05/07/2025
Climate Negotiations in the Age of Warmongering, Militarism and Failed Multilateralism
Climate negotiations are taking shape in the lead-up to the 30th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) on Climate Change (COP30) which holds in Belem, Brazil, toward the end of 2025. An important aspect of these negotiations leading up to COP30 is the just-concluded 62nd Climate Negotiation of the Subsidiary Body of the UNFCCC (SB62), held in Bonn, Germany. This meeting is expected to prepare the groundwork for and shape COP30. Therefore, its outcome will determine the direction of agreement or none at COP30. Central to the discussions and negotiations at the Bonn meeting – among other topics like the Global Goal on Adaptation and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) – was the question of financing for climate solutions and adaptation funding. Some developing countries and climate justice civil societies are pushing for public financing to play a central role in the mobilisation of the $1.3 trillion commitment for climate financing, which will be in addition to the $300 billion agreed at last year’s COP29 in Baku. The developed countries, which are to provide the funds, are resisting further commitments by promoting private funding over public commitment.
However, more important is the question of the mechanism and structure with which the agreed fund will be delivered. This is another bone of contention. While civil societies want the focus to be on public funds, developed countries want the private sector to play a major role in delivering the fund. This, as rightly noted by some climate justice organisations, is a way by which the developed countries aim to shift responsibility away from direct commitment. But it is a known fact that private finance mostly focuses on profitable investment. Therefore, the focus on private sector involvement for climate financing shows a lack of a sense of urgency by developed economies.
Climate financing structure is faulty and neocolonial
But like I noted in previous interventions, issues around climate financing go beyond just the fund. The reality is that the structure and mechanism for climate financing and fund accounting are fundamentally flawed and colonial in nature. The process for measuring climate financing and what counts as climate financing is nebulous, complicated and questionable, for instance, measuring a developed country’s climate finance through its financial contributions to multilateral financial and development institutions. Furthermore, the fund disbursement, in terms of what aspect of climate finance is funded and which developing country received the fund, is at the discretion of the developed countries, which makes climate financing another tool to further the foreign, strategic and business interests of the donor country.
Fundamentally, no donor country will fund any climate action or solution or project that aims to help a recipient country to develop its capacity for self-reliance, especially in terms of mitigation technology and industrial development and adaptation capacity. Most developed countries still favour the current economic status quo that ensures that developing economies continue to serve as a source of raw materials, markets, cheap labour and dumping grounds for obsolete technologies. But climate change is basically integrated into the socio-economic development of countries and cannot exist outside of the prevailing socio-economic structure. Unless climate justice involves restructuring the current global economic and financial system, climate solutions and action, in terms of funding adaptation and the development of mitigation technology and the economy, will follow the existing status quo that undermines the economy and development of third world and less developed countries.
A just climate financing system should involve developed economies and major polluting corporations accepting responsibility for funding climate solutions, not by a benevolent and debt-based approach, but through a climate accounting system that ensures that developed countries contribute a fair share of climate funding based on parameters that factor historical emissions and social and economic costs of emissions into contributions of each developed country and major polluting corporations. The recent development in the global maritime industry, where a levy system on greenhouse gas emissions was agreed upon – even if too little – showed that a similar and more comprehensive arrangement is possible at the global climate change governance level. The funds can be pooled in a central platform where the principle of need-based disbursement will be agreed upon. Furthermore, it will mean climate change technologies, for both adaptation and mitigation, are made available to developing and underdeveloped economies to advance their capacities for climate-compliant and sustainable development.
Failed Multilateralism and Growing Warmongering
But nothing exemplifies the limitation of current climate negotiations more than the current militarism and failure of multilateralism while the Bonn Conference is going on. In many respects, the Israeli war in Gaza, which has been universally acknowledged as a genocide, alongside the Israeli war with Iran, further underscores the very limitation of global climate change governance and the sterility of climate negotiation. Despite the gross violation of various international laws by the State of Israel in Gaza in particular, and the Middle East in general, various developed countries of the Global North, who are part of the signatories to these statutes, are supporting Israel morally, politically, diplomatically and/or militarily. This action and the diplomatic hypocrisy of many Global North countries have undermined the United Nations authority and further eroded the remnant of multilateralism needed to advance climate solutions.
