Climate talks enter final hours amid row over $1 trillion fund and China role

Government ministers, negotiators and civil society groups have expressed frustration and dismay at a lack of progress in United Nations climate talks in Baku as they moved into their final hours.
However, there was some hope that a new proposed headline figure for rich countries to help climate-vulnerable countries might break the impasse.
That figure is expected to be put on the table by the Cop29 presidency, which is leading negotiations, overnight on Wednesday.
“Cut the theatrics,” UN climate chief Simon Stiell told country representatives after talks over the key issue of climate finance stalled, with developing countries insisting they need more than $1 trillion (€948 billion) a year and richer nations balking at the cost. Figuring out what form that funding takes, who pays, and how much, has been the main task of this year’s climate talks.
Yalchin Rafiyev, chief negotiator of the summit’s host Azerbaijan, is due to issue a fresh text. Progress at the annual summit is typically marked through regular draft documents that get whittled down to a final deal.
[ The Irish Times view on the Cop29 summit: failure is not an optionOpens in new window ]
Wealthy and developing countries are sharply divided over the size of the new goal. It will replace a 2020 pledge by developed countries – delivered two years late – to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance.
Uganda’s Adonia Ayebare, who chairs the G77 and China group of more than 130 developing countries, said its demand was for wealthy nations to provide $1.3 trillion in public climate finance per year.
“The frustration is that the other side has not given us a counter offer. We are hearing $300 billion. But if that is true, that’s really not acceptable. It’s embarrassing,” he said.
The EU is reported to have floated $200 billion or $300 billion in informal talks. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said, however, the bloc was not willing to talk about the figure until it had more structural details, adding: “Otherwise you will have a shopping basket with a price, but you don’t know exactly what is in there.”
Countries are still at odds over whether large, still-developing economies – including the world’s second-biggest economy, China – will contribute towards the goal.
The World Wildlife Federation’s lead on enhancing national targets, Shirley Matheson said: “There’s a lot of frustration in the room. There’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a need for parties to really get together and work through this.”
Former chair of the global leaders’ group the Elders, Mary Robinson, said at a briefing that $300 billion had to be a minimum to build trust, with a path to $1 trillion by 2030.
“It seems like a lot of money, is a lot of money, but $2.4 trillion was spent on weapons last year; $10 trillion was raised quickly by developed countries for Covid,” the former president of Ireland added.
[ World leaders need to be ‘10 times more ambitious’ on climate change action, says Mary RobinsonOpens in new window ]
She said there was also dismay about lack of progress on a gender action plan – “things almost going backwards on women’s rights, intersectionality and even human rights”.
Representing the Elders, she said she was in a position “to name names”, with the Vatican, Russia and Saudi Arabia blocking any progress on a plan due to be adopted at Cop30 next year.
The BBC has reported that such countries do not want reference to “gender” in the plan, which aims to support women at the forefront of climate change.
Ms Robinson welcomed the return of UN secretary general António Guterres to Cop29 and hoped he would bring more firepower to the talks.
Cop29 did not have “high expectations” and was not helped by an extraordinary number of fossil fuel lobbyists and “carbon sequestration hopefuls” in attendance, she said. But at the same time, the event had a critical role in setting a climate finance goal with a decent figure of mainly concessional, public finance for developing countries that needs to be enough to provide momentum going into Cop30 in Brazil.
On reforming the Cop process, Ms Robinson said: “If you don’t have good leadership in a country that is hosting a Cop, you don’t make much progress. We are seeing that here.”
She agreed the world did not have time to delay climate action, as 2024 was going to be the hottest year ever despite the passing of a warming El Niño, while six of the nine planetary boundaries to keep Earth and humanity in a safe place had been breached.
[ Mary Robinson: fossil fuels must be urgently phased out with world at critical junctureOpens in new window ]
“We can still get on the right side of the boundaries on climate and nature,” she added. “It’s frightening, but it’s very doable. All we have to do is switch the money. We are spending $2 trillion on what is harming us – subsidies for fossil fuels and very bad, aggressive land management.”
By switching a third of that, and telling a positive story that is true, it would incentivise climate action and enable the world to move much faster in transitioning to a better and healthier world, Ms Robinson said.
There was a discernible view at Cop29 that introducing new taxes and levies on aviation, shipping and carbon-polluting companies was doable and “gives me real hope” in providing new sources of funding, she added.