Final COP29 proposal proposes ‘at least’ $300 billion for poor countries

The marathon UN climate summit neared the finish line early on Sunday, November 24, with countries set to approve or reject a hotly contested deal for wealthy historical emitters to provide at least $300 billion to poorer countries that have demanded much more.

After a grueling two weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan’s Caspian capital Baku, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev declared the summit’s final plenary session open after midnight, two days after the conference officially ended.

The final text was published after several sleepless nights for negotiators as tensions mounted as small island states and the world’s poorest countries walked out of one meeting.

“This package is an insult to us. We are the countries with the most at stake,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, an atoll threatened by rising sea levels.

Lead German negotiator Jennifer Morgan told AFP the countries would be offered a take-it-or-leave-it deal.

Before the final meeting, delegates gathered in small groups on the floor of the main conference room at the Baku sports stadium to examine line-by-line copies of the latest draft agreement. “I know that none of us wants to leave Baku without a good result,” Babayev said.

A number of countries have accused Azerbaijan, an authoritarian oil and gas exporter, of lacking the experience and will to meet the moment as the planet again sets temperature records and faces mounting deadly disasters.

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The strike prompted an emergency meeting

Small island states and impoverished African states angrily walked out of a meeting with Azerbaijan on Saturday, saying their concerns had been ignored. “I think it caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Brazil’s climate envoy Ana Toni. “Everything happened very quickly.”

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The strike prompted an emergency meeting between those countries and top negotiators from the European Union, the United States and Britain, chaired by COP29, at which new proposals were made.

Rich countries and small island states are also concerned about Saudi Arabia’s efforts to water down calls at last year’s summit to phase out fossil fuels.

The final text proposes that rich countries increase their commitments to poorer countries to combat climate change to at least $300 billion a year by 2035.

That amount is up from the $100 billion that rich countries are currently providing under expiring commitments and the $250 billion proposed in Friday’s draft.

The proposal has been criticized as an insulting undercut by developing countries, which have demanded at least $500 billion to boost climate resilience and cut emissions.

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Sierra Leone’s climate minister, Jivo Abdoulaye, whose country is among the world’s poorest, called the project “a virtual suicide pact for the rest of the world.”

Emerging power Brazil called for at least some progress and said it would seek to build on it when it chairs COP30 next year at the Amazon Gateway in Belem.

“After the difficult experience we are going through here in Baku, we need to achieve some result that is minimally acceptable in accordance with the emergency situation we are facing,” Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva told delegates.

Tired and “disappointed”

As staff at the vast, windowless stadium began packing up, diplomats scurried between meetings, some armed with food and water in anticipation of another late night.

Panama’s outspoken negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez has warned against repeating the COP15 failure in Copenhagen in 2009. “I’m sad, I’m tired, I’m disappointed, I’m hungry, I’m sleep-deprived, but there’s a tiny ray of optimism in me because this can’t be the next Copenhagen,” he told reporters.

Climate activists shouted “shame” as US climate envoy John Podesta walked the halls. “Hopefully there will be a storm before the calm,” he said.

Rich countries say it is politically unrealistic to expect more from direct government funding.

Donald Trump, skeptical of both climate change and foreign aid, returns to the White House in January, and several other Western countries have seen a right-wing backlash against the green agenda.

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Voluntary contributions

The draft agreement sets a larger overall goal of $1.3 trillion a year to combat rising temperatures and natural disasters, but most would come from private sources.

However, South African Environment Minister Dion George said: “I think being ambitious at this stage would not be very helpful.”

The United States and the EU wanted rich new emerging economies such as China – the world’s biggest emitter – to do their part.

The final draft called for developing countries to contribute on a voluntary basis, which represents no change for China, which already pays climate finance on its own terms.

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The EU and other countries have also sparred with Saudi Arabia over strong language about divesting from fossil fuels, which negotiators said the oil-producing country had resisted. “We will not allow the most vulnerable countries, especially small island states, to be robbed of new, scarce sources of fossil fuel emissions,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Bärbock said.

Le Monde with AFP

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