The Trump administration in the United States has already launched an open assault on multilateralism, further upping right-wing and, in a significant way, far-right nationalism. The administration’s attacks on climate agreements, actions and science; the undermining of United Nations system; the promotion of transactional diplomacy aimed at boosting the administration’s image while bullying oppositions; and disruptive yet narrow trade policies, have already directly impacted global climate change governance and furthermore rolled back the pace of global climate action. The administration’s climate denial, which is worsened by its right-wing nationalist policies, has undermined global collective climate actions and further emboldened the climate denial and anti-climate action constituency.
But the undermining of multilateralism predates the Trump administration. The Biden administration, alongside governments in Europe and elsewhere, gave a blank cheque to Netanyahu to maim Gaza and carry out a scorched earth, collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Against all known international conventions, the Israeli regime was armed to the teeth to reduce Gaza to rubble. It is this horror that Trump built upon. This brazen warmongering and attack on the UN system’s authority and multilateralism have implications for climate negotiations and global collective climate actions.
In the first instance, it shows that narrow political and economic interests of Global North countries will override collective actions, and that actions on climate change, despite being an existential issue, will only be possible when they conform to or fall within these narrow political and economic interests. Secondly, the failure of multilateralism and international conventions on such sensitive issues as genocide and mass murder makes the Global North’s commitment to global climate actions questionable and hypocritical. It means countries can make empty promises and commitments without any repercussion, inasmuch as they have the political, economic and military muscle to get away with such. While Israel’s carnage in Gaza and the war with Iran, alongside the Russia-Ukraine war, may be isolated, they also represent an existential threat to not just the geographical entities concerned but, importantly, the people living there. If there is brazen disregard for enforceable international statutes that protect tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of lives from being wasted and millions of others being traumatised through the use of lethal weapons, how much genuine concern will be expected for climate agreements and policies, which, though they address an existential issue, are voluntary and unenforceable?
More than this, what is the value of climate commitments and agreements when those making these agreements are neck-deep in destructive wars and militarism that add significantly to the climate crisis, environmental devastation and human carnage? Currently, the destruction of Gaza has unleashed not just a humanitarian catastrophe but also an unprecedented climate and environmental crisis.
According to a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report on the environmental impacts of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the enclave has become an environmental ticking time bomb. Aside from the complete degeneration of human civilisation and health systems, underground water, vegetation and water bodies have been severely contaminated. Air pollution resulting from bombing, infrastructural collapse and rubble is indeed heartrending. The ecosystem necessary for healthy living has been destroyed. In plain terms, Gaza has become an environmental wasteland that will have devastating long-term effects on several generations, even after restoration of basic civilisation.
But beyond this is the impact of warmongering in the Middle East on climate change. While the destruction of ecosystems in Gaza, especially marine and vegetative ecosystems, will lead to further emissions, the use of arms and emissions generated from bombings and destruction will surely add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. This is not to mention the emission generated from the production (and replacement) of weaponry. Also, the emissions to be generated from reconstruction after the war will have to be factored into the equation. According to an estimate, the Middle East conflicts (involving Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran) in the 15 months between October 2023 and January 2025 generated 1.9 million tCO₂ (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent), with Israeli actions and artillery responsible for 99 per cent of the emissions. Moreover, long-term emissions, arising from rebuilding and reconstruction, are estimated at over 31 million tCO₂. And these estimates do not include the horrific blitz in Gaza between January 2025 and now and the Israeli-Iran 12-day war in June 2025. Yet, these are conflicts that are fuelled by Western powers' diplomatic hypocrisy and unprincipled support for Israel's aggression and warmongering in the Middle East, especially its murderous and genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Costly militarism and military expenditure
In general, emissions impacts of the military sector, arms industry and conflicts, despite not being reported by most countries, are significant. According to an estimate by Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) and Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOB), in a 2022 report, the military sector contributes approximately 5.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This, if the military sector were to be a country, would mean it is the world’s fourth biggest emitter. While militarism, through arms production, transportation, deployment and maintenance, emits large amounts of greenhouse gases, it also wreaks havoc and destruction, which also add to emissions, through wars and conflicts and reconstruction. Worse still, militarism operates on a vicious cycle that may be difficult to stop. When a country ratchets up its military expenditure and arsenal, it creates a sense of insecurity for neighbours and enemies/rivals, real and imagined, which reverberates across countries.
