Dozens of people march in silence during the Climate Summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, better known as the COP29. There, they raised and crossed their arms to protest against the draft text, published this Friday. According to the letter, there will be no reduction in the use of fossil fuels or taxes on oil companies.
Small island states and some Africans left the negotiating room this Saturday where they learned of the existence latest proposal from the presidency for the climate finance agreement finalized by COP29, where they said they did not feel heard.
The political representatives of the negotiating group which brings together the least developed countries as well as that of the small island states claimed to have come to the climate summit to close the climate summit. “a fair deal” on climate financebut they felt “hurt” by not having been consulted.
“There is an agreement to be made and we are not consulted. “We are here to negotiate, but we are leaving because at the moment we do not feel heard,” said the head of the island countries negotiating group, Cedric Schuste, in statements to the media.
Some Latin American and Caribbean states, which are trying to build bridges between less developed countries and rich countries, have expressed their refusal to admit that this Baku summit would end without an agreement. “We cannot leave Baku like we leave Copenhagen,” said Panama’s special climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey, referring to the climate summit held in the Danish capital in 2009, a meeting that the international community of the climate considered a failure by not having reached any agreement. .
“We are already at the point of not only building bridges, but also walking on these bridges,” concluded Monterrey, after clarifying that the countries had left the consultation mainly because of their differences on the total amount that the countries rich people propose to mobilize to finance the consultation. climate transition and adaptation to the inevitable impacts of global warming.
“The big fight is numbers,” Monterrey said, as developing countries argue at this point that the goal be $300 billion per year by 2035and developing and emerging economies demand $500 billion annually and by 2030.
Lack of transparency in the process
Panama’s chief negotiator, Ana Aguilar, also criticized the lack of transparency in the process, blaming the Azeri presidency of the summit, which she said had more meetings with some parties than others, and it There have been three days without favoring negotiations rather than bilateral negotiations. “We have a problem,” said Colombian Minister Susana Muhamad, who said there was still a problem. a lot of distance between the amount that rich countries propose to mobilize and that requested by developing countries.
The COP29 presidency’s proposal, as reflected in a negotiating text made public on Friday, was that rich countries pay $250 billion per year by 2035 to the Southern States, to help them finance action against climate change, a phenomenon to which they contribute little but of which they are the main victims.
We are now talking about $300 billion, while the largest group of developing countries asks for at least 500 billion. The dispute is mostly over the amount, Muhamad said, but also “over some of the demands that I believe we can achieve through negotiation,” he said.
“The problem is that it was published very late, it was published yesterday. [en referencia a este viernes]. The lead time is very short, so we have some countries, those who have less financial capacity“We need them to be able to move and deliberate.” The Colombian minister said she would encourage rich countries “to take a step forward” and added: “this is very important so that we can move forward and move forward in this negotiation.”
