‘High risk of collapse’: UN climate talks head into the final stretch as concerns grow
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COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev (left) and Executive Secretary of UNFCCC Simon Stiell attend a press conference at the UN Climate Change Conference COP29.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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BAKU, Azerbaijan – More than halfway through the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, negotiators from nearly 200 countries remain far apart on a number of the key issues up for debate.
As nations try to agree on a plan to provide potentially trillions of dollars to developing countries suffering from the effects of climate change, divisions remain over how much money should be made available, what kind of financing efforts should count toward the overall goal and how recipient countries should gain access to the funds.
Negotiations often go into overtime. But with just four days to go, many attendees fear that this could be the first summit since the 2009 talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, to conclude without a deal.
“There is a high risk this could collapse,” said a senior negotiator for a major European country, who requested anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly.
Simon Stiell, the United Nations climate chief, pleaded on Nov 18 with countries to stop fighting and to reach a deal.
Some diplomats have expressed frustration with Mukhtar Babayev, the Azerbaijani minister who is president of the climate summit, which is known as COP29. Instead of rapidly dealing with a number of the smaller issues in play last week, negotiations moved at a plodding pace and many points of dispute remain unresolved.
At a news conference on Nov 18, Mr Babayev acknowledged that talks were moving sluggishly. “People have told me that they’re concerned about the state of the negotiations,” he said. “Let me be clear, I’m also concerned that the parties are not moving toward each other quickly enough. It’s time to for them to move faster.”
Diplomats started the summit wrangling over a nine-page draft agreement that would call for raising as much as US$1.3 trillion (S$1.74 trillion) per year to help vulnerable nations shift to low-carbon sources of energy such as wind and solar power, and also help them adapt to heat waves, floods, droughts and other hazards of climate change.
Since then, however, that text has ballooned to 25 pages as countries toss in new fine print and options for consideration. Such semantic details can represent wildly different interpretations of some of the major issues. NYTIMES
