article is Dr. Seema Javed, an environmentalist & a communications professional in the field of climate and energy