COP29 on Day 12 Heads into Final Hard Talks with Deep Divide
COP29 Climate Summit in Baku. Image credit X.com @AOSISChair
Small Nations Decry Developed World Diluting Climate Finance
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 23: The COP29 United Nations climate summit in stretched sessions is negotiating the final draft of $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 climate financing deal. But there is no meeting ground as the “final draft” is finding inadequacies from stakeholders.
Azerbaijan’s delegation released the latest draft of a climate financing deal in Baku. The deal pegs $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 in climate financing.
The final draft has so far been disowned by the climate change hit nations. The alliance of small nations dubbed the final draft as injustice. Another group – War on Want – described the final draft as an insult.
The Cop28 in Dubai last year had pledged a world without fossil fuel by 2050. Climate activists had mocked fossil fuel economy, the UAE and Azerbaijan, hosting the climate summit. Activists had been accusing the US and China as roadblocks to meeting the goals of the Paris Accord.
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António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, urged upon the negotiators to keep their eyes on “big picture”. “Soften hard lines. Navigate a path through your differences. Keep your eyes on the bigger picture. Never forget that the future of humanity is at stake,” Guterres said in an appeal before the stakeholders went into extended negotiations late hours on Day 12 of the climate summit in Baku, the city in Azerbaijan.
On the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai last year, activists had raised the issue of pledges made in the past but now forgotten. The pledges were for reducing global methane emissions, cutting down financing fossil fuel projects, and stop deforestation by 2030.
“The final draft being negotiated calls on wealthier, more polluting countries to pay $250 billion per year to poorer nations bearing the brunt of the crisis,” Democracy Now said in a report. It said that the negotiations may go into the weekend.
The developed countries such as the European Union and the US are alleged to be dragging their feet in firmly meeting the Paris Accord goals. The developed nations account for just 16 per cent of the world population while releasing over 33 per cent GHG emissions.
“The latest draft is an insult. It’s nowhere near the public, grant-based climate finance, that the planet and people urgently need,” said the group War on Want in a statement.
The Alliance of Small Island Developing States said in a statement that it is “deeply disappointed in the state of the most recent text, which basically asks parties ‘how low can you go? on climate ambition. This is unacceptable.”
The world has seen hottest years in succession in 2023 and 2024, breaking previous records. The UN chief quoting a report recently said that extreme heat is killing five lakh people globally every year.
The group representing the most vulnerable nations from the climate change as they face the risk of submergence with the rise in average global temperature termed the final draft “inadequate”. It said that the proposals are not sufficient to fully implement the Paris Agreement, which had put out an ambitious plan to cap to the 1.5C limit.
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“The proposed $250 billion a year by 2035 is no floor, but a cap that will severely stagnate climate action efforts. It is an investment goal that stands at a fraction of the at least $1.3 trillion that is needed to effectively protect our world from the most catastrophic impacts of climate change,” added the alliance of small nations.
The group stressed that the fresh proposal “does not raise the bar from the previous ineffective $100 billion goal”. “The text ignores minimum allocation floors for SIDS and LDCs, of which we requested at least $39 billion for SIDS (Small Island Developing Nations) and at least $220 billion for LDCs (Least Developed Countries).
It stated that SIDS nations receive a mere one per cent of climate finance. “We are also greatly disappointed to see loss and damage only included in the preamble,” added the group.
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