Climate finance talks face ‘toughest’ phase as COP29 nears endgame, World News says

BAKU – Countries attending the COP29 climate summit were warned on Wednesday (November 20) that the “hardest part” of talks on how much money should be provided to developing countries to help them cope with climate change was about to begin.

The main task of this year’s annual UN climate talks is to figure out what form this financing will take, who will pay it and how much. As an imaginary Friday deadline loomed, frustration over the lack of progress began to leak out of negotiating rooms.

“The hardest part begins now,” said Yalcin Rafiyev, chief negotiator of Azerbaijan, which hosted the summit, ahead of the new text to be published at midnight (04:00 SGT) in the capital Baku.

Progress at the annual summit is determined through regular draft documents that are often reduced to a final agreement.

Rich and developing countries are sharply divided over the size of the new target. This will be delivered two years late, replacing a 2020 pledge by developed countries to provide $100 billion (S$134.2 billion) a year in climate finance.

Ugandan Adonia Ayebare, who chairs the G77 and China group of more than 130 developing countries, said her demand is for rich countries to provide $1.3 trillion a year in public climate finance.

“The disappointment is that the other party has not made a counter offer to us,” Ayebare told Reuters. he said.

“We’re hearing $300 billion. But if that’s true, that’s really not acceptable. It’s a shame,” he said.

Another developing country negotiator told Reuters that the European Union had transferred $200 billion or $300 billion in unofficial talks. However, on Wednesday, the EU claimed that it had no official position on this number.

EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the bloc was not willing to talk about the figure until it had more structural details, adding: “Otherwise, you’ll have a shopping cart with a price, but you won’t know exactly what’s in it.”

Countries are still at odds over whether major still-developing economies, including China, the world’s second-largest, should contribute to the cause.

Egyptian Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad said the countries agreed that better-off developing countries would not have to legally pay.

Azerbaijani Rafiyev said that the COP29 presidency will produce a stricter text overnight. Simply put, a 25-page document filled with multiple options for almost every paragraph needs to be turned into a two-page document that can be developed and adopted in the last few days.

“We will have shorter, more concise, directly to-the-point texts,” Rafiyev said.

fossil fuels

While talks on funding have been slow, talks on accelerating efforts to reduce climate-damaging emissions appear challenging.

The countries that agreed on a landmark deal to move away from fossil fuels in Dubai last year have so far been unable to agree on the language to move this forward in Baku.

Austrian Climate Minister Leonore Gewessler told Reuters that Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, were “making a lot of noise about diluting the mitigation part” of the talks.

A representative of the Saudi Arabian delegation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had previously described the Dubai deal as a menu of options; He argued that not all countries would choose to divest from fossil fuels as their chosen path.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said in his speech at the summit that crude oil and natural gas are a gift from God, echoing the words of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who criticized the industry from the West in his opening speech.

The new commitment to cut emissions faster has brought into sharp relief a growing belief among scientists that the world’s grand goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius may soon be out of reach.

French climate scientist Robert Vautard said recent trends, if not changed, “will lead us to exceed 1.5 by the early 2030s, or even a little earlier.”

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