While the global leaders of South and North are once again discussing the promised goals and deliveries of COP30 at the ongoing UN climate meeting in Brazil, a rather chilling news has captured global attention, highlighting the looming threat of global warming. The United Nations Environment Programme UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025, released a couple of days back on November 18, found that within the next decade, global temperatures will likely exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Climate advocates had long hoped that it would be decades, if ever, before the 1.5°C threshold was breached.
“Despite all the warnings, the world has continued to emit greenhouse gasses at record levels, so this conclusion wasn’t unexpected,” said Martin Krause, Director of UNEP’s Climate Change Division. “But it should be a wakeup call to everyone. Climate change is real, it’s happening and unless we do something about it soon, the consequences will be severe.”
The stakes have never been higher, with climate-linked disasters intensifying worldwide and billions of lives hanging in the balance. COP30 is not just a negotiation; it is a critical juncture to transform promises into actions that secure a safer, fairer future for all. So the point here is, when will global North wake up to realise that the onus of financing and technology transfer lies on them to reduce the impact of global warming?
It is clear since the adoption of Paris Agreement in 2015 that mobilising finance and enabling technology transfer to the Global South is paramount with a view to intensifying climate change and exposing the deep gaps between commitments and actual delivery. While the Paris Agreement enshrined both as levers of transformation, the lived reality in developing countries is marked by funding delays, debt-heavy flows, and fragmented technological support that stymie urgent action.
Developing nations, especially in the Global South, shoulder disproportionate costs in climate adaptation and mitigation, with local impacts accruing global benefits. Recent studies show that over two-thirds of climate finance delivered has been in the form of loans, not grants, with some countries paying back more than they receive from wealthy creditors.
The unmet US$100 billion annual target is now overshadowed by far larger needs: COP29 established a new floor of US$300 billion annually by 2035, yet UNCTAD research warns actual requirements are closer to US$1.3 trillion per year. The growing costs of climate damages and adaptation have rendered current funding pipelines deeply inadequate.
India and other major developing economies insist that financial support must be non-debt-creating and predictable, with instruments such as grants and multi-year commitments to reduce project risks. Without sustained, accessible finance, the cost of capital remains high in emerging markets, perpetuating a cycle where the poorest pay more to finance vital climate projects.
Effective technology transfer is now recognized as equally critical. Despite Article 10 of the Paris Agreement and myriad frameworks, support has largely failed to overcome intellectual property barriers and high costs that keep cutting-edge solutions out of reach for the Global South. Key climate technologies—solar, battery storage, resilient crops—remain locked within a handful of countries due to restrictive IPR regimes.
Economic efficiency argues for technology as a non-rivalrous global public good, but current systems create artificial scarcity. India and others are pressing for open access, patent pooling, and targeted mechanisms to remove these barriers, leveraging proven models from medicine to democratize climate innovations.
COP30 must pivot from rhetoric to delivery, charting concrete pathways for both finance and technology flows. For finance, the focus should move to:
Tripling adaptation finance by 2030 and ensuring funds for loss and damage.
Institutionalizing support mechanisms such as country platforms led by developing nations, which aggregate multiple sources of investment around national climate priorities.
Reforming global financial architecture to correct market biases and reduce capital costs—for instance, re-rating climate-vulnerable nations fairly and recapitalizing MDBs with concessional lending.
For technology transfer, COP30 must:
Advance initiatives on open access and patent pooling for priority climate technologies.
Build international cooperation arrangements that integrate South-South collaboration, capacity building, and financing for technology transfer.
Align technology support with practical diffusion—moving from pilot projects to widespread adoption.
Underlying these pathways is the principle of climate equity and justice. The world’s credibility in delivering on climate promises—especially for the Global South—depends on fair, actionable, and lasting mechanisms that go beyond projections to institutionalized support. COP30 must mark the shift from ad hoc pledges to accountable—and accessible—delivery on finance and technology, ensuring developing nations have the tools and resources needed for transformational climate action.
(The views expressed above belong to the author and not to the organisation. PSUWatch is India's Business News centre that places the spotlight on PSUs, Bureaucracy, Defence and Public Policy is now on Google News. Click here to follow. Also, join PSU Watch Channel in your Telegram. You may also follow us on Twitter here and stay updated.)