BAKU: As nerves frayed and the clock ticked, negotiators from rich and poor nations were huddled in one room Saturday during overtime United Nations climate talks to try to hash out an elusive deal on money for developing countries to curb and adapt to climate change.
\nBut the rough draft of a new proposal circulating in that room was getting soundly rejected, especially by African nations and small island states, according to messages relayed from inside. Then a group of negotiators from the Least Developed Countries bloc and the Alliance of Small Island States walked out because they didn\u2019t want to engage with the rough draft.
\nThe \u201ccurrent deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do,\u201d Evans Njewa, the chair of the LDC group, said.
\nWhen asked if the walkout was a protest, Colombia environment minister Susana Mohamed told The Associated Press: \u201cI would call this dissatisfaction, (we are) highly dissatisfied.\u201d
\nThe last official draft on Friday pledged $250 billion annually by 2035, more than double the previous goal of $100 billion set 15 years ago but far short of the annual $1 trillion-plus that experts say is needed. The rough draft discussed on Saturday was for $300 billion, sources told AP.
\nAccusations of a war of attrition
\nDeveloping countries accused the rich of trying to get their way \u2014 and a small financial aid package \u2014 via a war of attrition. And small island nations, particularly vulnerable to climate change\u2019s worsening impacts, accused the host country presidency of ignoring them for the entire two weeks.
\nAfter bidding one of his suitcase-lugging delegation colleagues goodbye and watching the contingent of about 20 enter the room for the European Union, Panama chief negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez had enough.
\n\u201cEvery minute that passes we are going to just keep getting weaker and weaker and weaker. They don\u2019t have that issue. They have massive delegations,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cThis is what they always do. They break us at the last minute. You know, they push it and push it and push it until our negotiators leave. Until we\u2019re tired, until we\u2019re delusional from not eating, from not sleeping.\u201d
\nWith developing nations\u2019 ministers and delegation chiefs having to catch flights home, desperation sets in, said Power Shift Africa\u2019s Mohamed Adow. \u201cThe risk is if developing countries don\u2019t hold the line, they will likely be forced to compromise and accept a goal that doesn\u2019t add up to get the job done,\u201d he said.
\nCedric Schuster, the Samoan chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States issued a statement saying they \u201cwere not part of the discussion that gave rise to these imbalanced texts\u201d and asked the COP29 presidency to listen to them.
\nA climate cash deal is still elusive
\nWealthy nations are obligated to help vulnerable countries under an agreement reached at these talks in Paris in 2015. Developing nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward clean energy.
\nFor Panama\u2019s negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez even a higher $300 billion figure is \u201cstill crumbs.\u201d
\n\u201cHow do you go from the request of $1.3 trillion to $300 billion? I mean, is that even half of what we put forth?\u201d he asked.
\nOn Saturday morning, Irish environment minister Eamon Ryan said that there\u2019ll likely be a new number for climate finance in the next draft. \u201cBut it\u2019s not just that number \u2014 it\u2019s how do you get to $1.3 trillion,\u201d he said.
\nRyan said that any number reached at the COP will have to be supplemented with other sources of finance, for example through a market for carbon emissions where polluters would pay to offset the carbon they spew.
\nThe amount in any deal reached at COP negotiations \u2014 often considered a \u201ccore\u201d \u2014 will then be mobilized or leveraged for greater climate spending. But much of that means loans for countries drowning in debt.
\nTeresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at Action Aid, said that in order to get a deal, \u201cthe presidency has to put something far better on the table.\u201d
\n\u201cThe US in particular, and rich countries, need to do far more to to show that they\u2019re willing for real money to come forward,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd if they don\u2019t, then LDCs (Least Developed Countries) are unlikely to find that there\u2019s anything here for them.\u201d
\nAnger and frustration over state of negotiations
\nAlden Meyer of the climate think tank E3G said it\u2019s still up in the air whether a deal on finance will come out of Baku at all.
\n\u201cIt is still not out of the question that there could be an inability to close the gap on the finance issue,\u201d he said. \u201cThat obviously is not an ideal scenario.\u201d
\nJiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai, the Sierra-Leone environment minister, echoed that sentiment, saying \u201ca bad deal may be worse than no deal for us.\u201d
\nNations were also angry at potential backsliding on commitments to slash fossil fuels. German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock called out rich fossil fuel emitters who she said have \u201cripped off\u201d climate vulnerable states.
\n\u201cWe are in the midst of a geopolitical power play by a few fossil fuel states,\u201d Baerbock said. \u201cWe have to do everything to come toward the 1.5 degree (Celsius, 2.7 Fahrenheit) pathway\u201d of keeping warming below that temperature limit since preindustrial times, she said.
\nBut despite the fractures between nations, some still held out hopes for the talks.
\n\u201cWe remain optimistic,\u201d said Nabeel Munir of Pakistan, who chairs one of the talks standing negotiating committees.
\nWhen asked how, COP29 climate champion Nigar Arpadarai chimed in. \u201cWe have no choice,\u201d she said, as the harms of climate change continue to worsen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BAKU: As nerves frayed and the clock ticked, negotiators from rich and poor nations were huddled in one room Saturday during overtime United Nations climate talks to try to hash out an elusive deal on money for developing countries to curb and adapt to climate change. But the rough draft of a new proposal circulating …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":73246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73232","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\/73232","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=73232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73247,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73232\/revisions\/73247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}