The 29th UN climate conference opened Monday in Azerbaijan with the main challenge of finding a compromise on the amounts of financial aid for the poorest countries vulnerable to climate change.
COP29 is being held six days after the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, the world’s leading power and second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which could soon leave the flagship Paris climate agreement in 2015 once M Trump will enter the White House on January 20.
This planned US withdrawal from diplomacy makes it all the more difficult to reach consensus in Baku by the end of the conference on November 22.
The central standoff is to negotiate the amount of financial aid from developed countries to developing countries so that they develop without fossil fuels and adapt to the effects of a more extreme climate.
Today at 116 billion dollars per year (as of 2022), the new commitment must be in thousands of billions annually, demand the poor countries.
But Westerners consider this order of magnitude unrealistic for their public finances.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babaev spoke of “hundreds of billions” in his opening speech on Monday, but no negotiator has officially revealed their cards.
“We are on the path to ruin. And it’s not about future problems. Climate change is already here,” underlined Mr. Babaev, also Minister of Ecology of Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas power. “We must now demonstrate that we are ready to achieve the objectives we have set for ourselves. It’s not an easy thing.”
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