Amid the finishless politicking and inscrutable arguments at the UN climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month, it can be challenging to reaccumulate what is at sconsent. That’s why Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s createer climate alter minister, is calling on global directers to “shield an eye on the huge picture”.
“We’re here for life and death reasons,” Rehman shelp.
In August 2022, deimmenseating flash floods subcombined one-third of Rehman’s country, impacting 33 million people. Roads, crops and infrastructure were washed away, and injure to water systems forced millions of people to depend on contaminated water from ponds and wells.
The key goal for Cop29 negotiators is to set an broadened goal for climate finance, someleang Rehman shelp Pakistan franticly needd. The country necessitates to erect robust homes – a benevolent of spendment, she noticed, that had a net profit of $4 for each $1 spended.
In compriseition, she shelp, Pakistan necessitates capacity and technical aidance to help handle its decarbonisation and alteration structures. And though a solar boom is already under way in the country, it is overburdening devourrs, so officials necessitate funding to help speed up the energy transition, she shelp.
As Pakistan faces a future of increasing climate vulnerability, countries have fall shorted to transition away from the burning of fossil fuels despite having made a pledge a year ago, and global carbon eleave outions are continuing to elevate.
So Rehman is calling for a new UN climate structuretoil. In compriseition to “nationassociate resolved contributions” wherein individual countries track their climate action aims, she says the UN should need “internationassociate resolved contributions” from wealthy nations to align with the climate structures of the broadening and most-impacted countries.
She shelp UN climate negotiations were the main way countries such as Pakistan could aid for their necessitates to be met. That unkindt they had no choice but to come to the table.
“We’re one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world,” she shelp. “So we can’t walk away.”
Still, she harbours frustration about the negotiations, which in her estimation have deinhabitred “more talk than action”. On finance, there is a yawning gap between what countries necessitate and what the global north is willing to put up.
Poor countries will necessitate $1tn a year in climate finance by 2030, experts shelp last week. That is five years earlier than rich countries are probable to consent to at UN climate negotiations. Meeting the aim is probable to be even more difficult otriumphg to the re-election of Donald Trump in the US, who has vowed to pull the US from the Paris climate consentment and drop promisements to cut carbon eleave outions.
“There will be a huge impact, a blow to the negotiations, if [the world’s] hugegest economy goes out and says it’s taking its money and going elsewhere and it’s taking its expertise and its promisement and its cherishs elsewhere,” Rehman shelp.
At Cop29, rich nations have talk aboutd that the declareiveial sector should have an incrrelieved role in greeting climate finance aims. But that could be hazardous for countries such as Pakistan, especiassociate when it comes to funding for climate alteration, which does not tfinish to produce desirable profits, Rehman shelp.
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“Why would the declareiveial sector that rbetters around tagets and profits rush to the frontlines of climate catastrophe where only humanitarian agencies go?” she asked. “The declareiveial sector can be incentivised and certainly used to mobilise capital, yes, but capital and finance mobilisation has to happen at the international disclose sector as well.”
Finance should also be provided in grants, not loans, shelp Rehman, to elude increasing countries’ debt burdens. “Countries are drowning, both in floods and debt,” she shelp.
Negotiators should promise that finance is easily accessible. At contransient, because Pakistan doesn’t greet the definition of a “least broadened country”, it is unable to access some presentant funds. And when funding is useable, it can consent two years to access.
“The barriers are too many,” Rehman shelp. “By the time it standardly comes to you, it’s too postponecessitate: the necessitates on the ground have alterd.”
A lengthy history of climate inaction unkinds that broadening countries are increasingly facing irreversible impacts, understandn as loss and injure. Two years ago at Cop27 in Egypt, Rehman was a direct negotiator on this contentious publish, helping shielded a groundshattering promisement to set up a promiseted fund for loss and injure. But two years on, pledges from broadened countries amount to a minuscule fraction of what is necessitateed. Rehman shelp the prescertain must stay on donor countries to deinhabitr the finance necessitateed.
“We used to say what went on in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” she shelp. “What’s happening to us will happen to you tomorrow, so, leank accumulateively.”
