Reporting from the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan
A two-week marathon of climate talks has entered its grueling final dash. Developed and developing nations were still deadlocked over how many hundreds of billions of dollars wealthy countries should invest to help speed the global transition to cleaner energy and protect the most vulnerable countries against the drumbeat of catastrophes that accompany global warming.
The seemingly sleepless deliberations at the summit, which is scheduled to end on Friday, resemble a tug of war: The world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries have banded together with newly industrialized economic giants like China and India to demand that history’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters, including the United States and Europe, come up with a plan to provide $1.3 trillion in climate financing per year.
To put that number in context: Western countries have struggled to cobble together the $100 billion per year they promised at a climate summit 15 years ago. The financing question has become even trickier with a recent rightward political shift in some of those countries, notably the election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president just a week before the start of this year’s climate summit, known as COP29.
Though U.N. climate summits normally run into overtime, they rarely collapse entirely. But money is such a contentious issue that the possibility of failure loomed over the negotiations on Thursday.
The overarching objective of the talks, being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, is to set a new goal for annual financial flows. The $1.3 trillion number is based on cost estimates by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, a new body appointed by the United Nations, for developing and deploying technology that would hold the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with the preindustrial average.
“There is a clear obligation from developed countries,” said Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s lead negotiator, reacting to a draft resolution made public on Thursday morning that showed the two sides still far apart. “It is very frustrating. We need a justifiable number that will meet what we need.”
The United States, the world’s biggest economy and history’s biggest emitter, is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement when Mr. Trump takes office, which means the country would very likely renege on whatever financial commitments the final agreement sets out.
That has prompted Western negotiators in Baku to try to shift more reliance onto the private sector and lending institutions like the World Bank, rather than national budgets, as ultimate sources of climate finance.
Rivals of the West have capitalized on the disappointment felt by the rest of the world and sought to portray the deadlock as a betrayal.
“Western countries and Europe are trying to dilute what is already in the Paris Agreement,” said Ruslan Edelgeriev, the head of the Russian delegation in Baku and the chief climate adviser to President Vladimir V. Putin. He said he had seen “no great desire to increase” the amount of climate finance from developed nations in the negotiations he had attended.
India, like many developing countries, has used the negotiations to remind developed countries and the lending institutions they control that no emerging economy will limit its growth voluntarily. They say that not only is there not enough money for clean energy investments, but also that developing countries are locked out of much of it by onerous interest rates, which make renewable sources more expensive than fossil fuels like coal and oil.
“India’s investment needs for clean energy alone amount to half a trillion dollars per year,” said Arunabha Ghosh, who leads the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a prominent Indian research organization monitoring the talks. “But what I’m hearing is the same old, same old. On one level, recognition that the planet is off track, but there’s a lack of credible action and accountability. No one comes across as a clear leader.”
Decisions at COP summits must be reached by unanimous consent. That means geopolitical blocs, or even individual countries, can drive hard bargains that threaten to derail the talks entirely.
Further complicating the talks, under U.N. rules set down decades ago, China is considered a developing country. Western nations have pushed for the list of developed countries to be expanded to include China and others, like Saudi Arabia, essentially drafting them into a list of donor countries that would be held accountable for financial contributions. China has recently overtaken Europe as the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in history.
The Azerbaijani hosts, who have no leadership experience from past summits, have delegated responsibility to Ana Toni, Brazil’s top climate official at the conference, and her British counterpart, Alok Sharma, to be the final agreement’s main shepherds.
“It’s about achieving balance,” Ms. Toni said. “You are trying to make everyone equal, either in their happiness or unhappiness, with the final agreement’s language.”
Several Western officials, speaking anonymously to discuss the continuing negotiations, pointed to what they said was a “landing zone” that would involve a relatively modest increase in upfront finance pledges — to $200 billion or $300 billion a year from $100 billion a year — with heavy emphasis on efforts to reach into the trillions by leveraging private capital.
As with all COP resolutions, that will require deftly crafted language. Developing countries will need to feel assured that, while the resolution is ultimately nonbinding, its terms aren’t riddled with so many loopholes that they water down the core message that the financial obligation of wealthy countries is now of an order many times higher.
The talks coincide with another year of record-breaking heat.
Global greenhouse gas emissions soared to a record 57 gigatons last year, and they are not on track to decline much, if at all, this decade, according to a U.N. report issued just before the summit. Collectively, nations have been so slow to curtail their use of oil, gas and coal that it now looks nearly impossible to limit the global temperature the strictest targets set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Scientists say every fraction of a degree of warming brings greater risks from deadly heat waves, wildfires, drought, storms and species extinction.
Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London.
Max Bearak is a Times reporter who writes about global energy and climate policies and new approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. More about Max Bearak
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