UN AP: UN talks in disarray as a rough draft deal for climate cash is rejected by developing nations - Developing nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels

UN talks in disarray as a rough draft deal for climate cash is rejected by developing nations
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Melina Walling, Seth Borenstein, Michael Phillis, and Sibi Arasu
2024-11-23 14:22:23GMT


Activists participate in a demonstration for climate finance at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — As nerves frayed and the clock ticked, negotiators from rich and poor nations were huddled in one room Saturday during overtime United Nations climate talks to try to hash out an elusive deal on money for developing countries to curb and adapt to climate change.

But the rough draft of a new proposal circulating in that room was getting soundly rejected, especially by African nations and small island states, according to messages relayed from inside. Then a group of negotiators from the Least Developed Countries bloc and the Alliance of Small Island States walked out because they didn’t want to engage with the rough draft.

The “current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do,” Evans Njewa, the chair of the LDC group, said. When asked if the walkout was a protest, Colombia environment minister Susana Mohamed told The Associated Press: “I would call this dissatisfaction, (we are) highly dissatisfied.”

With tensions high, climate activists heckled United States climate envoy John Podesta as he left the meeting room. They accused the U.S. of not paying its fair share and having “a legacy of burning up the planet.”

The last official draft on Friday pledged $250 billion annually by 2035, more than double the previous goal of $100 billion set 15 years ago but far short of the annual $1 trillion-plus that experts say is needed. The rough draft discussed on Saturday was for $300 billion in climate finance, sources told AP.


Jennifer Morgan, Germany climate envoy, right, and Joanna MacGregor, senior advisor for U.N. climate change, talk near Germany Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, bottom left, in a meeting room at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Accusations of a war of attrition
Developing countries accused the rich of trying to get their way — and a small financial aid package — via a war of attrition. And small island nations, particularly vulnerable to climate change’s worsening impacts, accused the host country presidency of ignoring them for the entire two weeks.

After bidding one of his suitcase-lugging delegation colleagues goodbye and watching the contingent of about 20 enter the meeting room for the European Union, Panama chief negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez had enough.

“Every minute that passes we are going to just keep getting weaker and weaker and weaker. They don’t have that issue. They have massive delegations,” Gomez said. “This is what they always do. They break us at the last minute. You know, they push it and push it and push it until our negotiators leave. Until we’re tired, until we’re delusional from not eating, from not sleeping.”

With developing nations’ ministers and delegation chiefs having to catch flights home, desperation sets in, said Power Shift Africa’s Mohamed Adow. “The risk is if developing countries don’t hold the line, they will likely be forced to compromise and accept a goal that doesn’t add up to get the job done,” he said.

Teresa Anderson, the global lead on climate justice at Action Aid, said that in order to get a deal, “the presidency has to put something far better on the table.”

“The U.S. in particular, and rich countries, need to do far more to to show that they’re willing for real money to come forward,” she said. “And if they don’t, then LDCs (Least Developed Countries) are unlikely to find that there’s anything here for them.”


An activists participates in a demonstration for climate finance at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

A climate cash deal is still elusive
Developing nations are seeking $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damages caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward clean energy. Wealthy nations are obligated to pay vulnerable countries under an agreement reached at these talks in Paris in 2015.

Panama’s Monterrey Gomez even the higher $300 billion figure that was discussed on Saturday is “still crumbs.”

“Is that even half of what we put forth?” he asked.

Monterrey Gomez said the developing world has since asked for finance deal of $500 billion up to 2030 — a shortened timeframe than the 2035 date. “We’re still yet to hear reaction from the developed side,” he said.

On Saturday morning, Irish environment minister Eamon Ryan said it’s not just about the number in the final deal, but “how do you get to $1.3 trillion.”

Ryan said that any number reached at the COP will have to be supplemented with other sources of finance, for example through a market for carbon emissions where polluters would pay to offset the carbon they spew.

