Mukhtar Babayev is COP29 President and Special Representative of the President of Azerbaijan for Climate Issues.

We face an historic irony this year. 2025 was supposed to start a new decade in climate finance.

When countries signed the Paris Agreement in 2015, they set this year as the date from which donor countries would support the developing world under a new climate finance deal. The Baku Finance Goal agreed at COP29 in Azerbaijan did indeed set a target of $300 billion a year by 2035, a three-fold increase on the current funding.

But instead of stepping up, donors are stepping back. Governments are diverting funds from communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Military spending is being raised at the expense of climate finance and aid budgets are being slashed.

This is not how the new decade of solidarity and action was supposed to begin. Developed countries were supposed to take the lead. It is a bitter pill for the world’s poorest to swallow.

No enforcement mechanism for promises

Worryingly, this comes as countries prepare their next generation of climate plans for submission. This round of emission cuts is our last best chance to keep the 1.5 degree Celsius target within reach without a sustained overshoot. But how can developing countries cut emissions if they can’t count on support?

COP Presidents face the same question – how do you ensure the deals you gavelled are actually delivered? The awkward truth is that, technically, we cannot. There are proposals to reform climate governance, but we currently have no formal power to hold countries to account.

There is no international enforcement mechanism. Some countries should be commended for embedding commitments into domestic law. Most, however, exploit every loophole to avoid legally binding requirements.

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Instead, we rely on norms, values and standards. We place our hope in enlightened leaders who can see their own interest in collective climate action. We hope they understand that promises made are promises. Or we are forced to invoke their sense of duty.

When governments break promises to each other, it breeds distrust and anger. We can see this in the hallways of climate negotiations already. There is little point investing in soft power if leaders go soft on their words.

Many donor countries seem oblivious to the promises made. At ministerial meetings on climate change, few can recount the pledges of past years. Ministers gathered in Spain last week for the Fourth International Financing for Development conference. For all the talk of implementation, how many governments have kept the promises they made last time?

The early milestones for 2025 are barely on the agenda for this year’s UN climate summit. Small island states have