Summary for the day
We’re winding down the blog now. Negotiations are still taking place over the draft texts, and there has been no announcement of whether we’ll have another set of drafts soon, whether the next text will be the final one, or whether it’s just all on hold till tomorrow. Some are choosing to get a bit of sleep before the potential slog over the weekend.
It felt like a busy day but what actually happened?
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said on Thursday night that rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine, and warned that poorer countries might have to compromise.
The UK government pledged £239m to tackle deforestation
In an unusual intervention, the UAE stepped in and warned that the world must stand behind a historic resolution made last year to “transition away from fossil fuels” as the Saudis tried to block the language.
The draft text was published, but met a pretty hostile reception. It called for $1.3tn by 2035.
Civil society called it “an absolute embarrassment”
Few countries have spoken up so far, but their reactions have been mixed. The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has responded to the latest text from the presidency, describing it as a “genuine attempt”. But Amb Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s Special Envoy for chair of the African Group of Negotiators called it as “totally unacceptable and inadequate.”
We’re waiting for the next round of texts to emerge and will pick up the story then.
If you’re just catching up on events, the impact of the draft text is helpfully reported by my brilliant colleague Fiona Harvey here:
Updated
It’s worth going back to this piece by my colleague Fiona Harvey for some idea of why this Cop is quite so tricky.
Written as we glided in towards the opening day, she explains:
Money will be the core focus of Cop29. Under the Paris agreement, countries must agree a “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) for climate finance, to flow from the rich to the poor, to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.
This is something that has never been tried before in three decades of talks. Until now, the only climate finance target has been a promise made in 2009, at Cop15 in Copenhagen, for $100bn a year to flow to the developing world by 2020. That target was only achieved two years late – a delay that damaged the faith of developing countries, according to Alok Sharma, the president of Cop26 in Glasgow and now a member of the UK’s House of Lords. “Not reaching the previous $100bn goal on time sapped the confidence and trust of developing nations, and that’s why any future finance goal has to meet the deliverability test,” he said.
No Cop has ever discussed a finance goal before, let alone any tested of its rationale. The $100bn figure was “plucked out of the air”, said Rachel Kyte, the UK’s new climate envoy, speaking before her appointment to the role. The offer was made – largely at the instigation of the then US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton – based on political calculations of what developed country governments thought their electorates would stand for.
It’s that unprecedented aim which is one of the reasons this Cop is turning out so tricky.
For the Azerbaijan presidency, it was clear from early in the talks that reconciling these two approaches – one based on need, the other on what developed countries are prepared to stump up – means including at least two key numbers in the NCQG. What has emerged from pre-Cop talks in recent months is a “layered approach”. These layers have led some participants to call it an onion, others a camembert (because the sources of cash will be divided up into wedges), while a few prefer comparisons to a pie or a sandwich.
However, we’re a few hours away from the supposed end of these talks, and the camembert, or apple, or pie, or sandwich remains, for now, intact.
Meanwhile the Azerbaijani energy minister, Perviz Shahbazov, has been talking fossil fuel deals at the Istanbul Energy Forum, my colleague Dharna Noor spotted.
Turkey’s energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, said on X: “During the meeting, we discussed the possibilities to increase natural gas supply and TPAO’s [Turkish oil company] activities in new fields in the Caspian to further enhance our already intensive natural gas cooperation.”
No new fossil fuel production is compatible with net zero emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency said in 2021. But Azerbaijan is planning to significantly expand its gas production in the next decade. Do as I say, not as I do?
Updated
Azerbaijan wins Fossil of the day
There is some sympathy for the host nation Azerbaijan, as they attempt to usher this increasingly acrimonious conference towards some sort of finishing point.
But no mercy is being shown by Climate Action Network, the gigantic web of climate groups which awards the Fossil of the day award every day at Cop. They’ve chosen … yes, that’s right, Azerbaijan!