The amount in any deal reached at COP negotiations — often considered a “core” — will then be mobilized or leveraged for greater climate spending. But much of that means loans for countries drowning in debt.

Anger and frustration over state of negotiations
Alden Meyer of the climate think tank E3G said it’s still up in the air whether a deal on finance will come out of Baku at all.

“It is still not out of the question that there could be an inability to close the gap on the finance issue,” he said.

Ali Mohamed, the chair of the African Group of Negotiators said the bloc “are prepared to reach agreement here in Baku ... but we are not prepared to accept things that cross our red lines.”

But despite the fractures between nations, several still held out hopes for the talks. “We remain optimistic,” said Nabeel Munir of Pakistan, who chairs one of the talks’ standing negotiating committees.

The Alliance of Small Island States said in a statement that they want to continue to engage in the talks, as long as the process is inclusive. “If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement,” the statement said.

Panama’s Monterrey Gomez said there needs to be a deal.

“If we don’t get a deal I think it will be a fatal wound to this process, to the planet, to people,” he said.
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Associated Press journalists Ahmed Hatem, Aleksandar Furtula and Joshua A. Bickel contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

At what point are they done developing?

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Colombia environment minister Susana Mohamed

There are muslims in South America?

 

[Ninon42]

The rich countries don't need to give one thin penny and the UN is a joke. Diplomacy with a hand out is extortion.

 

[indomitable snowman]

At what point are they done developing?

When we run out of money and are completely overwhelmed by the brown hordes.

 

[clipartfan92]

Here’s what to know about the new funding deal that countries agreed to at UN climate talks
Associated Press (archive.ph)
By Melina Walling
2024-11-24 00:21:16GMT

Spoiler

BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — In the wee hours Sunday at the United Nations climate talks, countries from around the world reached an agreement on how rich countries can cough up the funds to support poor countries in the face of climate change.

It’s a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still deeply unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction.

World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.”

The summit was supposed to end on Friday evening but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday. With countries on opposite ends of a massive chasm, tensions ran high as delegations tried to close the gap in expectations.

Here’s how they got there:

What was the finance deal agreed at climate talks?
Rich countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, and that experts said was needed. But delegations more optimistic about the agreement said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.

The text included a call for all parties to work together using “all public and private sources” to get closer to the $1.3 trillion per year goal by 2035. That means also pushing for international mega-banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, to help foot the bill. And it means, hopefully, that companies and private investors will follow suit on channeling cash toward climate action.

The agreement is also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015.

The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising.

What will the money be spent on?
The deal decided in Baku replaces a previous agreement from 15 years ago that charged rich nations $100 billion a year to help the developing world with climate finance.

The new number has similar aims: it will go toward the developing world’s long laundry list of to-dos to prepare for a warming world and keep it from getting hotter. That includes paying for the transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels. Countries need funds to build up the infrastructure needed to deploy technologies like wind and solar power on a large scale.

Communities hard-hit by extreme weather also want money to adapt and prepare for events like floods, typhoons and fires. Funds could go toward improving farming practices to make them more resilient to weather extremes, to building houses differently with storms in mind, to helping people move from the hardest-hit areas and to help leaders improve emergency plans and aid in the wake of disasters.

The Philippines, for example, has been hammered by six major storms in less than a month, bringing to millions of people howling wind, massive storm surges and catastrophic damage to residences, infrastructure and farmland.

“Family farmers need to be financed,” said Esther Penunia of the Asian Farmers Association. She described how many have already had to deal with millions of dollars of storm damage, some of which includes trees that won’t again bear fruit for months or years, or animals that die, wiping out a main source of income.

“If you think of a rice farmer who depends on his or her one hectare farm, rice land, ducks, chickens, vegetables, and it was inundated, there was nothing to harvest,” she said.

Why was it so hard to get a deal?
Election results around the world that herald a change in climate leadership, a few key players with motive to stall the talks and a disorganized host country all led to a final crunch that left few happy with a flawed compromise.

