Pressure ramps up at UN talks to reach a deal for cash to curb and adapt to climate change

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.

A rough draft of a new proposal circulating in the 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.

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. And as the calendar and clock left, so did more of the negotiators from poor nations.

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 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.

Cedric Schuster, the Samoan chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States issued a statement saying they “were not part of the discussion that gave rise to these imbalanced texts” and asked the COP29 presidency to listen to them.

A climate cash deal is still elusive

Wealthy nations are obligated to help vulnerable countries under an agreement reached at these talks in Paris in 2015. 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.

For Panama's negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez even the higher $300 billion figure is “still crumbs.”

“How do you go from the request of $1.3 trillion to $300 billion? I mean, is that even half of what we put forth?” he asked.

On Saturday morning, Irish environment minister Eamon Ryan said that there'll likely be a new number for climate finance in the next draft. “But it’s not just that number — it's how do you get to $1.3 trillion," he said.

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.

"We have to get agreement quickly. And I hope and believe we can,” Ryan said. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the European delegation was “doing everything we can on each of the axes to build bridges and to make this into a success.”

Alden Meyer, of the European think tank E3G, said negotiators now have very little room for error.

“They’ve got to make sure whatever they put on the table is something that can fly. ... Because otherwise we start to lose critical mass as ministers start to leave tonight and into tomorrow,” Meyer said. “This is when it gets real.”

Anger and frustration over state of negotiations

Meyer 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. “That obviously is not an ideal scenario.”

Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulai, the Sierra-Leone environment minister, echoed that sentiment, saying “a bad deal may be worse than no deal for us.”

Nations were also angry at potential backsliding on commitments to slash fossil fuels. German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock called out rich fossil fuel emitters who she said have “ripped off” climate vulnerable states.

“We are in the midst of a geopolitical power play by a few fossil fuel states,” Baerbock said. “We have to do everything to come toward the 1.5 degree (Celsius, 2.7 Fahrenheit) pathway” of keeping warming below that temperature limit since preindustrial times, she said.

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Associated Press journalists Ahmed Hatem, Aleksandar Furtula and Joshua A. Bickel contributed to this report.

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