Ten years after the landmark Paris Agreement, the world is still trying to solve two crises as if they were separate: climate change and economic development. That’s a dangerous illusion. Climate progress cannot succeed if billions of people remain in poverty, without electricity, stable food systems, or the means to build better lives. And development, if it ignores climate risk, is little more than a short-term fix that will collapse under the weight of future disasters.
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I saw this tension firsthand at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the annual UN climate summit. The energy there was unmistakable—a mixture of urgency and frustration. Delegates from across Africa reminded the world that promises made in Paris have not been kept. Wealthy nations pledged to support developing countries as they cut emissions and adapted to rising temperatures. Yet, a decade later, those commitments remain largely unfulfilled.
At COP29 in Baku last year, developed countries agreed to mobilize at least $300 billion annually by 2035 for developing countries’ climate action, part of a broader aspirational target of $1.3 trillion per year. While this represents a tripling of the previous $100 billion goal, representatives from developing countries remain skeptical. More fundamentally, the $300 billion commitment falls far short of actual needs. The Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance estimates that developing countries (excluding China) need approximately $2.7 trillion annually by 2030 to meet climate and nature-related goals. The gap between promise and reality remains vast—and widening.
But money is only part of the problem. Even when funding arrives, it often misses the mark. A new analysis by the Clean Air Task Force looked at 52 African countries’ climate and development plans. It found that the two rarely intersect. Climate strategies focus on emissions and energy transitions, while national development plans emphasize job creation and economic growth—but without embedding climate targets. The result is a patchwork of policies that fail to deliver either lasting prosperity or real emissions cuts.
As Bill Gates noted in a recent memo, global climate policy increasingly risks sidelining development altogether. Today, more than 600 million Africans lack access to electricity, while 900 million do not have clean cooking technologies—conditions that undermine productivity, constrain public services, and contribute to preventable deaths.
Crucially, this should not be understood as an either/or dilemma. Wealthy nations already recognize that decarbonization must go hand in hand with economic growth to be politically viable at home. The same is true globally. Emerging and developing economies cannot be expected to choose between climate progress and economic progress. Insisting on a tradeoff between the two as a trade-off is both unrealistic and unjust.
When climate and development are treated as separate silos, everyone loses. Fragmented planning leads to inefficient allocation of scarce resources, missed opportunities for infrastructure investments with broad benefits, and policies that fail to produce either meaningful emissions reductions or durable socio-economic progress. Importantly, this is not a challenge restricted to Africa but a blind spot in international climate governance. Even wealthy countries are discovering that climate action divorced from economic realities is politically unsustainable. When climate action appears to threaten economic growth, job creation, or living standards, political support erodes quickly.
As negotiations in Belém draw to a close, one truth should be clear: climate and development are not competing agendas—they are the same story. Sustainable development is the foundation of lasting climate progress. And climate resilience is the only path to enduring prosperity. Any strategy that treats them separately is doomed to fail.
Development without climate action is a short-term fix. And climate action without development is an empty promise.
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