Countries yet to cash in on $300bn climate jackpot

Lack of cash no longer a ‘valid reason’ to stop poorer nations going green – but wars, Trump and caution take over

Natural disasters such as floods are expected to multiply due to climate change and leave a huge financial bill to pick up. AFP

Developing countries including most Middle East states have yet to use a new $300 billion climate fund to draw up plans to go green – blaming global turmoil and choosing to “wait for others” to go first, The National has been told.

Armed with the $300 billion pledge, countries had a February deadline to reveal how they would help tackle global warming. The UAE was one of the first, but only 22 out of 195 countries involved have submitted new climate plans so far.

Yalchin Rafiyev, a key architect of the financial mega-pledge, said a lack of cash “could have been a valid reason” to delay before the deal was struck in Azerbaijan last year. Now he is touring capitals to encourage governments to show their hand.

“There are various answers we are receiving”, Mr Rafiyev, who is Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister and was the country’s lead negotiator at the Cop29 summit in Baku, told The National during a visit to London that followed recent trips to Iraq, Algeria and the UAE.

Some countries report technical problems. Others “are simply waiting politically, taking into account all these geopolitical changes that we are going through”, Mr Rafiyev said. Since the Baku talks, Donald Trump has returned to power and taken an axe to America’s foreign relationships and aid programmes.

“They are trying to adjust themselves to these evolving realities,” Mr Rafiyev said. “And for some of them, it’s a matter of waiting for others to submit before they proceed.”

Yalchin Rafiyev was the lead Azerbaijani negotiator behind a $300 billion Baku finance deal agreed late last year. Getty Images

Is the money coming?

The fight against climate change has been stymied for years by rows over who should meet the massive costs - such as replacing fossil fuels with clean power and responding to floods and droughts.

The rich world made an annual $100 billion pledge to developing countries in 2009, but did not hit the target on time and it became a running sore in negotiations.

At last November's Cop29 summit in Baku the figure was hiked to $300 billion in a deal that saved the talks from collapse. But the figure was lower than the developing world wanted, while language was inserted allowing some of the cash to come from private companies.

Still, Mr Rafiyev is confident that the money will arrive even despite the turmoil in Washington, having taken positive soundings from other major donors such as Britain, the European Union and Japan. "When we agreed on $300 billion, we already knew who the new US administration is," he said.

"It's not a theoretical or a hypothetical figure," he said. The $300 billion "is just a minimum threshold that we want to achieve, but it could be higher. Now we should be even more mobilised and determined to reach this figure."

The Baku deal also "encourages" those who are not traditional donors to chip in. The UAE put $100 million into a climate disaster fund set up in Dubai in 2023.

Since returning to power Donald Trump has once again withdrawn the US from the Paris climate change agreement. AFP

Conflict and turmoil

Under climate treaties there is a joint goal of limiting the global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, but it's up to each country to decide how it will contribute.

These "nationally determined contributions" are to be updated every five years. But only 13 countries met the February 2025 deadline, with a few more handing in their homework since then.

Azerbaijan itself has yet to submit a new plan, saying the “political willingness” is there but citing technical delays. The country is spending billions of dollars dealing with the aftermath of a war with Armenia, Mr Rafiyev said, meaning the green transition "could be a bit slower than expected".

Other countries involved in conflicts could face similar problems, he said. But "for some quite stable countries, not having conflict, not having any difficulty in the transition of their economy, this is not a big problem".

Even in the rich world, the US has turned its back on global climate efforts, Germany's incoming government looks set to lower its focus on the issue, while Britain's ruling Labour Party was warned this week by its own former prime minister Tony Blair that scrapping fossil fuels in the short term is a strategy "doomed to fail".

Still, Mr Rafiyev says the Baku deal did "at least create hope for many" that the money to protect the planet will be there. He said countries were persuaded to approve the $300 billion pact by the argument that it was the "last chance" to make a decision.

"If we can shift from ambition to implementation, we can protect others from quitting the process as well, to not have this big of a domino effect," he said.