But worse is the diversion of resources that should be used to move society forward on destructive militarism. Between the years 2021 and 2024, world military expenditures increased by US$454 billion (a 17 per cent increase). This is an amount that can push climate financing forward and help improve living standards, especially in low-income and poor countries. In virtually all the major economies, military expenditure increased in the last 4 years. Furthermore, between 2015 and 2023, revenues of SIPRI's 100 largest arms producers and service providers increased by 19 per cent (US$120 billion), reaching US$632 billion in 2023. 89 per cent of the revenues are made by companies based in the United States and Europe, 16 per cent by China-based companies and 2.2 per cent from Israel. This clearly underscores the political economy of militarism, the arms industry and warmongering: wars and militarism are profitable. It also underlines the growing failure of multilateralism and continuous erosion of the United Nations’ authority. It is no accident that global north military powers, gathered under NATO, agreed to increase military spending just at the same time the developed countries are claiming no money for climate actions and finance.
Build the movement from below and across countries
Therefore, the climate justice movement must see beyond these climate negotiations, which may be important but can also be a diversion and camouflage for real anti-development and anti-climate actions of the Global North governments. As it has been shown so far, we cannot detach global climate negotiations and actions from global geopolitics. More importantly, the current warmongering in the Middle East, especially Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, ably supported and armed to the teeth by the United States and European powers, cannot be detached from the outcome of climate negotiations and indeed global climate governance. The direct undermining of global climate solutions by the Trump administration and the hypocritical undermining and watering down of the effectiveness of global climate actions, especially climate financing, by Global North countries feed into the narrow capitalist economic and foreign policy interests of global powers to maintain their political economic hegemony. The wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as growing militarism and warmongering, all of which have undermined multilateralism and the United Nations, show that climate actions and solutions cannot be left to mere negotiations by political actors.
More than this, the real solution lies in building climate justice movements across countries and regions that will challenge the narrow capitalist economic interests driving these foreign policy and diplomatic hypocrisies. Such a climate justice movement must align with bigger social movements fighting for economic and social justice and must be linked to overall economic liberations in the Global South as well as in the Global North. The global climate justice movement must aim towards helping national and regional movements, especially in the Global South, achieve genuine change for the environment and the people. In the Global North countries too, climate and environmental justice must prioritize building a mass movement of youth, the working class and other progressive social forces. This will mean linking climate justice with economic justice, anti-war movements and liberation for youth, workers, and the poor in the Global North as well as the Global South.
Kola Ibrahim
Author, researcher and public/development policy consultant, Kola Ibrahim is a Nigeria-based climate justice advocate and social activist. He has authored at least three publications on political economy of climate change, among several other publications.
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Oil Change International Amnesty International Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Nigeria Oxfam Oxfam in Nigeria World Resources Institute Recourse ActionAid Nigeria Greenpeace Africa Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Middle East and North Africa Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA) Greenpeace Nederland Corporate Accountability Friends of the Earth U.S. Oxfam Great Britain Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - New York Office Environmental Justice Foundation Centre For Environmental Justice Revolt in the Maghreb - Essays Global Greengrants Fund Climate Action Group Climate Action Network-International Pan African Climate Justice Alliance International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) Transnational Institute