Their reasons:
Today’s fossil goes to a country that doesn’t understand the gravity of the Presidency, or for that matter the value of civil society. Azerbaijan has fallen short, way short of the leadership needed here, which shouldn’t be that hard given the previous two COPs were hosted by the fossil fuel industry.
Their take-it-or-leave-it approach is putting at risk not only the climate finance goal, but also other crucial topics failing to advance human rights-based climate action, such as the Just Transition & Gender Work Programmes.
In these decisive hours, the COP29 Presidency must use every chance to bring negotiators back to the table and to secure the transformative outcomes that it had the mandate, and responsibility, to deliver. There is no hope without climate finance, we must move forward here before we reach Belém [where next year’s Cop will be taking place].
Updated
Afternoon or evening, depending on where you are. This is Bibi van der Zee, taking over from my colleague Matthew Taylor. Send over your thoughts and suggestions at bibi.vanderzee@theguardian.com.
The Alliance of Small Island Developing States says it is “deeply disappointed” by the texts which “basically asks Parties “how low can you go?” on climate ambition. This is unacceptable.”
This text will not be adequate to fully implement the Paris Agreement, to truly drive action to hold the 1.5C limit.
On the NCQG, the proposed $250 billion a year by 2035 is no floor, but a cap that will severely stagnate climate action efforts.
It is an investment goal that stands at a fraction of the at least $1.3 trillion that is needed to effectively protect our world from the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
It does not raise the bar from the previous ineffective $100 billion goal.
We cannot be expected to agree to a text which shows such contempt for our vulnerable people.
We appeal to the moral conscience of those who proclaim to be our partners to stand with us, give us a hand, do not leave us further behind.
For 30 years, SIDS have been bearing the costs and the burden of climate impacts.
All we ask is that we are guaranteed and receive the protection that is promised to us under the Paris Agreement. This ask is not a threat. It is just a matter of justice.
Tina Stege, Marshall Islands Climate Envoy, says: “It is shameful to put forward texts like these. This package puts small island developing states and the least developing countries first on the chopping block.
“When the world ignores the science and stands still on fossil fuels, what we hear is that our futures are being tossed away. We cannot accept that.
“On finance, we are offered only a fraction of what the world has spent on war in the past year, and lose everything that we have fought for over the past two years to make that money more accessible to smaller nations. No sub-targets or minimum floors. No definition of climate finance. No clarity or accountability for where the money will come from or go to.
She finishes by saying: “It is incomprehensible that year after year we bring our stories of climate impacts to these meetings and receive only sympathy and no real action from wealthy nations. We are not here to tell stories. We are here to save our communities.”
Updated
Trade unions representatives at Cop29 have weighed in, describing the climate finance goal “as nothing more than a bluff” and “an outcome so inadequate it can be dismissed out of hand”.
The Trade Union Non-Government Organisations, known as Tungo, are one of nine UN-recognised NGO constituencies at the summit.
In a statement, it said:
“At a time when the world needs to be massively expanding climate finance this deal could well scale it back. It sets a goal of $250bn by 2035. Given inflation, this barely even budges the status quo, in real terms.
“It leaves the global south with a fraction of the financing the text itself recognises as essential. There are no commitments to public or concessional financing and only a token reference to loss and damage. Crucially, human rights have been stripped out, and workers deliberately omitted.”
Updated
Following a flurry of [overwhelmingly negative] reaction to the new texts released a few hours ago, we are now waiting for the plenary – where countries set out their formal reaction – to start.
My colleagues on the ground in Baku have asked Cop29 officials what the timings might be as this stretches into the evening local time. but are getting nothing back yet.
Updated
The scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics, Bill Hare, who has been attending Cops since the 1990s, says there are “massive issues” with the text . He describes the proposed climate finance goal as “incredibly weak”.
“I think the presidency will have to iterate more than once now to try and find something workable,” he said.
On climate finance, he said the $250bn goal was weak as “any kind of finance can count towards it, and it only needs to be achieved by 2035, which means it’s essentially a ceiling, not a floor”.
“It also expands the contributor base to include anything that multilateral development banks fund. It means developed countries are not accepting the responsibility they have.
“Small islands and the least developed countries have been sidelined by the Azeri Presidency text. There is no mention of minimum allocations from them - a key ask - no explicit acknowledgement even of their special circumstances, which is already in the Paris agreement and the convention, so a step back to not include here. And perhaps most cruelly is the exclusion of any mention of loss and damage.
“The ‘call’ for a broader mobilisation of climate finance from public and private sources including investment is quite weak, being just a call when there needs to be strong direction.
“The $1.3tn per year put forward to go to developing countries by 2035 needs to be now and not 10 years time - and would need to be much higher by 2035.”
Updated
My colleague Dharna Noor has this from Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s climate envoy, on the new texts:
”This is not at a landing ground yet, but at least we’re not up in the air without a map.
Lots of work still needs to be done. We‘re working with allies from all around the world, especially the most vulnerable, to ensure an ambitious and fair outcome.”
Updated
Draft text 'unacceptable and inadequate'- African Group of Negotiators
My colleague Dharna Noor has this from Amb Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s Special Envoy for chair of the African Group of Negotiators.
Like many others he is furious about the latest text, describing it as “totally unacceptable and inadequate.”
On the New Collective Quantified Goal text, he says:
“The proposed target to mobilise $250 billion per year by 2035 is totally unacceptable and inadequate to delivering the Paris Agreement. The Adaptation Gap Report alone says the adaptation needs are $400 billion; $250 billion will lead to unacceptable loss of life in Africa and around the world, and imperils the future of our world. Moreover, it is no longer developed countries who are responsible under this formulation. It is rendered as a target for which all countries are responsible and where developed countries are taking the lead. This is unacceptable.”
On the Global Goal on Adaptation text, he says:
“The African Group of Negotiators reiterates the importance of prioritising adaptation and calls for an explicit decision for the technical and expert teams to finalise the work on the indicators six weeks prior to SB62. We believe that the finalisation of indicators is a party- driven process, and as such parties must be given enough time to consider the work and further the development of indicators. Furthermore, we are not happy with the inclusion of transformation adaptation in the text as parties did not have adequate time to engage on the concept. We are also extremely disappointed that the outcome does not provide a clear guidance on the inclusion of the indicators to track the means of implementation for the adaptation. We call for clear guidance for the inclusion of the Means of Implementation in the final text.”
On the Just Transition Work Programme text, he says:
“The Just Transition text is unacceptable and lacks balance between domestic and international dimensions of just transitions. Just transition is about fairness, international cooperation, shared prosperity and access to economic opportunities, as well as addressing challenges for the transitions. The Baku decision should effectively respond to the Dubai mandate and scope of just transitions.”
Updated
A joint statement by Amar Bhattacharya, Vera Songwe and Nicholas Stern, co-chairs of the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, recognises that $250bn from developed to developing countries is “too low and not consistent with delivery of the Paris Agreement”.
We welcome publication of the new COP29 Presidency text on the new collective quantified goal on climate finance. It calls on “all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country Parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035”. This is consistent with our analysis of the investments and external finance required by developing countries outside China to deliver on the goals of the Paris Agreement. The text also calls on developed countries to increase their financial support for developing countries to $250 billion per year by 2035. This figure is too low and not consistent with delivery of the Paris Agreement. Our analysis shows that the NCQG, based on the components that it covers, should commit developed countries to provide at least $300 billion per year by 2030, and $390 billion per year by 2035. We believe that these targets are feasible and will require stepped up direct bilateral finance from developed countries, much higher ambition on the part of the multilateral development banks, and improved private finance mobilisation.
"A genuine attempt" - Australian take on the new text
The Australian climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has responded to the latest text from the presidency, describing it as a “genuine attempt”.
He said there would be “long and tough conversations” into the night. “I think we’re in a genuinely finely balanced situation.”
