As COP29 grumbles into the weekend, poorer nations should be careful what they wish for

In a week of unprecedented decisions in Ukraine that appear to have driven the world to the edge of a nuclear war it may have seemed a little ironic that on the other side of the world the talk was all about the hope of a brighter, cleaner future for the planet.

As with every other COP conference the hype over this year’s meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan was ambitious but the expectation of progress was low, though it wasn’t anticipated that the gap between richer and poorer countries would become quite such a divisive issue. The conference should have ended today with every hope of some kind of meaningful announcement on climate change progress but as the day wore on the concluding sessions just became ever more divisive, and such is the disagreement on cash aid that the event is likely going to drag on painfully across the weekend in a last desperate effort to get some kind of consensus.

The issue is just how much aid should be given to the most vulnerable countries to help them fight climate change in an increasingly warming world. Wealthier nations went to Baku and pledged to more than double the $250bn cash they give currently, but even this increase has met with angry and bitter responses, with the group of small island nations in particular saying they were “deeply disappointed” with proposals, claiming they showed “contempt for vulnerable people.”

It may seem a little churlish and short-sighted for climate-vulnerable countries to reject such a generous and increasing level of cash support, but it needs to be clarified that the generosity of wealthier countries is not measured in gifts but in loans, as the huge cash injections that have been placed on the table will need to be repaid – and with interest.

To get an idea of the gulf that separates the two parties, the wealthier nations have offered $500bn a year in loans, but developing countries have responded by saying that $1.3tn is needed by 2035 if they are to reduce their carbon emissions to the levels expected, and make their countries less vulnerable to climate change.

Various offers and counter proposals have been sliding to and fro across the negotiating table all week, but the gap has just got wider. This is not least because even the world’s wealthiest nations are finding themselves in the grip of a major cost-of-living crisis, and the instability that is worsening in Ukraine has meant that many developed nations are now having to look twice at their overseas aid commitments in the face of growing demands to secure homelands, both militarily and economically.

The return of Donald Trump has also undoubtedly impacted on the latest climate talks. Not only is the incoming US president a vocal climate change critic, but environmentalists have been rocked by his appointment of oil industry CEO Chris Wright as his Secretary of the Department of Energy. Oklahoma-based billionaire Wright is head of the Denver-based fracking company Liberty Energy, and he also sits on the board of a modular nuclear reactor company.

Whilst he has acknowledged a link between burning fossil fuels and climate change, Wright is on record as saying that he doubts that climate change is linked to worsening extreme weather. In direct contradiction of the core aims of the COP narrative Wright also says that the continued use of fossil fuels is critical to dragging developing countries out of poverty, and he said in a CNBC interview in 2023 that the notion that such countries could somehow divest themselves of fossil fuel reliance “within a decade” was “absurd.”

“Standing in the way of today’s energy system before we’ve built a new energy system, there’s just no upside in that,” Wright told CNBC. “I don’t think you’ll see meaningful change in our hydrocarbon system in the next three decades.”

The combination of fossil fuel billionaire, climate sceptic and Trump lynchpin may not make Wright the most welcome subject of conversation at a climate conference, but his concerns were echoed this week at COP by many of the developing nations.

Understandably there has been a whiff of hypocrisy around the conference – after all those wealthy nations putting pressure on others to clean up their carbon act are hardly models of clean energy themselves.

Looked at from the other end of the telescope developing nations may be struggling to build climate event robustness and self-sufficiency but, with a great deal of justification, they see wealthier nations as resource exploiters who have done precious little to clean up their own act. One only has to look to the UK, where our water utility companies are in a state of collapse and our rivers and beaches are dangerously polluted with sewage, our alternative energy strategies are failing to hit even the most basic targets we have set for ourselves and waste reduction targets are only hit by exporting much of our our detritus to those very developing countries we are chastising.

Sadly the current wisdom in many developing countries is that the solution to economic marginalisation and climate vulnerability is to boost economic growth, which may be sound policy but this needs to be focussed on self-sufficiency and pastoral economics rather than imitation of the industrial-scale failings of wealthier countries. Given the way the world is going generally we are most likely on the cusp of an enforced shift away from expansion and industrialisation, and are fast approaching the neccessity of re-aligning ourselves to rationalisation and the kind of micro-economics and regimes of self-sufficiency that served populations so well prior to the Industrial Revolution.

The rationale of many contemporary world leaders is very much aligned to the thinking of the likes of Chris Wright, that vulnerable nations need to become smaller replicants of industrialised economies, which will be achieved by their close control through debilitating endebtedness, coupled with careful growth that will ensure they continue to be servants to their old masters.

As the COP29 arguments crawl to their weary end this weekend, it is hoped that some deal will eventually be thrashed out whereby developed nations will further increase their financial hold on weaker nations, in return for them becoming net suppliers.

No doubt it will be dangerously tempting for poorer countries to accept this particular ‘king’s shilling’, but fundamental thought really needs to be given to the hidden price of such deals, and to whether or not untainted nations really still want to become part of a developed world that appears to be increasingly coming apart at the seams.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian