The Climate Summit held in Baku (Azerbaijan) has reached its final stretch without an agreement in sight. With less than 36 hours to go until it officially ends, the nearly 200 countries present are still unable to find consensus on key COP29 issues, such as who will pay, how much and how to help developing economies reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the worst impacts of rising global temperatures.
After a week and a half of negotiations, the summit presidency has published the basic texts for an agreement, which are supposed to reflect the work done so far and foster the greatest possible consensus. But it has not been like that. On key issues such as financing The text does not reflect any specific figure to update the 100,000 million that are now contributed annually although it speaks of “billions”; It also keeps the donor base open for these funds, without further specification, and does not reflect progress on work to reduce greenhouse emissions or efforts to leave fossil fuels behind.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” said EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. “Is clearly unacceptable as it is now«, he criticized on the basis that the text is now not »balanced«. One of the EU’s workhorses is to get large economies that until now have not contributed to climate financing, such as China or the Gulf states, to enter into it; as well as recognizing new financing avenues that are not limited only to state contributions.
The US climate envoy, John Podesta, also said he was “deeply concerned” by the texts. And a wide variety of countries spoke in the same sense, with conflicting interests and for different reasons. “The current text contains many elements that are neither satisfactory nor acceptable to China«said Xia Yingxian, a Chinese official, reports AFP; while the group of underdeveloped countries, grouped in the G77defended the need to put clear figures on the table and they pointed out that a mobilization goal of “at least” 500,000 million dollars annually is needed.
As usual, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has traveled to COP29 in this final phase to try to give a boost to the negotiations. “COP29 is now at its most critical point, but failure is not an option,” he stated in a press conference. However, Guterres has recognized that many countries are still in their initial positions, defending the same claims with which they came to the summit, when it is time to give in and look for a meeting place. It is time to move, move forward and put the cards on the table, urged the secretary general, because there are still many “substantial differences.”
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