Navroz Dubash Speaks on United Nations Environment Programme at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference

Navroz Dubash, a professor of public and international affairs and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton, attended the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, last month, where he spoke on a panel hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It released the annual ‘Emissions Gap Report’ and focused on how to speed up climate action through the individual emissions reduction targets countries set, known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.

Dubash argued that credible commitments of finance are key to countries setting and achieving NDCs, particularly for developing countries with development priorities.

Ultimately, the conference resulted in wealthy countries, including the U.S., pledging to increase the financing of climate-change projects in the developing world to at least $300 billion a year by 2035, triple the current amount but far below the $1 trillion developing countries had hoped to see by 2030.

“The finance ‘non-deal’ occurs against the backdrop of the aspirational target of holding temperature to within 1.5 degrees of warming slipping away,” Dubash said. “The process is dangerously close to promising illusory money for an illusory global target.”

The conference was held up by “entrenched national political positions,” Dubash noted, acknowledging that some may question whether it is an effective way to address climate action. However, he said the COPs help shift national policies and set the stage for countries to consider more ambitious NDCs.

“Developing countries could usefully specify just how much it will cost to implement these actions, setting the stage for more detailed claims for financial support,” he said.

Read more here: https://spia.princeton.edu/news/princeton-spia-students-see-climate-policy-take-shape-cop29