The ending of COP29 is “reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Society. He cited Trump’s recent victory in the US — with his promises to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement — as one reason why the relationship between China and the EU will be more consequential for global climate politics moving forward.

Developing nations also faced some difficulties agreeing in the final hours, with one Latin American delegation member saying that their group didn’t feel properly consulted when small island states had last-minute meetings to try to break through to a deal. Negotiators from across the developing world took different tacks on the deal until they finally agreed to compromise.

Meanwhile, activists ramped up the pressure: many urged negotiators to stay strong and asserted that no deal would be better than a bad deal. But ultimately the desire for a deal won out.

Some also pointed to the host country as a reason for the struggle. Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, said Friday that “this COP presidency is one of the worst in recent memory,” calling it “one of the most poorly led and chaotic COP meetings ever.”

The presidency said in a statement, “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator. We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.”

Shuo retains hope that the opportunities offered by a green economy “make inaction self-defeating” for countries around the world, regardless of their stance on the decision. But it remains to be seen whether the UN talks can deliver more ambition next year.

In the meantime, “this COP process needs to recover from Baku,” Shuo said.
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Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein and Sibi Arasu contributed to this report.
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

With talks teetering, climate negotiators struck a controversial $300 billion deal
NPR (archive.ph)
By Michael Copley, Jeff Brady, Julia Simon, Alejandra Borunda, and Lauren Sommer
2024-11-23 19:43:00GMT

Spoiler

Activists demanding that rich countries pay up for climate finance for developing countries at the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images/Getty Images Europe

Negotiators at a global climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, struck a last-minute deal for wealthy countries to help their poorer neighbors deal with global warming, saving the annual meeting as it verged on collapse.

From the outset, the focus of the United Nations' COP29 climate conference was raising money to help developing nations cut their climate pollution and prepare for threats they face from extreme weather. Developing nations have contributed far less of the pollution heating the planet, but suffer the harms of extreme weather disproportionately.

Those countries had pushed for climate funding of $1.3 trillion a year. But the final agreement set a goal of $300 billion annually. Some representatives of developing countries were furious at the outcome, saying $300 billion a year from industrialized countries is far short of what vulnerable nations need.

"It's a paltry sum," said Chandni Raina, a member of India's delegation, during the conference's closing meeting. "It is not something that will enable conducive climate action that is necessary for the survival of our country and for the growth of our people, their livelihoods."

Announced more than a day after the talks were scheduled to end, the funding deal was brokered after world leaders and climate activists leveled sharp criticism at industrialized nations, as well as the Azerbaijani officials who hosted the two-week meeting.

Raina criticized the meeting's president, Mukhtar Babayev, for passing the financing agreement before he gave countries a chance to comment.

"Trust is the basis for all action, and this incident is indicative of a lack of trust, a lack of collaboration on an issue which is a global challenge, which is faced by all of us, and most of all by the developing countries that are not responsible for it," Raina said. "But, we've seen what you have done."

Mohamed Adow, director of the Kenyan think tank Power Shift Africa, said at a press conference on Friday that this was "the worst COP in recent memory."

Taking aim at wealthy countries that built their economies over centuries using fossil fuels, Adow added, "You can't have a negotiation if only one side is actually engaging in good faith and putting forward proposals that [respond] to the needs on the ground."

The climate talks were held at the end of what will almost certainly be the hottest year on record. Global temperatures are rising mainly because of heat-trapping pollution that's created when people burn fossil fuels like coal and oil. Global emissions rose to a new record in 2023, and the world is nowhere close to meeting a goal countries set to limit warming in order to reduce the risks of worsening disasters from extreme weather like floods and heat waves.

The leaders of some developing countries briefly walked out of negotiations on Saturday. Cedric Schuster, Samoa's minister of natural resources and environment, said in a statement that developing countries were treated with "contempt."

