Statement of the Environment and Climate Change Working Group of the Arab Watch Coalition for Financial Justice that brings us closer to Comprehensive Climate Justice. From the Paris Agreement to Belém: 10 years of Unsatisfactory Results.
In the past three decades, the global financial system has reproduced itself with every crisis under the banner of “financial innovation”. Although this slogan appears progressive on the surface, its results on the ground reveal a fundamental imbalance in the priorities of international finance. According to World Bank data, climate finance reached $38.6 billion in fiscal year 2023 and rose to $42.6 billion in 2024[1], most of this financing is directed towards low-carbon energy and infrastructure projects, which account for the largest share of global climate finance, because they are profitable sectors that are easy to measure and implement.
In contrast, nature, with all its elements, including biodiversity, forests, and ecosystems, remains in a strikingly delayed position, according to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the world needs $700 billion annually to close the nature finance gap until 2030. Meanwhile, OECD analyses show that current nature finance only covers 3–5% of this need, a percentage that is disproportionate to the scale of the threats to the environment and nature[2].
This leads us to talk about the Bonn negotiations. Despite all the ambitious speeches and repeated promises, these negotiations did not achieve any tangible progress toward fairness for those on the front lines of the climate crisis.
While the world’s attention was focused on the conference as a crucial preparatory stop for COP30, a sense of deadlock hung over the meetings, starting from the very first day, which witnessed a long struggle over the agenda itself. This was due to the demand by the “Like-Minded Developing Countries” group to include the implementation of financial commitments stipulated in Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement and a discussion of unilateral measures that restrict trade in the name of climate, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Although the conference presidency succeeded in overcoming the procedural impasse, the core of the disagreement remained strikingly present, indicating the persistence of a lack of trust and insufficient progress in the developed countries’ response to the fundamental demands.
The negotiations were stalled for two full days, and the conference failed to achieve any breakthrough regarding the means of implementation, primarily finance and technology transfer. Even the “Baku – Belém” plan, which is supposed to define the features of climate finance until 2035, remained without clear outlines or effective guarantees, with no timeline and a lack of consensus on disbursement tools or transparent governance. Developing countries, for their part, demanded tangible measures that guarantee effective access to finance, stressing that effective access to finance must take priority over general pledges.
Amidst all this, and with the United States’ absence from the conference, following its practical withdrawal from the climate finance and foreign aid file due to local political and economic crises, this absence will weaken any chance for progress and deepen the North-South divide. Even Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey (these countries, alongside the European Union, constitute half of the current global emissions) have not yet submitted their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), as of the end of last September[3]. This demonstrates a lack of a genuine sense of responsibility, coupled with a continued pursuit of contradictory policies, as they announce commitment while simultaneously continuing to invest in fossil fuels. For example, the United Kingdom, despite presenting an ambitious plan to cut emissions by 81% by 2035, has not halted oil exploration projects or the financing of polluting energy sources.
The reality is that the real challenge lies not only in the ceiling of long-term goals, but in the absence of short-term commitments. All Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) have not been updated, despite the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold having been effectively breached during the past year and this year. This means that any further delay is complicity with the catastrophe.
On the road to Brazil, and despite the COP30 Presidency’s attempt to show political flexibility in Bonn, it was unable to extract any decisive commitment from major countries to submit their climate plans before the Belém summit, which is supposed to form the most important focus of the conference. The path to climate justice cannot be built on financially empty roadmaps, nor on merely formal understandings. What is required is not just more funding, but a complete review of the foundations of the negotiations, which still measure the value of nature by its profitability and climate by the amount of investment returns it generates, while practically avoiding any discussion of the catastrophe, its causes, and its consequences.
As we discuss the outcomes of the Seville Conference on Development Finance, which came at a critical moment of global crises, we find that it failed to develop effective responses to the escalating climate and social challenges, reflecting the continued control over the global development system by mechanisms that do not serve a just transition. Despite the reference to the need to mobilize $4 trillion annually for climate finance, that figure remained a theoretical number in the final document, without a clear roadmap, and without being linked to concrete mechanisms such as ending fossil fuel subsidies, or redirecting public finance flows from destructive projects to sustainable pathways.
In this statement, we affirm that we do not need formal improvements, but rather action to establish new rules for work that guarantee the achievement of real and sustainable results. What is required today is a radical transformation in development finance approaches, imposing progressive taxes on global profits, especially in polluting sectors such as extractive industries and fossil fuels. This requires reaching an international agreement on tax cooperation that puts an end to cross-border financial acquisitions.
In the same vein, private investments must be regulated through mandatory standards that subject large corporations, especially multinational ones, to strict rules regarding environmental protection, human rights, and labor, via a binding international treaty that ends impunity.
And at the heart of all that, climate justice remains the core demand. Justice means the complete and gradual phase-out of fossil fuels, increasing public and direct finance for adaptation and mitigation goals, and linking climate finance to environmental compensation for the loss and damage caused by Northern countries.