On the climate finance target, he said: “Any quantum conversation is going to be highly controversial. There has been a strong effort to try to get a quantum that is ambitious and achievable. There is no point in the developed world signing on to a quantum that they just don’t believe they can deliver, so that will be a key issue over coming hours.”
Speaking on behalf of the Umbrella Group of wealthy countries in the plenary on Thursday, Bowen was sharply critical of the lack of an explicit reference to the agreement in Dubai that the world needs to triple renewable energy by 2030 and transition away from fossil fuels.
He noted there had been changes on this in the latest text. It now says the summit “reaffirms the outcomes of the first global stocktake” - that is, what was agreed last year.
“Obviously I’m pleased that there is no explicit backsliding from the Dubai consensus. There are ongoing references to the work of that. I always like to have these things loud and explicit but that will be an ongoing conversation over the course of the evening,” he said.
Bowen did not speculate on when Cop29 might finish. He is scheduled to leave tomorrow night to be in the Australian parliament from Monday for the release of a national climate statement next week.
Updated
"Outrageous, evil and remorseless" - Panama's view on text
Reaction to the latest Cop29 negotiating texts from countries is starting to arrive. Panama’s lead negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, who gave a barnstorming speech yesterday, is absolutely furious:
“The $250bn offered by developed countries is a spit on the face of vulnerable nations like mine. They offer crumbs while we bear the dead. Outrageous, evil and remorseless.”
Updated
It is fair to say the reaction to the new text from civil society groups has been overwhelmingly negative. There are a few more here – some again suggesting developing countries walk away – the key thing now is to hear what countries say. It could be a bruising afternoon.
Mariana Paoli, from Christian Aid, said:
It is baffling that despite everyone knowing all year that this was the ‘finance COP’, rich countries are still refusing to put substantial enough funding pledges on the table. This is irresponsible, immoral and risks condemning both people and planet. Developing countries would be better walking away from the table than signing up to this garbage.
“With hours to go, unless significant changes are made to the text, especially the amount of finance to be provided, developing countries will be left behind. The funding that the global south is fighting for here is a lifeline and will lay the groundwork for climate action over the next decade.
Victor Menotti, US coordinator for the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice, told the Guardian:
“The big thing people are looking for is that quantum, the core of public financing, go up from the 100 billion years ago. Now what we’re seeing, 250 billion, is in current dollars about the same amount of money when you consider inflation and all of that. So it’s something between a joke or an insult…. The trillion is a big number. It’s more than the Pentagon budget. But what’s important is the public resources that are going to leverage that money.
Stephen Cornelius, from WWF said:
The climate finance text is completely inadequate. It now has a finance target, but it completely misses the mark. The amount is far too low, and rich countries don’t even commit to delivering all of it. This simply will not be good enough, and I expect there will be fireworks when countries meet later. We need a core of public finance closer to US$1 trillion. There is too much at stake for this process to end in a bad deal that doesn’t deliver the necessary finance. This is an investment in our collective future.
Dr Vaibhav Chaturvedi, senior fellow, Council on Energy, Environment and Water in India said:
The 1.3 trillion USD number is at best a sham. Even the apparent increase in the provision from developed world to developing world of USD 250 Bn USD annually by 2035 is the same as the 100 Bn USD by 2020 if 6% annual average inflation is accounted for. There is no grant or low cost finance component. This is a bad deal for the developing world, irrespective of how it is going to be portrayed by the presidency.
Updated
In response to the newly released text on climate finance, a senior U.S. official said: “It has been a significant lift over the past decade to meet the prior, smaller goal. $250 billion will require even more ambition and extraordinary reach. This goal will need to be supported by ambitious bilateral action, MDB [multilateral development banks] contributions, and efforts to better mobilize private finance, among other critical factors.”
In 2009, developed countries agreed that by 2020, they would collectively mobilize $100 billion per year to support developing countries’ decarbonization and adaptation plans.
Updated
"An absolute embarrassment" - civil society reacts to Cop text
But the reassurances from the Cop presidency have done little to calm the anger of civil society groups.
In response to the latest NCQG text, Laurie van der Burg, Oil Change International global public finance manager, said:
This text is an absolute embarrassment. It’s the equivalent of governments handing the keys to the firetruck to the arsonists. The vague $1.3 trillion investment target is not to be relied on and the $250 billion goal is not debt-free. Previous suggestions to end fossil fuel handouts and make polluters pay have all been axed. This amounts to a cop-out for polluters and allows rich countries to dodge their responsibilities by relying on the private sector and even developing countries to cover the bill, creating a debt-trap for countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis.
“We know rich countries can pay up the trillions they owe to the Global South by ending fossil fuel handouts, taxing the super rich, and changing unfair global financial rules. We need a dramatic change in direction if we want a fighting chance to leave Baku with a finance deal that can support the fair fossil fuel phaseout that we need to avoid breaching 1.5°C.
Namrata Chowdhary, Chief of Public Engagement at 350.org said:
The Global North must stop playing poker with people’s lives and pay their overdue debt. We need real leadership—from wealthy nations and the Presidency—to land this deal. If they can’t deliver, they must step aside, because we will not accept a bad deal that fails to meet the moment.
As the world watches what should be the final day of this year’s climate talks, the agreement we came here for remains elusive. This new climate finance goal is three years in the making, and the global majority remains leaps and bounds ahead of the governments who are continuing to stall and let progress slip away in the name of profits. But we will not be silenced. At COP29, we hold the line in our demand for more climate finance, not this bare minimum offer.
Updated
Statement from the COP29 Presidency
A statement from the COP29 Presidency insists the new text is the result of “an extensive and inclusive consultation process.”
Throughout the year, the COP29 Presidency has been pushing for a fair and ambitious new climate finance goal, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing country Parties.
We conducted an extensive and inclusive consultation process that extended into the early hours of the morning.
We gave all groups the opportunity to react to the package of texts we released yesterday morning and we thank them for their constructive engagement.
Taking into account the views expressed during the consultations, and what we heard from Parties at yesterday’s Qurultay, we have now published updated texts.
These texts form a balanced and streamlined package for COP29. The COP29 Presidency urges Parties to study this text intently, to pave the way towards consensus, on the few options remaining.
As a first reflection of Parties indications the New Collective Quantified Goal decision contains a call on all Parties to work together to scale up financing to developing countries for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035.
Further, reflecting the submission of developed country parties, it includes a decision to set a goal in extension of the goal of jointly mobilizing USD 100 billion per year, with developed country Parties taking the lead, to USD 250 billion by 2035 for developing country Parties for climate action.
We will further engage with Parties to collectively agree final adjustments to the few outstanding yet important issues.
We will continue to work hard, inclusively and transparently, to press all sides for the highest ambition outcome possible.
Updated
NGOs are fast out of the blocks in reacting to the latest negotiating texts - as countries pore over them line by line.
John Verdieck, director of international climate policy at The Nature Conservancy, is concerned about whether the text is clear enough about developed countries’ role as the providers of climate finance.
“It’s been a hard-fought week, but this proposed number of at least $1.3tn, with a public floor of $250bn, for climate finance to developing countries shows that negotiators are taking this crisis seriously. Unfortunately, saying that “all actors” have to take responsibility is too ambiguous and could allow wealthy nations to skirt their responsibilities.”
While we wait for countries to react, civil society groups are already giving their verdict – and it is not positive.
This from War on Want
‼️ BREAKING: The new climate finance text has been released at the #COP29 climate talks - and it’s an insult.
— War on Want (@WarOnWant) November 22, 2024
$250B from developed countries by 2035 , $1.3T from “all sources”.
This is nowhere near the public, grant-based climate finance the planet and people urgently need. pic.twitter.com/nuLPkuv4f7
We’re not backing down. We’ll fight all night to ensure this inadequate #ClimateFinance deal is rejected.
— War on Want (@WarOnWant) November 22, 2024
Without real finance, there can be no concrete action to cut pollution or achieve a just transition to fairer, greener economies and societies.
