Efforts to tackle the accelerating crisis of anthropogenic climate change are on the line this week in the US election, as the votes are tallied to see who will lead the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter during a period critical to deciding the fate of the planet. On one side, climate action is anathema to former president Donald Trump and many of his Republican supporters. In 2019, he oversaw the US’s high-profile withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which binds signatories to an average 1.5 degrees Celsius limit on global warming above pre-industrial levels, and there are well-founded fears that this could repeat under a second presidency. His domestic agenda would virtually eradicate clean energy investments and unleash billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere through renewed fossil fuel expansion.
Meanwhile, his main rival, Kamala Harris, has notably helped to advance the Democrats’ climate policies as VP. Though she lacks the litany of controversies that characterised Trump’s time in office, she and the Biden administration share Trump’s steadfast commitment to upholding US imperialism in backing Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. This has eroded her support among many on the left and may prevent her from entering the White House to take effective climate action. Though the contest finds itself on a knife edge, by the time this article is read, the results may already have been declared.
Observers around the world then, waiting with bated breath, might rail at this injustice which lies at the heart of the climate crisis: the fate of nations who have contributed the least to this ongoing crisis, such as Tuvalu, predicted by scientists to be underwater in the next 50–100 years, is beholden to the political will of countries that are contributing the most. The US is far from the only industrialised country complicit in this. A Lancet Planetary Health study found that, when considering population, land area, and post-industrial contributions, the Global North was responsible for 92% of global emissions: the US with 40% and the EU with 29%. Meanwhile, other heavy net emitters in the Global South, such as China and India, have also received their fair share of criticism for failing to decrease emissions accordingly, and reply with protestations of their need for development and the consequent necessity of ensuing CO2 emissions. The blame is passed endlessly between the major nations of the world, with COP after COP taking place and no end to this stalemate in sight.
It is against this backdrop that COP29 takes place later this month in Azerbaijan. A key focus of this year’s conference is addressing shortfalls in climate finance, in order to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Climate finance refers to all public and private financial resources allocated to climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation covers attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, thereby slowing the onset of global warming. It involves investing in renewable energy technologies to hasten phasing out fossil fuels, and supporting carbon capture and storage projects which contribute to the removal of excess emissions from the atmosphere. Adaptation, meanwhile, is aimed at helping countries deal with the impacts of climate change through building capacity for measures such as flood defences to counter rising sea levels, efficient management of water systems to combat drought, and agricultural practices which are resilient in the face of changing climate. Industrialised nations will need to invest most heavily in mitigation measures, while vulnerable developing nations will require the most adaptation. These initiatives will not come cheaply – according to the World Bank, by 2030, developing countries will need US$4.5 trillion annually to meet targets set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On top of this, the economic cost of extreme weather impacts, worsened by climate change, reached an estimated US$329 billion globally in 2021, a figure that is only set to increase. However, one out of six countries still lacks a national adaptation planning (NAP) instrument, a UN-established process which seeks to identify medium- and long-term adaptation needs, informed by the latest climate science. Once major vulnerabilities to climate change have been identified, the NAP process develops strategies to address them. Most worryingly, a significant finance gap remains, with the global failure to fulfil the $100 billion climate finance pledge made at COP15 in 2009 exemplifying this.
The key debate here is thus: who is most responsible for stumping up these giant costs? The notion of climate equity tells us that the biggest emitters have a responsibility to carry the cost for most emissions. Since industrialisation and wealth abundance across the Global North is a direct result of decades of exploiting the Global South for its resources and cheap labour, first under colonialism, and now corporate capitalism, there is understandable resentment from the Global South when asked to reduce emissions, or when their migrants seek to reach places like Europe and the US, with increasing numbers of journeys being catalysed by climate change. Why should they be restricted in trying to achieve the same high living standards seen in the Global North, either through movement or their own development? It takes a jarring entitlement and hubris for the Global North to continue living comfortable, carbon-intensive lifestyles whilst preaching sustainable development to the Global South. Instead, sustainable models of development should be adopted by all nations, rather than only those still developing. For developed nations, this means a drastic change in their consumption habits to reduce their own CO2 emissions, and contributing accordingly to aid those nations whose vulnerability to climate change has been exacerbated by the emissions of the Global North. As recently demonstrated by the devastating floods in Spain, or Hurricanes Helene and Milton that lashed the US, Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas in quick succession, climate change does not discriminate by GDP, though developing nations in the Global South will feel its effects the most. We can only hope that these tragic events engender empathy in the Global North for those in the Global South whose similar suffering is less televised, and pave the way for implementing radical policies to alleviate this.
The way forward then, requires a mutual understanding that only a fair redistribution of the world’s wealth will lead to a truly equitable plan to finance the fight against climate change – it is as much in the interests of the Global North to provide climate finance as it is for the Global South to receive it. If COP29 gets this wrong, then in the coming decades, as the effects of climate change are felt most keenly by the most vulnerable nations, this will widen global divides, sowing disunity and mistrust when those are the very barriers that need to be overcome to deliver effective climate action for all of humanity.