Asad Rehman, Executive Director of anti poverty charity War On Want attended COP29 but has blasted the deal agreed by rich delegates who he compared to arsonists asking fire victims to pay for the blaze they had caused.
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00:00Insufficient, inadequate and an insult is what many developing country negotiators said
00:06and is what global civil society said. In fact, the one press conference by developing country
00:14negotiators said this is a joke but it's a deadly joke and it's a deadly joke for people on the
00:19planet. This is nowhere enough. The UN has said we need trillions and has warned we are already
00:26have 1.5 degree on life support and that by the end of the century we'll be at three degrees.
00:32This was called a finance cut for a reason because developing countries need finance to
00:37be able to cut their emissions, to be able to adapt now to ever increasing temperatures and
00:42of course meet the scale of loss and damage which is devastating not just people's lives
00:47and livelihoods but overwhelming many developing countries and to be able to transition cleanly
00:53that needed finance and the money that was put on the table and I have to say we had two weeks
00:59of negotiations where developed countries refused to put a number and then at the very last moment
01:04put this totally inadequate number and it's not a real commitment as well because it is not
01:12guaranteed that that will be public grants. In fact, it's very likely that much of it will be
01:17debt-inducing loans and other financial instruments so far far off from what is needed
01:24and a real I think just a real slap in the face for developing countries who expect to
01:31develop countries to come and negotiate in good faith. Yeah well as you say a deadly joke that's
01:36just very sobering indeed that thought. Talking a little bit more about the debt side of things that
01:42is a recurring critique isn't it that much of the climate finance is provided in loan form which
01:47just exacerbates the debt burden on the global south. Absolutely, look it's like an arsonist
01:55who burns down somebody's home but turns their back to the flames and then tells the victim
02:00pick up the bill and if not you can't afford to here I'll lend you a loan and we'll benefit from
02:06that. It's just incredible to think that this is what is being offered to developing countries
02:12but we know it is. Of the 2,900 billion pledge that was made just over 30 billion of that was
02:20a new and additional public grant climate finance. The rest was overwhelmingly in double counting
02:26existing financial flows or in debt creating loans and we know that many developing countries are
02:32trapped and not just in unsustainable debt repayments where they're spending more on paying
02:37back their debt than they are in protecting their citizens but because of unjust tax and trade rules
02:43they're also locked into having no choice but to exploit their natural resources whether that's
02:49fossil fuels to be able to pay back that debt so we know we need to cut emissions and those have
02:56to be done equitably and fairly and of course developed countries bear the largest responsibility
03:00for this but this finance is not a charity, it's not a gift that developed countries are
03:07giving to developing countries. It's a legal obligation, it was a legal obligation in the
03:10climate convention and it's a legal obligation under the Paris agreement and really what's
03:16happening behind the scenes here is that the United States and in the shadows the UK, the European
03:22Union and other developed countries really want to dismantle what's left of the Paris agreement
03:27and create a new agreement where they don't want to take any responsibility for anything and they
03:34will say that the responsibility to cut emissions is a challenge for governments to meet domestically
03:40and nationally and of course that means what we're going to see is what the UN special rapporteur
03:45on extreme poverty coined climate apartheid where the wealthy, where the rich will use their wealth
03:50to seek safety and it will be the poor who are left to burn and drown and I think that's the
03:55world we are heading towards unless rich countries you know step up and do their fair share of effort.