Despite the challenges faced by the Seville Conference, its outcomes can constitute a catalyst for rethinking the current approach. And in the context of COP30, these demands should be integrated into a strategic agenda for civil society alliances, aimed at building pressure on governments and international financial institutions to bring about radical and effective change.
The Climate Finance Gap: Structural Challenges Facing Arab Cities and Communities
At the Arab level, the repercussions of climate change intersect with conflicts, resource scarcity, and slowed growth within institutional environments of varying capabilities. This overlap reveals the fragility of meeting basic rights and services under escalating climate pressure. In cities and towns, interruptions and service disruptions recur with the multiplicity of heat waves, long periods of drought, and increased short, heavy rainfall that sometimes leads to sudden floods, as happened in Amman and Alexandria.
These phenomena sharply increase the demand for electricity, exacerbate water loss in networks, increase the pollution of surface and groundwater sources, and affect residents’ health through heat stress, water-borne diseases, and deteriorating air quality during dust storms. Daily economic activity is also harmed by the disruption of roads and facilities and the spoilage of inventory, and the social cost increases in informal settlements and refugee camps where population density is high and service infrastructure is weaker, which raises the probability of temporary internal displacement and increases pressure on the facilities of surrounding cities.
In rural areas, drought and increasing soil salinity exacerbate the decline in agricultural productivity, raise irrigation costs, and reduce income opportunities for small farmers, while coastal cities are exposed to accumulated losses due to coastal erosion and groundwater salinity. The service justice gap widens with varying supply hours and maintenance capabilities between centers and peripheral areas, and the impact of this is visible in education, health, and occupational safety, with reduced safe working hours and increased risks for the most vulnerable groups.
In contrast, climate finance faces a structural bottleneck manifested in the narrow fiscal space and the high burden of debt servicing in a number of countries, which limits the ability of public budgets to respond to recurrent and costly extreme climate events.
Financing channels are characterized by fragmentation between humanitarian and climate tracks that are neither temporally nor programmatically integrated. This creates funding gaps between urgent relief, re-operation, and building resilience, while municipalities and local facilities, which bear the direct burden, remain the slowest parts of the system to access funding.
The challenge of accessing climate resources also stands out due to complex procedures, technical requirements, and verification conditions that are not always available to smaller implementing entities. On the level of International Financial Institutions (IFIs), including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), their programs and financial austerity policies intersect with short-term service spending needs, leading to difficult trade-offs between adhering to fiscal correction paths and covering the increasing costs of emergency maintenance and climate-related breakdowns. When loan-based financing outweighs grants, the costs of adaptation and climate losses turn into future obligations. This is embodied in the deferral of deep repair work on service infrastructure or its installment over long periods, which leaves large parts of the networks in a state of repeated exposure. Furthermore, the heavy reliance on quick-to-measure indicators for funding impact creates an incentive to select projects that are arithmetically measurable in the short term, even when the actual sources of fragility are cumulative and require long-term operational intervention.
Markets associated with Article 6 add another layer of uncertainty due to price volatility, differing accreditation standards, and varying institutional capacity for documentation and measurement. This affects the distribution of flows within and between countries, as opportunities are concentrated in locations capable of generating assets, while areas suffering from high climate losses remain less capable of attracting similar financing. In more than one case, investments are directed toward activities with high carbon accreditation potential, compared to daily service activities such as reducing water loss, maintaining sewage networks, or providing thermal safety equipment for workers, even though the latter are directly linked to service continuity and loss reduction.
The net result is that the high frequency of climate events clashes with the slow and conditional availability of funding opportunities. This leads to the accumulation of uninsured losses and the erosion of infrastructure assets through closely timed breakdowns. The impact of the risks expands across the most vulnerable segments in cities, rural areas, and coastal regions alike, while the gap persists between the actual size of the need and the volume of feasible financing within the constraints of debt and public spending.
The Demand for Finance that Puts People at its Core
At a time when International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are supposed to lead the just transition, we see them continuing to support policies and projects that reproduce past crises under new banners. Development banks, led by the World Bank, continue to invest in carbon pricing projects and emissions markets without considering the social dimensions or their effects on the most marginalized groups. In 2024, revenues from carbon pricing instruments exceeded $100 billion, according to the World Bank[4], a figure presented as evidence of successful climate policies. However, it conceals a more complex reality: a transition from free pollution to paid pollution, and from the polluter pays principle to the owner pays principle.
Carbon markets are promoted as a “flexible” tool to reduce emissions, but they actually lead to the postponement of the required structural transformation, as they allow major corporations to continue their polluting practices in exchange for purchasing carbon credits from projects often implemented in the Global South, without the participation of local communities in decision-making or prioritization. More dangerously, these projects are reduced to “credits” that are bought and sold in markets similar to oil exchanges, where marketable projects, such as forestation, are prioritized at the expense of renewable energy projects and actual community development.
In this sense, current policies do not contribute to building genuine development but instead produce an “environmental transition without a social soul”. The environment is being transformed into a commodity, carbon into a currency, and the need to mend the broken relationship between humanity and the environment is being ignored. And the concepts of justice and accountability are being replaced by the logic of supply and demand. Since carbon pricing instruments are designed behind closed doors, by finance ministries and private companies, without the involvement of the communities that are supposed to benefit from them, or even informing them about them.
