COP29: Africa outraged by ‘insufficient’ $300bn climate change deal

African and other developing nations have rejected as “insufficient” a $300 billion deal on climate finance that was agreed by negotiators at the United Nations’s COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, to help developing nations adapt to climate change.
Richer nations agreed to pay at least $300 billion annually until 2035 to help developing countries make their economies more environmentally-friendly, and prepare for natural disasters. But the deal that came on Sunday (24 November) was dismissed by many poorer nations for offering them only “abysmally poor … a paltry sum,” as India’s negotiator Chandni Raina put it. “Many other nations have echoed Raina’s words that “we cannot accept it”, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, denouncing the deal as an insult and a joke.
Delegations from the least developed nations and small island states walked out of negotiations in protest, saying their climate finance interests were being ignored. “We came here to this COP for a fair deal. We feel that we haven’t been heard,” said Cedric Schuster, the chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, a coalition of nations threatened by rising seas. Speaking for the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group made up of nearly 50 of the world’s poorest nations, its chair, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi, joined the chorus of dissatisfaction, saying that “[the] current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.” The annual amount is an increase from a previous $100 billion pledge, but was still $200 billion less than the amount that a group of 134 developing countries demanded.