Scores of poor countries’ leaders have rejected negotiators position at the United Nations climate talks which agreed on a $300 billion funding target to help developing nations adapt to climate change.
The funding support from the developed countries was sequel to the agreement reached on Sunday, a day after the COP29 talks were expected to end in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
According to the pact, the richer nations agreed to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer countries make their economies more environmental-friendly, and prepare for natural disasters.
The $300 billion though represented an increase from a previous $100 billion pledged by the developed countries, but was still estimated to be $200bn less than the amount canvassed by a group of 134 developing countries.
A larger target of $1.3 trillion per year was also part of the deal, but most of that would come from private sources.
Commenting on the agreed funding, a delegate from India, Leena Nandan, said: “The amount that is proposed to be mobilised is abysmally poor. It’s a paltry sum. This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
Earlier, delegates from small island states and the least developed nations walked out of negotiations on the funding package, saying their climate finance interest were being ignored.
Speaking on the small island states’ position on the deal, the Samoan chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, a coalition of nations threatened by rising seas, Cedric Schuster, said: “We’ve just walked out. We came here to this COP for a fair deal. We feel that we haven’t been heard.”
Also, chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, Evans Njewa, said: “The current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.”
When asked by journalists if the walkout was a protest, Colombia Environment Minister, Susana Mohamed, told The Associated Press news agency: “I would call this dissatisfaction, [we are] highly dissatisfied.”
With tensions high, climate activists also heckled United States climate envoy, John Podesta, as he was leaving the meeting room and accused the US of not paying its fair share and having “a legacy of burning up the planet”.
COP President, Mukhtar Babayev, told a late-night session on Saturday after the walk-out, “that none of us wants to leave Baku without a good outcome”, and urged all nations to “bridge the remaining divide”.
The representatives from the European Union (EU), the United States and other rich countries had later on Saturday met directly with those of developing nations in an attempt to work out an agreement.
Specifically, during the meeting developing countries had sought $1.3 trillion to help adapt to droughts, floods, rising seas and extreme heat, pay for losses and damage caused by extreme weather, and transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and towards clean energy.
However, following the negotiations at the meeting, they accused the rich of trying to get their way – and a smaller financial aid package – through a war of attrition, while the small island nations, particularly those vulnerable to climate change’s worsening effects, accused the Azerbaijan’s presidency of ignoring them throughout the talks.
Before the final deal was announced, Panama’s chief negotiator, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, said he had had enough of the insincere disposition of the richer countries, saying that “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
“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,” Gomez added.
In her remarks on the accusations of the poor nations’ leaders against the rich countries, Nazanine Moshiri, senior climate and environment analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that rich countries were being restricted by economic conditions.
She said: “Wealthy nations are constrained by tight domestic budgets, by the Gaza war, by Ukraine and also other conflicts, for example in Sudan, and [other] economic issues.
“This is at odds with what developing countries are grappling with: the mounting costs of storms, floods and droughts, which are being fuelled by climate change”, Moshiri added.
