• G20 leaders met in Brazil to discuss sustainable development and the transition to cleaner energy, aiming to address global warming.
• The leaders called for a substantial increase in climate finance to respond to climate change.
• The G20 agreed on the need for a new financial goal for climate finance from rich nations to developing ones, but did not specify a solution.
• The summit also committed to a legally binding treaty to limit plastic pollution by the end of 2024, marking a significant step towards addressing global climate change.

The leaders of the G20 major economies convened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on November 19, 2024, to discuss sustainable development and the transition to cleaner energy. The aim was to increase the odds of a successful deal to address global warming at U.N. climate talks in Azerbaijan.

The host of the COP29 climate summit had earlier made a plea for G20 countries to send a positive signal on the need to tackle climate change and provide clear mandates to help save talks that had bogged down in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The world is currently on track for its warmest year on record, and leaders are seeking to shore up efforts to address climate change before Donald Trump retakes the U.S. presidency in January.

Trump is reportedly preparing to exit the Paris Agreement on climate change and roll back U.S. policy on global warming. In a joint statement issued late Monday, the G20 leaders called for "rapidly and substantially increasing climate finance from billions to trillions from all sources" to pay for the response to climate change.

The Financial Goal for Climate Change

The G20 leaders agreed that COP29 negotiators need to reach a deal on a new financial goal for how much money rich nations must provide to poorer developing nations in climate finance. However, while the G20 statement said nations need to resolve the issue, they did not indicate what the solution should be at the U.N. summit slated to end on Friday. Economists suggest that goal should be at least $1 trillion annually.

Developed countries, including in Europe, argue that the contributor base needs to be expanded to include richer developing countries like China and richer Middle Eastern countries in order to agree on an ambitious goal. Developing countries, such as G20 host Brazil, have pushed back on expanding beyond developed countries, the main culprits for causing climate change. On Sunday, sources close to the G20 negotiations said a text had been floated that suggested that developing countries could contribute on a voluntary basis, but such language did not make it into the final agreement.

The Urgency of Climate Change and Plastic Pollution

Opening their annual summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the impact of climate change was evident all over the world and needed to be addressed urgently. G20 nations are seen as vital to shaping the response to global warming, as they control 85% of the world economy and are also responsible for more than three-quarters of climate-warming emissions.

The G20 also committed to agreeing on a legally binding treaty to limit plastic pollution by the end of 2024, with talks on the subject set to resume next week aiming to end over two years of negotiations to hammer out a deal.

In a historical context, the G20's focus on climate change echoes the sentiments of the 2015 Paris Agreement, where 196 parties agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, the current situation is more urgent, with the world on track for its warmest year on record and the U.S. potentially exiting the Paris Agreement under the upcoming Trump administration.

The G20's commitment to a legally binding treaty to limit plastic pollution also mirrors the 2018 amendment to the Basel Convention, which aimed to reduce the movement of plastic waste between nations. However, the current commitment is more ambitious, aiming to end plastic pollution entirely by the end of 2024.