“The US at this COP is not just a lame duck, it’s a dead duck. They can’t commit to anything and that means that countries like China will not want to commit to anything.” – Prof Richard Klein, Stockholm Environment Institute.
There is every reason to be anxious about the outcome of the ongoing 29th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, popularly known as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan. This year’s meeting has finance as the central focus of its agenda, and the rich countries of this world should be the driving force behind the green finance thrust. But, the sobering reality is that hoping for ambitious climate action decisions at the end of the COP might be nothing short of a pipe dream.
America, the planet’s richest nation, has an incoming commander-in-chief, whose body language portrays a leader that would be stingy to the climate by the time he is sworn in as the President of the United States of America in two months’ time. On this column, I have always argued that monetary incentives are rapid drivers of change and should be given greater considerations as a strategy for robust environmental governance. The fight against climate change gathered more momentum when renewable energy innovations and deployments emerged as business models, traversing all geographies.
This is why robust economies like the USA and the Europe Union took the lead, and eventually drove down their carbon footprints as a result of the natura.