Writing on BlueSky Fadhel Kaboub President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and senior Advisor with Power Shift Africa said:
Historic polluters offering $250bn by 2035 in poor quality financing (aka economic entrapment & false solutions).
#IsItAJoke
Global South negotiators bravely walk out. No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal.
#PayUp
James Murray editor of Business Green
It looks like a compromise agreement that can allow the next phase of negotiations to start, but developing economies will feel like the numbers are massively low-balled. A very punchy plenary awaits.
— James Murray (@James_BG) November 22, 2024
Harjeet Singh, climate activist, Cop veteran and with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, is not happy with the latest text on the all-important climate finance goal:
It is a disgrace that despite full awareness of the devastating climate crises afflicting developing nations and the staggering costs of climate action - amounting to trillions - developed nations have only proposed a meagre $250bn a year.
Trust has been shattered; developing countries must stand firm. Rejecting this is a stand for dignity - no deal is better than a bad deal, especially when it disrespects those bearing the brunt of a crisis they did not create.
Updated
"Private finance" included in the draft text
The text - which came as much of a surprise to many negotiators as it did to everyone else in the conference centre - contains a “quantum” of finance from developed countries which is lower than the sums that the Guardian is aware have been talked of by some rich nations in private.
This amount is described in the text as coming from “a variety of sources” - including private finance.
At first sight, this might seem a violation of the terms on which developed countries are supposed to be providing climate finance. The “quantum” is supposed to be made of “core” finance, to come directly from the public budgets of developed countries or through multilateral development banks, which are funded mostly by the developed world.
Private finance is supposed to come in the outermost layer of the “onion” of finance being talked about here - that is, after the “inner core” of public money and the middle layer of money to come from sources such as new taxes, carbon trading and other innovative sources of finance.
So why is private finance being mentioned in the inner core?
The explanation is that this is a reference to “mobilised” finance. Mobilised finance is when private companies invest on top of money put in by countries from public budgets. So, for instance, the EU provides $30bn of public finance a year to climate efforts in developing country, and this core funding also mobilises about $7bn a year in co-investment.
Because of the way some countries account for their climate finance, it is not possible to separate out the “mobilised” finance cleanly from that provided from public budgets. Therefore the word private is included in this text, but it should be understood in this context as being limited to this “mobilised” portion of finance. The real private finance will still be in the outer layer of the onion - according to some estimates, this outer layer could be worth about $500bn of the $1 trillion or $1.3 trillion goal.
It may be possible for the presidency to clarify this meaning further, potentially in a footnote, if developing countries are unhappy that the inclusion of the word private in this portion of the text could be used as a loophole.
Updated
Hello Matthew Taylor here [I took over the blog just as the new text dropped.] Send any thoughts, nuggets etc to matthew.taylor@theguardian.com
“Transition away from fossil fuels”
Damian Carrington has more on the key phrase “transition away from fossil fuels”.
It is now mentioned in one of the latest negotiating texts - but in a pretty convoluted and weak way:
“Underscores the multisectoral and multidimensional nature of just transitions and the resultant need for whole-of-economy approaches to just transitions that engage the private sector, including micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, and contribute to the creation of green, decent jobs and recognizes that such approaches include significant socioeconomic opportunities associated with transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”
There has been a big row between the many countries that wanted to include the transition phrase - a key achievement of the Cop in UAE last year. But oil-rich Saudi Arabia and allies have fought to keep it out, to try to sideline the commitment every nation signed up to at Cop28. UEA today said all countries should “honour what they agreed”.
Watch out for in country reaction
My colleague Patrick Greenfield the key will be to watch out for in country reactions.
We are waiting for countries to give their formal reactions to the text. Negotiating teams from around the world will be huddled over their laptops going through the documents line by line and checking it against their negotiating priorities. We will start hearing from them in the next hour or so.
