COP29’s key priority was to secure delivery of existing commitments, particularly through increased finance mechanisms.
COP30 in 2025 is expected to be especially important, so COP29 had additional pressure to set the groundwork for next year’s pivotal summit.
The response to COP29 has been critical, with most commentary highlighting concerns about the pace of action, the extent to which promises are likely to be delivered, and the potential for climate injustice.
One of the key outcomes of COP29 was an agreement around the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG), which is intended to be a crucial funding mechanism for climate finance over the coming years. It includes:
- An increase in the goal for finance to developing countries from developed countries, from 100billion USD each year to 300billion USD, to be achieved by 2035
- A further ambition to scale up finance to developing countries from public and private sources to 1.3trillion USD per year by 2035
The NCQG was controversial, prompting the Alliance of Small Island States to walk out of negotiations, citing both the limited scale of the finance being discussed and the historic failure to achieve past finance goals.
Recent research suggests that far greater amounts of finance will be needed by emerging markets and developing countries, with 1trillion USD a year needed by 2025 and as much as 2.4trillion by 2030.
COP29 also saw the full operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund, completing the work started at previous climate summits.
Beyond financing climate action, the full range of issues linked to climate change were discussed throughout COP29, including key developments on:
- The Mitigation Work Programme
- Energy storage, green energy zones, and hydrogen
- Adaptation and resilience
- Environmental justice
- Transparency
- Corporate climate initiatives
Read the full briefing for more information.
