There was strong demand for action at the opening day of the COP29 climate conference, hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan, with representatives from around the world speaking of the need to escalate climate-change related financing.
Filipino representative Tetet Nera-Lauron, adviser for the United Nations Programme at policy lobbyist Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, criticized a perceived lack of progress when it came to high-emitting, developed countries financing climate mitigation for the poorer economies most heavily impacted by global warming.
“You know, adaptation and causing damage is not an investment goal where you can potentially profit more from the climate crisis. It's a matter of life and death for us, not a business or an investment decision,” Nera-Lauron said at a news conference at COP29, or the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
During the same panel, representatives from Somaliland and Bangladesh also stressed how the impact of climate change can have a wide range of effects on developing communities, such as the destruction of crops due to flooding salinating fresh-water supplies, to increasing rates of child marriage due to economic impoverishment resulting from agricultural collapse.
COP29 has been labeled as the "Finance COP" by groups such as the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change. Key developments to watch for in the financial world at this event include whether Article 6.4, which would implement a new international carbon crediting mechanism, will be finalized, and whether the $100 billion a year committed to combating the effects of climate change is adhered to.
A dominant topic of conversation during the first day of COP29 was how an incoming Donald Trump presidency would impact both U.S. domestic policy on climate change and wider international attitudes. During the previous Trump administration, the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, a move since reversed by the government of Joe Biden.
When asked by Pensions & Investments at a news conference on what Trump’s win would mean for international efforts to increase climate finance, Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead at nongovernmental organization ActionAid International, said: “It seems likely that the U.S. will not now pay its fair share of private finance under this new incoming government, but this is a test for rich countries.
“Will they follow Trump's lead and just give up on the planet by default? They need to ask whether they actually want to fall in line with climate skeptic attitudes, or whether they actually want to fix this crisis. If they believe in the climate emergency, then they should be willing to pay more than their fair share of climate finance, not less.”
Also speaking during the first day of the COP29 conference was John Podesta, current U.S. climate envoy following the retirement of John Kerry.
Of what a second Trump term could mean for U.S. sustainability policy and efforts to combat climate change, Podesta said at a news conference: "This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. Facts are still facts. Science is still science. The fight is bigger than one election and one political cycle in one country.”
Released to coincide with the first day of COP29, MSCI released its latest Net Zero Tracker, which showed that just 10% of the money invested in climate funds currently flows to companies in emerging markets.
Linda-Eling Lee, head of the MSCI Sustainability Institute, said in an interview with Pensions & Investments: “For large institutional investors, being able to channel substantially more more money into emerging markets still comes with hurdles, in terms of risk appetite as well as constraints relating to fiduciary duty.”
The MSCI report also showed that the activities of the world’s public companies are on course for global warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in average global temperatures by 2100.
