The question bringing COP29 to a halt: Who’s rich enough to pay for climate change?

The world’s governments have come to the United Nations’ climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, deadlocked on one ugly question. It’s been debated for years, but now they need to find an answer in a matter of weeks; trillions of dollars’ worth of international climate aid hang in the balance. This money could mean the difference between life and death for some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people on the front lines of the climate crisis.

Everyone at the COP29 climate summit agrees that the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries need trillions of dollars to transition to clean energy and cope with climate-fueled disasters. And everyone agrees that rich countries, which are responsible for a disproportionate share of historic carbon pollution, have some responsibility to pay up for this. 

As financial needs balloon, longtime wealthy nations in North America and Europe are clashing with newer global power players like China and Saudi Arabia over whether nations like the latter should be required to provide aid funding. The U.S. and the European Union are pushing for a strict standard that would commit large new economies like China to donating, reflecting how much richer those countries have gotten in recent decades, but a broad coalition of developing countries is fighting to keep such language out of the deal. 

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