COP29: ‘You first’ policy will take us nowhere, warns UN Climate Change chief

Developed country parties had been proposing some kind of income or wealth criteria to include countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Qatar -- something that developing countries have strongly resisted.

Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, warns of the dangers of such ‘you first-tism’. (X/@SimonStiell)

Written by: Amitabh Sinha

4 min readBakuNov 19, 2024 09:43 AM IST First published on: Nov 19, 2024 at 09:43 AM IST

In the absence of any significant movement on the finance negotiations, and hopes still pinned on some positive signals from the G20 meeting faraway in Brazil, some countries here were stalling progress on other tracks as well, arguing that it was futile to discuss more ambitious emission cuts in the absence of a strong outcome on finance.

This prompted Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, to warn of the dangers of such ‘you first-tism’.

“We can’t lose sight of the forest because we are tussling over individual trees. Nor can we afford an outbreak of ‘you first-ism’, wherein a group of parties dig in and refuse to move on one issue unless others move elsewhere. This is a recipe for going literally nowhere,” Stiell said.

The issue has been going on since late last week, when a group of developing countries objected to attempts to put specific emission cut targets in one negotiation track that was started in Glasgow in 2021, to raise the ambition of mitigation actions. India was among the countries that had objected, arguing that the conclusions of this track of negotiations was supposed to be “non-prescriptive”.

Also read | COP29: India reiterates issue of unilateral trade measures, impact on developing countries

India had said that this track had been “established with a specific mandate that it would be operationalised through a focused exchange of views, information and ideas, noting that the outcomes… would be non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances… and would not impose any new targets or goals”.

Other developing countries, including China had echoed similar sentiment.

On Monday, developed countries said the talks on this track must not be suspended and blamed the developing countries for “blocking progress”. They were supported by the group of small island nations which said it wanted to see a strong mitigation outcome in Baku.

Stiell said the parties needed to make progress on all tracks simultaneously for Baku to succeed. “We will only get the job done when parties are prepared to move in parallel. Brinkmanship and pre-meditated playbooks burn up essential time. It is time to get down to real business,” he said.

Check out | UN climate chief asks G20 leaders for boost as COP29 finance talks lag

Meanwhile, the European Union showed some flexibility on one of the sticking points on the finance negotiations. Developed country parties, including the EU, have been demanding that the list of countries with responsibility to provide money to developing countries, mentioned in the 1994 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, must be expanded. They argue that the quantum of money now required for climate action was far greater, and beyond the means of only the listed countries, while at the same time several countries that were classified as developing at that time, and not considered for generating financial resources, had become rich in the meanwhile, capable of contributing.

Developed country parties had been proposing some kind of income or wealth criteria to include countries like China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea or Qatar, something that developing countries have strongly resisted. Luca Hoekstra, Commissioner for climate Action at European Commission, today said a “likely solution” could be some rich developing countries agreeing for making contributions on a voluntary basis.

“…the world agreed on, earlier, on this categorisation of developed and developing. And yet we also see that a range of countries have made tremendous economic progress in the last couple of decades, which is good. I think it is an amazing achievement… Our view is that, with that affluence, with more economic growth, also comes the responsibility to do more in terms of burden sharing. Because this truly is a global problem. And yet I do recognize that for countries it is typically difficult to leave the categorisations and move officially from one category to the next. So, a potential solution could be that without leaving these classic positions to into a space of voluntary contributions and in that sense we would be open and welcoming of those countries who do make such a step,” Hoekstra said.