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COP29 host tells rich nations to break climate stalemate

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Agence France-Presse

<p>PARIS — The hosts of this year&#x27;s UN climate summit urged governments Wednesday to start compromising to break a deadlock over how to help poorer countries tackle global warming.</p><p>The COP29 summit in gas-rich Azerbaijan in November is supposed to produce a global agreement on how rich nations should help fund climate investments in developing countries, but negotiations have stalled.</p><p>Developing states need massive investments in energy systems to reduce their own carbon footprints while shoring up defenses against the effects of global warming.</p><p>Yet, poorer nations are the least responsible for carbon emissions but suffer the most from a warming planet.</p><div><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/2024/5/28/is-climate-change-behind-all-extreme-weather-events-1409">READ: Is climate change behind all extreme weather events?</a></div><p>A crucial diplomatic meeting in Bonn last month ended in bitter stalemate with countries unable to advance an issue that has eroded trust between nations at climate talks for years.</p><p>In a letter to the roughly 200 nations signed onto UN climate accords, COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev lamented the absence of &quot;necessary progress&quot; and warned time was running out.</p><p>&quot;We clearly need a rapid increase in the pace of our work. Time lost is lives, livelihoods and the planet lost,&quot; wrote Babayev, a government minister and former executive at Azerbaijan&#x27;s national oil company.</p><p>&quot;We call on all parties to increase the pace of their work and move on from their early negotiating positions.&quot;</p><div><strong>Challenging and complex</strong></div><p>Wealthy nations have been under pressure to commit to new financing targets that go well beyond the $100 billion a year they promised in 2009.</p><p>Developing nations excluding China will need to raise their current climate investment budgets 25-fold to about $2.4 trillion a year by 2030, according to an expert assessment commissioned by the UN, nearly 25 times present levels.</p><p>Negotiators are nowhere near agreeing on a dollar aid figure, with negotiations bogged down over who should pay, what form the money should take, and who should receive it.</p><p>Under a 1992 climate accord, only a small handful of the wealthiest industrialised nations at the time were obligated to pay climate finance.</p><p>But some want the pool of contributors widened, most notably to include China, which is today vastly wealthier than thirty years ago, and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.</p><p>This has been a non-starter for developing nations, who have accused wealthy countries of trying to shirk their responsibility.</p><p>To break the ice, Azerbaijan will host negotiators for an informal two-day retreat starting July 26. They have named two experienced diplomats — Dan Jorgensen of Denmark and Yasmine Fouad of Egypt — to help the parties make headway.</p><p>Babayev said the impasse would &quot;not be solved by negotiators alone&quot; and called for political leadership on the sidelines to help move discussions toward consensus.</p><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEO</strong></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-vwAAODntQc?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div>

<p>The COP29 summit in gas-rich Azerbaijan in November is supposed to produce a global agreement on how rich nations should help fund climate investments in developing countries, but negotiations have stalled.</p>

The COP29 summit in gas-rich Azerbaijan in November is supposed to produce a global agreement on how rich nations should help fund climate investments in developing countries, but negotiations have stalled.