A poster from the U.S. think tank Foreign Policy in Focus depicting the Global North as a garden and the Global South as jungles exemplifies the summit’s underlying inequality. Is it a coincidence?
COP29 is a Loan Fair
Josep Borell’s trope referring to Europe as a garden and the rest of the world as a jungle may have been disowned by some in the west, but this line of thinking has been adopted in the highest levels of climate debate and policy including by COP (Conference of Parties of The UN Climate Change Conference, UNCCC), 29th summit. The summit has been dubbed Finance COP, as it leaves wealthy nations to continue using fossil fuels, and urges them to give expensive loans to developing ones in exchange for the latter shelving their developmental needs, to purportedly save the planet from climate change. Surprisingly, wealthy economies that use fossil fuels, and hence emit nearly all GHGs, making tens of trillions in the process, are not required to stop emitting.
Some speakers at the COP think that top emitters, euphemized as ‘wealthy nations’ should only contribute a paltry $100 billion (less than Kenya’s or Ethiopia’s annual GDP) to be loaned out to all poor countries in exchange for the latter stopping using fossil fuel; essentially ending development. Thus, there is apparent double standards, where developed countries are allowed to continue emitting GHGs, but poor ones must pledge to stop emitting even in the future to supposedly save the planet.
Reading from BBC report on the 11th, and France 24 on 12th November, 2024, rich countries will continue using fossil fuels, to power their........