Developing nations staged a walkout at the United Nations climate talks in Baku, demanding wealthy emitter nations step up financial aid to combat the effects of global warming.
Host nation Azerbaijan urged delegates to seek consensus as COP29, already extended into an extra day, verged on the brink of failure.
“I know that none of us wants to leave Baku without a good outcome,” COP President Mukhtar Babayev told climate officials from around the world on November 23, urging them to “bridge the remaining divide.”
Small island states and the least developed nations walked out of negotiations on a funding package for poor countries to curb and adapt to climate change, saying their climate finance interests were being ignored.
“[The] current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do,” said Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries group.
Developing countries have been pushing rich countries for years to finance their attempts to battle the impact of climate change, saying that the extreme weather and rising seas hurting them is the result of greenhouse gas emitted by the wealthy nations decades ago.
In 2009, rich countries pledged $100 billion a year in annual climate aid by the early 2020s but some have been struggling to meet their commitments.
The last official draft on November 22 pledged $250 billion annually by 2035, more than double the previous goal, but far short of the annual $1 trillion-plus that experts say is needed.
Experts said that rich countries like the United States and Europe are facing budget constraints due to the coronavirus pandemic and now wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The United States has allocated $174 billion to Ukraine and billions more to Israel to help bolster their defenses. European nations have also allocated well north of $100 billion for Ukraine.
In a bid to save COP29, representatives from the European Union, the United States, and other wealthy countries met directly with those of developing nations to work out an agreement.
“If we don’t get a deal I think it will be a fatal wound to this process, to the planet, to people,” Panama’s special representative for climate change, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez said.