"What is happening here is highlighting what a different boat our vulnerable countries are in, compared to the developed countries," said Schuster, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States, which represents dozens of low-lying nations from the Caribbean to the South China Sea. "After this COP29 ends, we cannot just sail off into the sunset. We are literally sinking."

President Biden said in a statement that the COP29 climate-funding agreement was "ambitious." "It will help mobilize the level of finance – from all sources – that developing countries need to accelerate the transition to clean, sustainable economies, while opening up new markets for American-made electric vehicles, batteries, and other products," Biden said.

However, the recent U.S. presidential election hung over the conference. Voters' decision to send Donald Trump back to the White House raises questions about whether the country will continue working on global climate initiatives. Trump, who has promised to pursue policies in his second term to support the country's oil and gas industry, is expected to again pull the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Here's what else did — and didn't — happen at COP29.


A sign displays an unofficial temperature as jets taxi at Sky Harbor International Airport at dusk, July 12, 2023, in Phoenix.
Matt York/AP

Deal calls for at least $300 billion annually for developing countries
Negotiators agreed that wealthy countries will provide developing nations at least $300 billion a year in climate funding by 2035.

That's triple what poorer nations were promised under a previous commitment, but it's a fraction of what researchers say is required. A report released during the conference shows developing nations other than China — which boasts the world's second-largest economy and is the second-biggest contributor of climate pollution historically — will need about $1.3 trillion in climate funding annually.

The final COP29 agreement includes a vague goal for "all actors to work together" to provide $1.3 trillion to developing nations by 2035.
"The poorest and most vulnerable nations are rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn't put more money on the table when billions of people's lives are at stake," Ani Dasgupta, chief executive of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement.

The debate over climate funding traces back more than a decade. In 2009, industrialized countries set a goal to give developing nations $100 billion a year by 2020 to help them deal with climate change. In 2015, countries extended the pledge to 2025. They also said they'd set a new goal that reflects the "needs and priorities of developing countries" before the old one expires. That's what negotiators fought over in Azerbaijan.

Heading into this year's meeting, it was clear developing countries are in a bind. They need help, but whatever money wealthy nations pledged was certain to be just a portion of what's required to cope with climate change. And industrialized countries were slow to deliver on their original commitment, so poorer nations are relying on unreliable neighbors.

The dollar figure wasn't the only point of contention. Leaders of vulnerable states say they need a lot more assistance to come in the form of grants — not loans — in order to avoid increasing the debt burden on poorer countries.

The final agreement doesn't guarantee poorer countries the grant funding they say they need. The document says the $300 billion annually from wealthy countries can come from "a wide variety of sources," including private investors.

Developing countries have also pushed for compensation for the damages from climate-related disasters, like more intense storms and droughts. Last year, richer countries agreed to create a "loss and damage" fund to fill that need, housed at the World Bank. So far, more than $720 million has been pledged and at COP29, countries officially opened the fund for donations.

A small number of countries have received payments already, part of pilot projects organized by Scotland.

A call to phase out fossil fuels faces pushback
At last year's meeting in Dubai, negotiators for the first time agreed countries should transition away from fossil fuels. This time, calls to reiterate that agreement faced pushback.

The world's largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, was identified as a primary force behind that effort.

"Their blatant obstruction has ensured there's no clear commitment to phase out fossil fuels — an outrageous betrayal of humanity and the urgent fight against climate catastrophe," Maria Ron Balsera, executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights said in a statement.

The host country for COP29 also came in for criticism.

Oil and gas dominate Azerbaijan's economy, representing 90% of the country's exports and finance about 60% of the government's budget. An official with the COP29 host country, Azerbaijan, was recorded by the human rights group Global Witness arranging a meeting to discuss potential fossil fuel deals.

At COP29, Azerbaijan's president, Ilham Aliyev, said natural resources like oil and gas are a "gift of the god."

"And countries should not be blamed for having them, and should not be blamed for bringing these resources to the market," Aliyev said. "Because the market needs them. The people need them."


