China trumps the United States at climate talks

COP29 climate talks ended in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku last week after two weeks of arguments, agreements, and side deals.

The United Nations conference involved 106 heads of state and more than 50,000 business leaders, activists, and government representatives from almost every country. Few say the conference was a resounding success. But neither was it a failure.

The central task of the UN conference was to come up with funding to help developing countries become more resilient to the effects of climate change and to transition to more sustainable economic growth.

The biggest challenge was agreeing on who should pay, and the results highlight the shifting international dynamics and offer some insight into China’s role.

During three decades of global climate talks, nations have agreed to cut their emissions, phase out fossil fuels, end inefficient subsidies and stop deforestation.

Record highs

They have acknowledged since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, when they agreed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, that greenhouse gas emissions would harm the climate and ecosystems and that governments must work together to solve the crisis.

But progress has been slow. Greenhouse gas emissions were at record highs in 2024. Governments are still subsidizing fossil fuels, encouraging their use.

The world is also failing to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times – a target established under the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Extreme weather, from lethal heat waves to devastating tropical cyclones and floods, has become more intense as temperatures have risen. And the poorest countries have faced some of the worst damage while doing the least to cause it.

Developing countries argue that they need US$1.3 trillion a year in financial support and investment by 2035 from the wealthiest nations – historically the largest greenhouse gas emitters – to adapt to climate change and develop sustainably as they grow.

That matters to countries everywhere because how these fast-growing populations build out energy systems and transportation in the future will affect the entire planet.

At the Baku conference, member states agreed to triple their pledge of $100 billion annually to at least $300 billion by 2035 to help developing nations. But that was far short of what economists estimated those countries would need to create clean energy economies.

The money can also come from a variety of sources. Developing countries wanted grants, rather than loans that would increase what for many is already crushing debt.

Under the new agreement, nations can count funding that comes from private investments and loans from the World Bank and other development institutions, as well as public funds.

Fossil fuels

Groups have proposed raising additional taxes on international shipping and aviation. A UN study projects that if levies were set somewhere between $150 and $300 for each ton of carbon pollution, the fund could generate as much as $127 billion per year.

Other proposals have included taxing fossil fuels, cryptocurrencies, and plastics, which all contribute to climate change, as well as financial transactions and carbon trading.

Still, how much of a leadership role China takes is an important question going forward as United States President-elect Donald Trump is expected to throttle back Washington’s support for international funding.

China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the second-largest economy. Beijing also stands to gain as a provider of green technologies, including solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles.

Tracking annual carbon emissions

Whether or not it should be expected to contribute funding at a level comparable to the other major emitters was so hotly contested at COP29 that it almost shut down the conference.

Previously, only those countries listed by the UN as “developed countries” – a list that doesn’t include China – were expected to provide funds. The COP29 agreement expands that by calling on “all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing.”

In the end, a compromise was reached. The final agreement “encourages developing countries to make contributions on a voluntary basis,” excluding China from the heavier expectations placed on richer nations.

In a conference fraught with deep division and threatened with collapse, some bright spots of progress emerged from the side events. In one declaration, 25 nations plus the European Union agreed to no new coal power developments.

Climate summits

There were also agreements on ocean protection and deforestation. Other declarations marked efforts to reenergize hydrogen energy production and expanded ambitious plans to reduce methane emissions.

Yet after weeks of bickering and a final resolution that doesn’t go far enough, the UN talks process is in question. In a letter on November 15, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and a group of climate leaders called for a “shift from negotiation to implementation.”

After back-to-back climate summits hosted by oil-producing states, the letter also called for strict eligibility requirements for conference hosts “to exclude countries who do not support the phase out” or “transition away from fossil energy.”

With Trump promising to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, it is possible the climate leadership will fall to China, which may bring a new style of solutions to the table.

Lucia Green-Weiskel is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.