Baku: The COP29 climate talks open Monday in Azerbaijan, under the long shadow cast by the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to row back on the United States\u2019 carbon-cutting commitments.
\nCountries come to Baku for the main United Nations forum for climate diplomacy after new warnings that 2024 is on track to break temperature records, adding urgency to a fractious debate over climate funding.
\nBut Trump\u2019s return will loom over the discussions, with fears that an imminent US departure from the landmark Paris agreement to limit global warming could mean less ambition around the negotiating table.
\n\u201cWe cannot afford to let the momentum for global action on climate change be derailed,\u201d said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu\u2019s special envoy for climate change and environment.
\n\u201cThis is a shared problem that will not solve itself without international cooperation, and we will continue to make that case to the incoming president of one of the world\u2019s largest polluters.\u201d
\nOutgoing President Joe Biden is staying away, as are many leaders who have traditionally appeared early in COP talks to lend weight to the proceedings.
\nJust a handful of leaders from the Group of 20, whose countries account for nearly 80 percent of global emissions, are attending.
\nAfghanistan will however be sending a delegation for the first time since the Taliban took power. They are expected to have observer status.
\nDiplomats have insisted that the absences, and Trump\u2019s win, will not detract from the serious work at hand, particularly agreeing a new figure for climate funding to developing countries.
\nNegotiators must increase a $100 billion-a-year target to help developing nations prepare for worsening climate impacts and wean their economies off fossil fuels.
\nHow much will be on offer, who will pay, and who can access the funds are some of the major points of contention.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s hard. It involves money. When it comes to money, everybody shows their true colors,\u201d Adonia Ayebare, the Ugandan chair of a bloc that groups over 100 mostly developing countries and China, told AFP on Sunday.
\nTrump, who has repeatedly called climate change a \u201choax,\u201d has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement.
\nBut Ayebare brushed aside the potential consequences of a US withdrawal, noting Trump already took Washington out of the Paris agreement during his first term.
\n\u201cThis has happened before, we will find a way of realigning.\u201d
\nDeveloping countries are pushing for trillions of dollars, and insist money should be mostly grants rather than loans.
\nThey warn that without the money they will struggle to offer ambitious updates to their climate goals, which countries are required to submit by early next year.
\n\u201cBring some money to the table so that you show your leadership,\u201d said Evans Njewa, chair of the LDC Climate Group, whose members are home to 1.1 billion people.
\nBut the small group of developed countries that currently contributes wants to see the donor pool expanded to include other rich nations and top emitters, including China and the Gulf states.
\nOne Chinese official warned Sunday during a closed-door session that the talks should not aim to \u201crenegotiate\u201d existing agreements.
\nLiang Pei, an official at China\u2019s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, urged negotiators to instead address \u201cthe climate crisis collectively, constructively.\u201d
\nThe talks come with fresh warnings that the world is far off track to meet the goals of the Paris agreement.
\nThe climate deal commits to keep warming below 2C compared to pre-industrial levels, preferably below 1.5C.
\nBut the world is on track to top that level in 2024, according to the European Union climate monitor.
\nThat would not be an immediate breach of the Paris deal, which measures temperatures over decades, but it suggests much greater climate action is needed.
\nEarlier this year, the UN warned the world is on track for a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century based on current actions.
\n\u201cEveryone knows that these negotiations will not be easy,\u201d said Germany\u2019s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
\n\u201cBut they are worth it: each tenth of a degree of warming avoided means fewer crises, less suffering, less displacement.\u201d
\nMore than 51,000 people are expected at the talks, which run November 11-22.
\nFor the second year running the talks will be hosted by a country heavily reliant on fossil fuels, after the United Arab Emirates last year.
\nAzerbaijan has also been accused of stifling dissent by persecuting political opponents, detaining activists and suffocating independent media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Baku: The COP29 climate talks open Monday in Azerbaijan, under the long shadow cast by the re-election of Donald Trump, who has pledged to row back on the United States\u2019 carbon-cutting commitments. Countries come to Baku for the main United Nations forum for climate diplomacy after new warnings that 2024 is on track to break …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":72837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72839,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72823\/revisions\/72839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}