A portion of Amazon rainforest deforested by illegal fire in Brazil this August.
Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty

Some countries unveiled new climate targets
As part of the Paris climate treaty, countries have to announce plans to make deeper cuts to their own climate pollution by 2035. The hope is that all the pollution cuts combined will limit the world's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to temperatures from the 1800s.

Targets are due in February, and with a looming deadline, some countries announced their targets in Baku.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a speech early in the summit, announcing the country would slash emissions 81% by 2035, compared with 1990 levels. "It's very important to establish ambition, and that's exactly what the UK [target] did," says Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.

Brazil, whose climate emissions come mostly from rampant deforestation in the Amazon, also announced its target. It plans to cut climate pollution by as much as two-thirds by 2035 compared to 2005 levels. While Brazil says its cuts align with the 1.5 degree goal, climate policy experts say that's still unclear.

Deal over carbon markets draws criticism
One of the goals at this year's summit was to finally agree on rules for a global system for trading carbon offsets, or carbon credits.

Carbon credits are basically a promise. A promise that when a country or business purchases a credit, that money is going toward an action that reduces or removes planet-heating pollution.

At the summit, negotiators concluded negotiations over parts of "Article 6", a part of the Paris Agreement that allows countries to cooperate to reach their climate targets, including by trading carbon credits.

A leading company in the carbon credit sector, Verra, called it "a historic step."

But many carbon market researchers voiced concerns. Research has repeatedly shown that many carbon credits don't reduce emissions. In fact, a new research paper looking at thousands of carbon credit projects found less than 16% of the carbon credits are actually reducing climate pollution.

The new rules "could end up undermining our efforts to rein in emissions rather than advancing them," said the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch in a statement.

Funding for health initiatives falls short
At last year's COP28 in Dubai, advocacy organizations made the case that future climate negotiations should include a new priority: protecting human health. Climate change, they said, is now one of the biggest threats to health worldwide. It is amplifying health risks from extreme weather, such as dangerous heat waves like those in Europe or India that killed tens of thousands of people in recent years. It also spurs the spread of infectious disease, worsens air quality, and stresses people's mental well-being.

"Climate change itself is an overarching issue that influences health," said Florence Ngala, chief environmental officer at the Ministry of Health in Zambia, at the meeting this year.

In her country this year, a climate-worsened flood lasted for two months and led to thousands of cases of cholera and 800 deaths. But the impacts didn't end when the flood receded: the disruption to health services lasted for months, and some health facilities postponed upgrades that might have helped them become more resilient.

Advocates hoped at COP29, developed countries would commit to increasing the amount of money flowing to threatened countries like Zambia. Those would be critical to shoring up health services that protect people from climate-worsened risks and to developing climate-resilient health facilities. But the final commitments fall short of what many developing countries were demanding—and what organizations like the World Bank have suggested is needed.

"It is deeply discouraging to yet again see governments of wealthy countries that claim to be leaders kick the can on climate down the road, at the cost of the lives and health of their populations, and of everyone around the world" says Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance.

What the ‘show me the money’ climate summit tells us about the new Trump era
Politico (archive.ph)
By Zack Colman
2024-11-24 01:24:11GMT

Spoiler

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The U.S. has played the powerbroker in more than 30 years of global negotiations on fighting climate change — a quest that has swept in an army of diplomats, the world’s biggest companies and every nation on Earth.

The first climate summit since Donald Trump’s second White House victory underscored the volatile side of that legacy.

In a 14-day conference focused on hundreds of billions of dollars in climate finance, everybody recognized that the incoming U.S. president will refuse to pay any amount the Biden administration agrees to. President Joe Biden’s emissaries helped orchestrate a multinational pledge for “ambitious” carbon-cutting, but they declined to join it. And as the U.S. prepares to recede from global leadership, much of the rest of the world is looking to China to fill the void.

Trump’s upcoming presidency is the most important source of the instability on display at the COP29 summit, despite all the Biden administration’s efforts to send signals that America is still on board with the climate cause, said Carlos Fuller, Belize’s permanent representative at the United Nations.

