Countries at UN climate summit under pressure with no finance deal entering final day

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Countries at the United Nations climate summit amped up the pressure on themselves Friday by entering the last scheduled day of talks with no visible advancement on their chief goals.

From the commence, COP29 has been about climate finance — money that wealthy nations are obligated to pay to developing countries to cover damages resulting from extreme weather and to assist those nations adjust to a warming earth. Experts put the figure at $1 trillion or more, but draft texts that emerged Thursday after nearly two weeks of talks angered the developing globe by essentially leaving blank the monetary commitment.

The talks often run into overtime as wealthier nations are pressed to pay for impacts caused largely by their emissions from centuries of burning fossil fuels. The late complete also adds pressure on Azerbaijan, the oil-wealthy country presiding over this year’s COP, or Conference of Parties.

In a statement late Thursday, the presidency struck an optimistic tone, saying the outlines of a monetary package “are starting to receive shape” and promised recent draft texts on Friday.

“COP29 urges all parties to engage urgently and constructively in order to reach the ambitious outcome that we all require,” the statement said.

As negotiators, observers and civil population organization representatives waited for a recent draft text to be released on Friday, many said they were frustrated and disappointed with the talks so far.

“No deal is better than a impoverished deal,” said Harjeet Singh of the climate advocacy throng, Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty.

Singh said the key bottleneck is wealthy countries’ reluctance to declare how much they are willing to pay for countries to shift away from fossil fuels and toward tidy vigor, adjust to the drought, storms an extreme heat and pay for losses and damages caused by climate transformation. Independent experts put the figure needed at $1 trillion per year.

“Things are absolutely stuck,” he said. “It’s negotiation in impoverished belief by developed countries.”

Bryton Codd, part of Belize’s negotiating throng, said there is a lot of frustration felt by participants at the climate talks.

“I’m just waiting to view if that (climate finance objective) will actually be presented,” he said.

“Year after year our people arrive here and we dance this dance and play this game. No one comes here out of thrill, we arrive because we have no selection. Because we cannot let this procedure fall short,” said Tongan climate activist Joseph Sikulu with the environmental throng 350.org. “Nothing less than $1 trillion in grants per year will be enough to view those most impacted by climate transformation on a just shift towards a secure, equitable upcoming.”

On Thursday, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev convened a Qurultay — a traditional Azerbaijani conference — where negotiators spoke to listen all sides. He promised to discover “a way forward regarding upcoming iterations” of the deal.

Panama’s Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez said the “lack of commitment transparency feels like a slap in the face to the most vulnerable.”

“It is just utter disrespect to those countries that are bearing the brunt of this crisis,” he said. “Developed countries must stop playing games with our life and put a solemn quantified monetary proposal on the table.”

Other areas that are being negotiated include commitments to slash earth-warming fossil fuels and how to adjust to climate transformation. But they’ve seen little movement.

European nations and the United States criticized the package of proposals for not being powerful enough in reiterating last year’s call for a shift away from fossil fuels.

U.S. climate envoy John Podesta said he was surprised that “there is nothing that carries forward the … outcomes that we agreed on last year in Dubai.” The United States, the globe’s biggest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, has played little role in the talks as it braces for another presidency under Donald Trump.

Days earlier, the 20 largest economies met in Brazil and didn’t mention the call for transitioning away from fossil fuels. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who was at that conference, said official language is one thing, but reality is another.

“There will be no way” the globe can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius “if there is not a phase out of fossil fuels,” Guterres said at a Thursday information conference.

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Associated Press journalist Ahmed Hatem contributed to this update.

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