With just weeks to go before COP29, the critical UN climate negotiations taking place in Azerbaijan, we residents of small island developing states find ourselves watching our hopes for the future sink below rising tides. My people wonder if larger countries are drifting further and further away from the unity and moral fortitude required to protect us and better our world.
In the past few months, climate change has caused an onslaught of record-breaking temperatures, wreaking havoc on our vulnerable regions. Our brothers and sisters in Tuvalu and Kiribati, grappling with severe flooding from high tides and storms, are struggling to save their crops and secure drinkable water. Families in Vanuatu continue to reel from the effects of Cyclone Niko, which displaced thousands of people. Small islands in the Caribbean have had to deal with the misfortune of a Category 5 hurricane that arrived in the Atlantic earlier in the year than had ever been recorded.
We have said time and again: as governments continue to drag their feet, the impacts of climate change will continue to worsen, with devastating consequences. Why, then, does our international response continue to be so inadequate?
Climate finance is at the core of addressing the crisis. Without adequate and efficient financial flows, adaptation and mitigation efforts will remain unfulfilled, and damage payouts insufficient. Finance is the key to ensuring the world can keep the global temperature rise below the crucial limit of 1.5°C. Take heed: if financing is not there, we will veer off track. The damage could be irreversible.
It is shocking to witness what seems to be an egregious lack of urgency on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance, a key part of the Paris agreement. The NCQG, currently under negotiation, is expected to be agreed by next year. As we approach what many are referring to as the climate finance COP, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the world’s least developed countries are struck by the divide between our nations, which are committed to achieving a robust agreement on climate finance, and those which seem set on ignoring obligations in favour of political expediency.
Climate commitments cannot fall by the wayside. We certainly understand the hardships of economic budget restraints. But it is a very bitter pill to swallow when we see larger countries somehow conjuring endless streams of money to finance military conflicts, with no end in sight.
In 2023, the world’s military expenditure increased for the ninth consecutive year, reaching a total of $2.44 trillion. Funds for military conflicts and aggressions? Readily available. Yet funds to save lives and livelihoods from the climate crisis are continuously delayed. Vulnerable states cannot forget the long overdue delivery of the annual $100bn goal, pledged by developed countries at COP15 in 2009, to help us address the effects of climate change. It was not until last year that the goal was reached.
At this year’s conference, we urge the international community to commit to a climate finance agreement that supplies trillions of dollars. It must consider the special circumstances of the most vulnerable nations, as per the provisions of the Paris agreement.
A robust finance goal would operationalise the many promises and protections in Article 9 of the Paris agreement, which clearly states that “developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation”. This would produce the accelerant needed to fill the implementation gap.
Small island developing states are paying the price for what bigger countries have brought upon our world. But the climate crisis will not dissipate once it has unleashed its fury upon our lands. As it grows, it will rage beyond our borders.
Unprecedented impacts are coming for larger countries, too. We must use the critical opportunity at COP29 not only to stand up for small island developing states, but to ensure a liveable world for all.