“This has become the COP of uncertainty because of that change,” Fuller told POLITICO. “Whatever the U.S. says here — now, it could be with the best intentions — will they follow through? Or will they just say, ‘I can give you everything,’ but then it means nothing?”

Trump’s rise and resurgent far-right political movements across Europe were just one of many shadows over the climate talks that ended early Sunday, held in the capital city of oil-rich Azerbaijan. Saudi resistance torpedoed any effort to end the summit with a call to move away from fossil fuels — never mind that a pledge to do just that was the supposedly triumphant achievement of the last climate summit less than a year ago.

All the while, scientific evidence mounted that the Earth’s temperatures are rising toward catastrophic levels.

“The worst part is the unpredictability,” Brazilian climate chief Ana Toni told POLITICO. “The whole world says that on finance, on policy, we need a roadmap, we need predictability.

“And then,” she added, “you have the U.S. going in and out.”

Here are key takeaways from this year’s climate talks, and what they bode for what’s next:

Hopes for meeting ambitious temperature targets are a bust
COP29 began with inauspicious news: The World Meteorological Organization said that this year would eclipse 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming since the pre-industrial age for the first time.

The mark, which set a record for the modern era, is in some ways symbolic: Crossing that threshold for one year is less dire than doing so over a 30-year climatological timescale, the point at which catastrophic effects of warming — runaway ice melt, heatwaves and droughts that make parts of the world virtually uninhabitable, and rising seas that swallow low-lying lands and islands — would become irreversible.

Still, the milestone showed that the world is most likely heading past 1.5 degrees for the long haul, despite nearly a decade of vows by world leaders to avert it.

Even before Trump takes office, the U.S. is already on track to miss Biden’s target of halving its greenhouse gas pollution during this decade, relative to 2005 levels. Trump’s policies, which include vows to leave the 2015 Paris climate agreement, unwind Biden’s climate law, reverse vehicle fuel economy standards and pump more oil and gas, would throttle the pace of emissions reductions and global cooperation.

Some nations at COP29 echoed Trump’s approach. Populist Argentine President Javier Milei openly flirted with exiting the Paris pact, while Saudi Arabia blocked attempts to restate last year’s fossil fuel pledge.

The U.S., meanwhile, declined to join a coalition including the European Union, Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and Norway that promised during the conference to embrace “ambitious” new climate plans by early next year. U.S. officials did not explain their absence from the effort, even though the Biden administration had helped orchestrate the pledge.

Broadly, nations arrived unwilling to move from their “red lines” on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, said South African Environmental Minister Dion George, who co-chaired that negotiating track. He said the U.S. was more “subdued” when “normally they talk a lot.”

Taking hardened positions is “not in anybody’s interest, frankly, but I think that’s a reflection of where we are heading in the world,” he told POLITICO. “What’s required in this type of environment where we are seeing very interesting geopolitical shifts: Leadership is required. And bravery. And I’m not seeing much of it.”

Show me the money (once Dems are back in power)
The summit’s most contentious issue involved how much money wealthy nations would offer poorer countries to help them cope with climate disasters while moving their economies toward clean energy. Factions arrived poles apart — with some rich countries pushing for $200 billion in climate financing each year for the next decade, even though studies indicate the real need is more than $1 trillion a year.

An independent analysis by finance experts said developing nations needed $300 billion per year of public, mostly grant-based funding that charges little or no interest, plus a total of $1 trillion annually provided by other sources such as the private sector.

Senior U.S. officials acknowledged that the looming four years of Trump 2.0 and at least two years of full Republican control of Congress moderated how much climate finance the United States could expect to deliver. Instead, they sought to craft a deal that a future, climate-friendly administration could meet.

The summit ended with a call for at least $300 billion in annual finance, which representatives of developing countries called insufficient to meet their needs.

