Kreetika Kumar 
The Pacific Islands have long served as a moral compass in global climate negotiations, consistently calling for equity, ambition, and justice.
However, at COP29, that call was once again ignored, leaving vulnerable communities to bear the brunt of the climate crisis while the richest nations turned their backs on their legal and moral obligations.
This has been highlighted in a statement by the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network which is a regional network of civil society organizations working on climate change issues in the Pacific Islands.
It says that this COP was framed as the “finance COP,” a critical moment to address the glaring gaps in climate finance and advance other key agenda items.
However, not only did COP29 fail to deliver adequate finance, but progress also stalled on crucial issues like fossil fuel phase-out, Loss and Damage, and the Just Transition Work Plan.
According to the statement,t the outcomes represent a catastrophic failure to meet the scale of the crisis, leaving vulnerable nations to face escalating risks with little support.
It says that the multilateral process has not failed; it is the developed countries within the process that have failed, continuing their decades-long attempts to dismantle global climate cooperation.
It says that the so-called new climate finance goal a USD $300 billion annual target by 2035 relies heavily on loans rather than grants, pushing developing nations further into debt.
According to the statement, it does not address the growing costs of adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage faced by vulnerable nations and explicitly ignores any substantive decision to include loss and damage just acknowledging it.
