Activists demanding rich countries pay up for climate finance for developing countries of the Global South protest on day 11 at the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo / Getty Images
Activists demanding rich countries pay up for climate finance for developing countries of the Global South protest on day 11 at the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo / Getty Images
The UN’s marathon climate summit neared the finish line early on Sunday, with nations due to approve or reject a hotly disputed deal for wealthy historic emitters to provide at least US$300b to poorer countries that had demanded much more.
After an exhausting two weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan’s CaspianSea capital of Baku, COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev declared open the final summit plenary after midnight, two days after the conference was officially scheduled to end.
A final text was released following several sleepless nights for negotiators, with tensions boiling over as small islands states and the world’s poorest countries walked out of one meeting.
“This package is an affront to us. We are the countries that have the most at stake,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy of the Marshall Islands, an atoll nation threatened by rising seas.
Top German negotiator Jennifer Morgan told AFP countries would be presented a “take it or leave it” deal.
Before the closing session, delegates huddled in small groups on the floor of the main conference room inside Baku’s sports stadium to pore over copies of the latest draft deal line by line.
“I know that none of us want to leave Baku without a good outcome,” Babayev said.
Small island nations and impoverished African states on Saturday angrily stormed out of a meeting with Azerbaijan, saying their concerns had been ignored.
“I think it caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Brazil’s climate envoy, Ana Toni. “It all happened very quickly.”
The walkout triggered an emergency meeting between those nations and top negotiators from the European Union, United States and Britain with the COP29 presidency in which new proposals were made.
Wealthy countries and small island nations have also been concerned by efforts led by Saudi Arabia to water down calls from last year’s summit to phase out fossil fuels.
The final text proposes that rich nations raise to at least US$300b a year by 2035 their commitment to poorer countries to fight climate change.
It is up from US$100b now provided by wealthy nations under a commitment set to expire – and from US$250b proposed in a draft on Friday.
Activists with banners and flags hold a gathering to demand rich countries help developing nations tackle global warming, during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo / AFP
That offer was slammed as offensively low by developing countries, which have demanded at least US$500b to build resilience against climate change and cut emissions.
Sierra Leone’s climate minister Jiwoh Abdulai, whose country is among the world’s poorest, called the draft “effectively a suicide pact for the rest of the world”.
Developing power Brazil pleaded for at least some progress and said it would seek to build on it when it leads COP30 next year in the Amazon gateway of Belem.
“After the difficult experience that we’re having here in Baku, we need to reach some outcome that is minimally acceptable in line with the emergency we’re facing,” Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva told delegates.
As staff at the cavernous and windowless stadium began packing up, diplomats rushed between meetings, some armed with food and water in anticipation of another late night.
Panama’s outspoken negotiator, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, warned not to repeat the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009.
“I’m sad, I’m tired, I’m disheartened, I’m hungry, I’m sleep-deprived, but there is a tiny ray of optimism within me because this cannot become a new Copenhagen,” he told reporters.
Climate activists shouted “shame” as US climate envoy John Podesta walked the halls. “Hopefully this is the storm before the calm,” he said.
Wealthy nations say it is politically unrealistic to expect more in direct government funding.
US President-elect Donald Trump, a sceptic of both climate change and foreign assistance, returns to the White House in January and a number of other Western countries have seen right-wing backlashes against the green agenda.
The draft deal posits a larger overall target of US$1.3 trillion per year to cope with rising temperatures and disasters, but most would come from private sources.
A sign for COP29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, on display in Baku Olympic Stadium in Baku. Photo / Getty Images
However, South Africa’s environment minister Dion George said: “I think being ambitious at this point is not going to be very useful.”
The United States and EU have wanted newly wealthy emerging economies like China – the world’s largest emitter – to chip in.
The final draft encouraged developing countries to make contributions on a voluntary basis, reflecting no change for China, which already pays climate finance on its own terms.
The EU and other countries have also tussled with Saudi Arabia over including strong language on moving away from fossil fuels, which negotiators say the oil-producing country has resisted.
“We will not allow the most vulnerable, especially the small island states, to be ripped off by the new, few rich fossil fuel emitters,” said German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock.