“The U.S. elections and many other geopolitical events have changed what [the rich countries] could have provided,” said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a coalition of island states.

Trump and congressional Republicans zeroed out climate finance during the president-elect’s first term. Biden spent four years slowly rebuilding those U.S. efforts, hitting $11.4 billion this year and achieving its goal of quadrupling 2016 levels.

But the pendulum will almost certainly swing back. While Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment on the finance talks, the president-elect has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax designed to weaken the United States, and he has put Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of an effort to find trillions of dollars in cuts from government spending.

At the same time, the U.S. took part in a contentious meeting among major economic powers early Saturday, after which it joined Australia and European countries in agreeing to set the number at $300 billion a year.

One European negotiator criticized the U.S. positioning, saying the Americans “behaved as if they have got more influence than they have when they have only got weeks left in power.”

The emergence of Trump in the U.S. and European leaders who complained of fiscal constraints in their capitals led to “a lot of posturing” and blame shifting on finance, said Ruleta Camacho-Thomas, Antigua and Barbuda’s climate ambassador.

“There’s a lot of waiting and seeing what the other country will do and what the other group of countries will do: ‘But if these people are not doing this, then I can’t do that,’” she said. “That is global politicking. And this is about survival for us.”

As wide as the divide on climate was, Trump’s emergence made it more important to not let COP29 fall to pieces, one European diplomat said.

“The developing countries are now saying that it is better to have no agreement than a bad one,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks. “Normally that is true but in this case, with the upcoming presidency in the U.S., it should be crucial for them to have an agreement now.”

China is ascendant
The U.S. receding under Trump amid his likely withdrawal from the Paris Agreement make room for China to take over the global climate leadership role. But how China will lead is a major question.

Beijing’s massive subsidies for its clean energy technology have reduced costs for developing nations’ green transitions, yet its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure lending program has saddled those countries with onerous debt. While reports show China’s greenhouse gas pollution may have peaked, it is still by far the world’s top driver of climate change. Accelerating China’s carbon-cutting is key for staying below 1.5 degrees, but it’s still building more coal-fired power plants.

China also routinely resists pleas for transparency for its pollution-cutting measures. The same is true on climate finance.

“China is a bit complex, but at the same time, we do see leadership from China,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director with the environmental group Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

Trump’s rise will likely give China more of the global market, clean energy analysts have said. Ending Biden’s consumer incentives for buying electric cars, which Republicans have targeted, and subsidies for making batteries, solar panels and wind turbines would curtail burgeoning U.S. efforts to compete in realms that China dominates.

China has also led a backlash against efforts by the U.S. and other wealthy nations to impose industrial policies that would blunt China’s stranglehold over key raw materials and technologies for green energy. It has prodded emerging economies to criticize policies such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and and the EU’s carbon border tariff, arguing they make greening their economies more expensive.

At COP29, Trump’s impending return to power gave the U.S. less leverage to corral China into making compulsory contributions to the finance goals. China — which has the world’s second-largest economy — hung onto a 1992 U.N. determination that it is poor enough to avoid paying into those efforts, though the final agreement leaves the door open for countries that have since grown wealthier to make commitments if they desire.

China, however, sought to disarm criticism when it for the first time offered a figure for the amount of finance it has provided to other nations through its long-touted “South-South Cooperation.” The total is $25 billion since 2016, the Chinese said.

Zia Weise contributed to this report.

 

[N Space]

You just know these gibs will do nothing more than engorge the pockets of NGOs and corrupt politicians.

 

[Would]

To live in a time where the losers and beggars demand you give them everything you own is such an interesting one.

I await the man to tell them "no" and set their village aflame.

 

[NoSpiceLife]

I wonder what the IQ levels are of politicians in developing countries. Surely they would have to be far greater than the people they govern.

Average IQ in Africa is under 70, and South America is under 90 (does anyone know how current datapandas' data is). At that level they could be easily coerced into believing whatever they are told, and left wondering why it's so hard to get money out of first world countries.