All eyes are on the G7 meeting being held in Apulia, Italy, to see if world leaders make progress on the new climate finance goal as technical negotiations at the UN climate talks concluded in Bonn on Thursday saw slow progress on the matter with significant divisions among parties.
A post-2025 climate finance deal is expected to be struck at the COP29 meeting in Baku this year. A meeting of the G7 Finance Ministers in April failed to even mention the new goal in its final communiqué.
The G7 is under pressure to scale up financial flows to developing countries, which are dealing with mounting debt. Climate finance is on the agenda of the three-day talks held June 13–15. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among a group of world leaders invited to attend the event.
“Climate finance at international talks has morphed into a battleground, a glaring testament to years of neglect and deception by developed nations. These countries have not only skirted their historical responsibilities but have also consistently deployed delay tactics, shifting burdens onto the shoulders of developing countries,” said Harjeet Singh, a climate activist and Global Engagement Director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.
He says that with the devastating climate events affecting people there is a need for action to raise trillions of dollars, not excuses. Finances need to be found for urgent climate solutions needed to safeguard the world’s future and restore justice to the communities bearing the brunt of climate change.
At the G7 meeting, leaders are expected to discuss issues related to climate finance, coal phase-out, fossil fuel subsidies, gas and renewable energy, and energy storage. The meeting comes off the back of the EU elections this weekend. Decisions made at the summit will be a key indicator of progress ahead of the G20 meeting in Rio and COP29 in Baku.
In April, the G7 Climate, Energy, and Environment Ministers meeting agreed to phase out existing unabated coal power generation during the first half of the 2030s and made some commitments responding to the COP28 deal, but fell short of making any new progress on the scaling up of climate finance. Countries also left open the possibility of continued public investments in gas.
All G7 countries are off track to meet their existing emission reduction targets for 2030, which are not yet collectively aligned with 1.5°C. The group is under pressure to demonstrate how it will lead in the global effort to transition away from fossil fuels, end public support for unabated fossil fuels, and scale up clean energy at home and internationally.
Luca Bergamaschi, Co-Founding Director of ECCO, an independent Italian think tank, says the G7 keeps reiterating its commitment to climate and development finance but has so far failed to deliver.
“It cannot continue to ignore the urgency of the crisis we face with increasing climate impacts. In the past few months alone, we have experienced floods in Brazil, droughts in Malawi, and heatwaves in India. The G7 is the group that needs to do the heavy lifting to keep the world on track to limit temperature rises to 1.5 °C. It can do this by redirecting fossil fuel finance to clean energy, alleviating debt in developing countries, and setting out clear, ambitious climate finance targets to support the transition at home and abroad," he said.
At the end of two weeks of negotiations at Bonn, there remain significant speedbumps on the road to COP29. Progress on the centrepiece of COP29—the new climate finance goal (the new collective quantified goal, NCQG)—remains slow, and there are still significant divisions among parties.
According to experts, Bonn has also raised many questions about whether parties are serious about implementing the outcomes from COP28’s global stocktake, especially its headline agreement to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’. COP29 marks the beginning of the deadline for all countries to submit new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Tom Evans, Senior Policy Advisor, E3G, said that COP29 fires the starting gun on the race for countries to come forward with ambitious new 2035 climate targets.
“It’s time for a group of leading countries to step out of the shadows and set the bar for ambition, with plans showing how they will transition away from fossil fuels and help triple renewable energy this decade, as agreed at COP28. All eyes are on the G7, COP Troika, and other major emitters to take the reins, starting at this September’s UN General Assembly,” said Evans.