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MADRID/LONDON: Scores of world leaders will be sweltering in the summer sun of southern Spain next week at a once-a-decade United Nations development financing summit aimed at curbing global poverty, disease and the worst-case threats of climate change.

Despite the scorching temperatures, though, a major chill looms over the event – the decision early this month by the United States, traditionally the world’s largest aid giver and key finance provider, not to show up.

UN countries want to close a $4 trillion-a-year funding gap they now estimate prevents the developing world achieving the organization’s Sustainable Development Goals that range from cutting infant death rates to minimizing global warming.

Critics say the promises at the heart of the conference – called the “Seville Commitment” – are nowhere near bold enough.

The measures, agreed by consensus after a year of tough negotiations, include tripling multilateral lending capacity, debt relief, a push to boost tax-to-GDP ratios to at least 15 percent, and shifting special IMF money to countries that need it most.

The run-up, however, has been marred by the US decision to withdraw over what it said was the crossing of a number of its red lines, including the push to triple development bank lending, change tax rules and the use of the term “gender” in summit wording.

The European Union only joined the summit with reservations, particularly over how debt is discussed within the UN.

Speaking to reporters this week, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed described Washington’s boycott as “regrettable,” especially after its “catastrophic” recent aid cuts that she said had cost lives and livelihoods.

Speaking alongside officials from summit host Spain and Zambia, which has helped organize it, she said the final outcome document agreed reflected both “ambition and realism” and that the UN would try to re-engage the US afterwards.

Remy Rioux, chief executive officer of the French Development Agency, said Washington’s withdrawal had not been a total surprise given Donald Trump’s views. The hope is that agreements next week will allow bolder action at the UN climate talks in Brazil in November.

“We will push for the new framework... (and) its operationalization from Seville to Belem,” he added, referring to the Brazilian city that will host COP30.

Aid in decline

Other measures to be announced include multilateral lenders automatically giving vulnerable countries the option to insert repayment break clauses into their loans in case of hurricane, drought or flood.

Another buzz phrase will be a “Global SDR playbook” – a plan where the wealthiest countries rechannel the IMF’s reserve-like Special Draw Rights they hold to the multilateral banks, who then leverage them as capital in order to lend more.

Campaigners warn that it will fall far short of what is needed, especially as more than 130 countries now face critically high debt levels and many spend more on repayments than on health or education.

Aid and support from rich countries, who themselves have rising debts, is dropping too.

In March, the US slashed more than 80 percent of programs at its USAID agency following federal budget cuts spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk. Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden have all made cuts in recent years too.

The OECD projects a 9 percent–17 percent drop in net official development assistance (ODA) in 2025, following a 9 percent decline in 2024.

It looks set to hit the poorest countries hardest: bilateral ODA to least developed countries and sub-Saharan Africa may fall by 13-25 percent and 16-28 percent respectively, the OECD estimates, and health funding could drop by up to 60 percent from its 2022 peak.

So what would be a good outcome in Seville, especially given the US pull-out?

“We should make sure we are not backtracking at this point,” said Orville Grey at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, referring to funding commitments. “We should at least remain stable.”

BONN: This year’s UN COP30 summit in Brazil was hotly-anticipated as a pivotal moment for the planet, as the world fast approaches a key global warming threshold.
But the hosts are yet to propose a headline ambition for the marathon November talks, raising concerns they could fall flat.
The build-up has been overshadowed by devastating conflicts on three continents and the US withdrawal from global cooperation on climate, trade and health.
Expectations have dimmed since Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s pitch three years ago to host climate talks in the Amazon.
A warm-up UN climate event in Germany that concluded on Thursday saw disputes flare over a range of issues, including finance, adding to anxiety about how much headway COP30 can make.
Brazil is a deft climate negotiator, but the “international context has never been so bad,” said Claudio Angelo, of the Brazilian organization Climate Observatory.
Given the stakes, former UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said Brazil may have to make do with “baby steps.”
“One of the main messages that should be coming out of COP30 is the unity of everyone behind multilateralism and international cooperation. Not achieving that means everybody will suffer,” she told AFP.
“Failure is not an option in this case.”


Previous COPs have been judged on the deals clinched between the nearly 200 nations that haggle over two weeks to advance global climate policy.
Recent summits have produced landmark outcomes, from a global pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, to the creation of a specialized fund to help countries hit by climate disaster.
COP30 CEO Ana Toni said that “most of the big flashy topics” born out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change had been dealt with.
That leaves Brazil with an arguably harder challenge — trying to ensure what has been agreed is put into practice.
Much of the action is set for the COP30 sidelines or before nations arrive in the Amazonian city of Belem.
National climate plans due before COP30 from all countries — but most importantly major emitters China, the European Union and India — will be more consequential than this year’s negotiations, experts say.
It is expected this latest round of national commitments will fall well short of containing global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, and possibly even 2C, the less ambitious of the Paris accord’s climate goals.
“I expect that the COP will need to react to that,” said Ana Toni, although what form that reaction would take was “under question.”
Uncertainty about how COP30 will help steer nations toward 1.5C has left the Alliance of Small Island States bloc “concerned,” said lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen.
“Our survival depends on that,” she told AFP.


How countries will make good on their promise to transition away from fossil fuels may also become a point of contention.
Angelo said he hoped Brazil would champion the idea, included in the country’s climate plan, of working toward “schedules” for that transition.
But he likened Brazil’s auctioning of oil and gas extraction rights near the mouth of the Amazon river this month — just as climate negotiators got down to business in Bonn — to an act of “sabotage.”
Another key priority for Brazil is forest protection, but otherwise COP30 leaders have mostly focused on unfinished business from previous meetings, including fleshing out a goal to build resilience to climate impacts.
According to the hosts of last year’s hard-fought climate talks, global tensions might not leave room for much else.
“We need to focus more on preserving the legacy that we have established, rather than increasing ambition,” said Yalchin Rafiyev, top climate negotiator for COP29 host Azerbaijan.
He fears that trying and failing to do more could risk undermining the whole UN process.
Those close to the climate talks concede they can move frustratingly slowly, but insist the annual negotiations remain crucial.
“I don’t think there’s any other way to address a threat to humanity as big as this is,” Espinosa told AFP.