During yesterday’s five hour plenary, there was a clear split between developed and developing countries in their reactions to the first draft. Developing countries were angry about the lack of target on finance. In the new draft, the $1.3tn that the G77 and China has asked for is in, with a sub target of $250bn for developing countries by 2035, but this might prove unacceptable for countries that want to see far more from the developed world.
Developed countries, particularly the EU, were concerned about backsliding on last year’s deal in Dubai, with member states and other countries from the global north demanding that the Baku text reaffirms the landmark deal to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels. This was fiercely opposed by Saudi Arabia yesterday.
We need to give countries a bit of time to digest what the Azeri presidency has prepared. We will bring you the reactions the moment they start coming through.
Snap verdict - Damian Carrington
More from Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington.
The new text on the all-important finance target “calls for” $1.3tn by 2035. That’s what developing countries asked for, but what kind of finance remains important - grants, loans, private?
It “decides” on $250bn for developing countries by 2035 - that’s in the ballpark of the figures that have been frequently mentioned for the “core” funding, though $300bn was at the top end. This might be the start of a haggle.
It “invites developing country parties to make additional contributions”. Nations like China and Saudi Arabia will like that - they are still officially developing countries in UN climate talks and very strongly reject any calls to be obliged to contribute.
But this is just the latest iteration of the text - let’s see what countries make of it.
Updated
The new draft text “calls for”:
a finance target of $1.3tn by 2035
“Decides” $250bn by 2035, including public and private
“Invites developing country parties to make additional contributions”
Updated
Azerbaijani authorities have blocked the website cop29.com, after the URL was acquired by environmental justice campaigners and pointed to a website criticising the country’s hosting of the UN climate summit, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.
Any delegates at Cop29 in Baku clicking on cop29.com today were greeted with the following message: “The application you are trying to use has been blocked in accordance with Cop29 policy rules. Please report to information center if you believe this is an error.”
It’s no error by the Azerbaijan government hosting the summit. The site was acquired by campaign group Global Witness and leads with the faces of five big oil bosses and the headline: “Fossil fuel companies are destroying the planet for profit. They broke it, they should pay for it.”
The site has also been reportedly blocked outside the conference by the authoritarian regime. It remains accessible to those using a VPN to browse the web.
“We may never know why Azerbaijan tried to block cop29.com from its citizens and the world’s decision-makers attending Cop29,” says Alexander Kirk at Global Witness. “But it looks like they’re worried about our central message: if you break it, you should fix it, and Big Oil should be made to pay.”
Azerbaijan is a petrostate, heavily reliant on oil and gas, which is a “gift from God”, according to President Ilham Aliyev. It is significantly expanding gas production in the next decade, despite repeated warnings from scientists that no new fossil fuels can be exploited if there is to be any chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C. Azerbaijan says the EU has requested more gas, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Global Witness acquired the cop29.com site from an Indian couple who used the domain for their family copperware business – 29 is the atomic number of copper. They were offered a significant sum by Azerbaijan’s Cop29 team for the site, Global Witness said, but the owners were worried about climate breakdown and decided to let Global Witness have it instead.
Updated
Talks have not yet finished, but already the first Cop29 post-mortem report has rolled in – and it is a bleak analysis.
Mohamed Adow, director of the climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, has described this year’s UN climate summit as “one of the most poorly led and chaotic Cop meetings ever”.
And he lays the blame squarely at the feet of Azerbaijan, the oil and gas rich autocracy that this year hosted the talks. His comments come as negotiations are deadlocked, with no sign of a compromise between the demands of the developing world and the willingness of the wealthy nations to meet them.
Adow says developing nations need to be ready to walk away without a deal if the package on offer does not improve. In comments sent in to the Guardian, he said:
This COP presidency is one of the worst in recent memory and he is overseeing one of the most poorly led and chaotic COP meetings ever.
COP summits are a delicate and precious thing, they require skill and determination in order to progress global climate action and land a successful deal.
We only have a matter of hours remaining to save this COP from being remembered as a failure for the climate and embarrassment for the rich world.