The policies implemented today do not place communities at the center of decision-making, but rather reduce them to “potential beneficiaries” of returns that may or may not reach them, or that may be used to reduce corporate taxes instead of improving the lives of residents. Instead of climate finance leading a just transition that puts people and the environment at its core, it is transforming into a tool for greenwashing polluting projects and protecting existing privileges.
True reform is based on redefining the core function of International Financial Institutions (IFIs), enabling them to transcend their traditional role as tools for austerity/regulation, to become genuine partners in supporting pathways for a just transition globally. This cannot be achieved without reviewing their investments, halting the financing of projects that contribute to increasing emissions or reinforcing rentier economies, and establishing mandatory mechanisms for involving affected communities in the design and evaluation of programs.
Furthermore, pressure must be applied to establish binding international rules for carbon markets, subjecting these markets to democratic accountability and linking them to distributive justice, rather than market justice. Climate justice cannot be measured by the volume of trading on stock exchanges, but by the extent of the actual transformation in people’s lives, and by reducing the gap between those who hold the power to decide and those who pay the price.
Targeted Recommendations 10 Years After the Paris Agreement and Ahead of COP30
- Activating Article 2.1(c): Aligning Financial Flows with Low-Emission Development
International Financial Institutions (IFIs), primarily the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), must be obliged to implement Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement by shifting investments from fossil fuel projects and polluting infrastructure to green and just pathways. Conditional loans and blended finance should not be considered a means of fulfilling climate commitments, as they exacerbate debt burdens and undermine environmental and social justice.
- Resetting Carbon Markets Under Article 6
The mechanisms stemming from Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, related to voluntary cooperation and the exchange of carbon credits, must be reformed so that they are subjected to strict controls in governance, social accountability, and climate justice. What is required is to prevent these mechanisms from turning into speculative exchanges that prioritize profit, exclude affected communities, and greenwash emissions instead of genuinely reducing them.
- Activating Article 9: New, Additional, and Unconditional Finance
Article 9 obliges developed countries to provide new and accessible climate finance that is not counted as part of usual development assistance and is offered in the form of grants, not loans. Pressure must be applied to define clear timelines and transparent governance plans to ensure that finance reaches the most vulnerable states and communities, and to protect them from being affected by political fluctuations or a lack of clarity in commitments.
- Linking Climate Finance to Article 13: Enhancing Transparency and Accountability
It is not enough for funding to be provided; its pathways and real impact must be verified, as stipulated in Article 13 of the Paris Agreement. Therefore, independent community accountability mechanisms must be established to monitor finance flows and carbon markets, ensuring the participation of local communities in assessment, implementation, and decision-making.
- Reallocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) within the Framework of Article 9
Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) can be used as a quick and equitable financing tool, as permitted by Article 9, provided they are rechanneled through transparent and unconditional mechanisms that ensure the expansion of fiscal space for developing countries and are allocated to adaptation and loss and damage programs, instead of being directed towards supporting major financial interests.
- Commitment to the Paris Agreement
Despite their commitments, major countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan, continue to finance fossil fuel exploration and extraction projects, in violation of the spirit of Article 2 and Article 4 of the Agreement. Therefore, there must be a demand to halt any public or private investment in fossil fuels, and to effectively link Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to short-term implementation measures. We must also follow up on any plans issued this September, as well as monitor the reports released to ensure the achievement of actual emissions reduction.
The organizations signing this statement (including members of the Environment and Climate Change Working Group in the Arab Watch Coalition) are working with like-minded global movements to ensure that COP30 becomes a pivotal moment—not for repeating speeches, but for establishing the right of people to just and unconditional climate finance, imposing transparency on carbon markets (which is essential at this stage), and rebuilding trust in international institutions by holding them accountable for their performance and history. The legal provisions in the Paris Agreement, along with the Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in late July, are not merely negotiating documents, nor can they be viewed only as such; rather, they form a new framework that requires reassessing the relationship between market mechanisms, human rights, and communities. The matter requires sustained effort to ensure that these rights are given the necessary priority to enhance people’s security.
Dibeen Society for Environmental Development – Jordan
T.E.R.R.E. Liban – Lebanon
Economic Studies and Media Center – Yemen
Development Center for the Tensift Region – (Marrakech/Morocco)
Tunisian Association for Development Law – Tunisia
Yemeni Organization for Enhancing Integrity – Yemen
Lebanon Eco Mouvement – Lebanon
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/factsheet/2023/10/10/climate-finance-update
[2] https:/blogs.worldbank.org/en/climatechange/rules-of-the-road–measuring-impact-of-biodiversity-finance-
[3] https:/climatenetwork.org/resource/ndcs-3-0-missing-the-mark-on-ambition-and-equity/
[4] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2025/06/10/global-carbon-pricing-mobilizes-over-100-billion-for-public-budgets