https://arab.news/jekh3
With the UN Climate Change Conference known as COP30 opening in Belem, Brazil, this week, it is clear that the world’s widely shared commitment to a just energy transition is falling by the wayside. In the year since governments signed on to the agreement at COP29 to scale up climate finance — with a goal of mobilizing $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 — wealthy countries have been retreating from their financial pledges. Worse, these signs of bad faith are coming just as the costs of climate adaptation and decarbonization in developing countries are mounting.
If the Global North is no longer willing to meet its funding promises, as now seems certain, it can still demonstrate good faith, nonetheless, through another form of solidarity: sharing the knowledge, technology and intellectual property that underpin the green transition.
This is not an issue that can be deferred. The shift to a green economy is already reproducing the same asymmetries that have long defined global trade. Instead of fostering inclusive development, climate policy is increasingly being shaped by protectionist measures and intellectual property regimes that entrench technological monopolies in the Global North. For example, the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism may be billed as a safeguard against carbon leakage, but it also illustrates how climate policy can be used to justify protectionist trade measures.