We need Mukhtar Babayev to get his act together, push countries to actually deliver a global finance goal that will keep alive the target of limiting global heating to 1.5C and not let the world’s developed countries wriggle out of paying their climate debt.
The way this COP is going, developing countries are going to have to prepare themselves to walk away from COP29 if the package on the table doesn’t improve. It can and must improve, otherwise no deal.
There’s no point accepting a bad deal if it buries climate ambition. Without a strong deal that will provide the trillions needed to tackle the climate crisis, Baku will be known as a global disappointment.
No deal is better than a bad deal. Poor countries don’t need to be held hostage in Baku. If rich countries fail to deliver what they owe in climate finance, then they should be forced to come back next year in Brazil with a better plan.
You may have missed this speech yesterday, made in the middle of five hours of nations decrying the poor state of the negotiations, but it was a barnstormer, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.
Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, ripped into both rich nations for failing to offer a number for climate finance and petrostates such as Saudi Arabia for backsliding on last year’s commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels”. He said:
I will not mince words. We are failing the planet and people once again at this Cop, after decades of empty mitigation [emissions cutting] and climate finance promises, emissions have more than doubled, and we are on a pathway to assassinate half of all living creatures on Earth.
Mitigation is not just about adopting renewable energies or improving energy efficiency. It is fundamentally about phasing out fossil fuels. It is troubling to witness both utter silence and outright resistance on this critical issue.
To make matters even worse, after three years of negotiations on the new finance goal, countless workshops and dialogues in remote places, our [rich nation] colleagues have yet to put forward a [number] for us to negotiate. We’ve been to South Africa, Germany several times, the Philippines, Egypt, Austria, Switzerland, Dubai, Colombia, Bakue a few times. For God’s sake, what’s the next stop? Mars?
Quite frankly, this lack of commitment feels like a slap in the face to the most vulnerable. It is just utter disrespect to those countries that are bearing the brunt of this crisis.
The current weak language of mitigation is a death sentence to Panama, our people and other vulnerable countries. Developed countries must stop playing games with our lives and put a serious, quantified financial proposal on the table.
Why should Panama bear the burden of loans to cover the $250m in losses and damage that we have suffered in the past month due to torrential rains? We constantly hear from developed countries that the $1.3tn proposal presented by the developing world is extreme and unreasonable. So let me say what’s truly extreme and what’s truly unreasonable: spending $2.5tn trillion in wars while failing to commit less than half of that to save lives and investing $7tn in fossil fuel subsidies.
My people have spent months under water in the worst torrential rains that we have seen in our recent history. Some of my neighbours, some of my family and friends, have lost their entire livelihoods, and yet our developed country colleagues expect us to finance this recovery with loans.
We have waited 32 years for action, and here we are stuck once again. A lack of ambitious mitigation text is a death sentence to my people, A lack of ambitious mitigation text means giving up on a livable future. The absence of a quantified financial proposal from developed nations is not just irresponsible, it is despicable. It is sometimes quite evil. Let’s stop this circus. It is time to get serious, to get our act together and to deliver.
You can watch the speech from the 2h 20m mark here.
UAE steps in amid Saudi blocking of transition commitment
Saudi Arabia has been playing a strong blocking role throughout Cop29 – but most of the complaints of the country’s behaviour have had to be made behind closed doors by negotiators in private, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian climate editor.
The clearest issue in which the petrostate has been an obstruction is over the so called UAE consensus. That’s the name for the outcome of Cop28 last year in Dubai, when nations agreed for the first time to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
Saudi has been determined to avoid a reaffirmation of that resolution, hoping to bury it at this Cop so that future Cops will find it difficult to revive.
Now the UAE has stepped in to defend its achievement last year. The Guardian understands the country is full square behind the commitments made as part of the consensus.
Whether the statement by a “brother” state and Arab neighbour will have much impact remains to be seen.
Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, told the Guardian she was deeply concerned. She said:
One of the things that I want to see explicitly in the main text, obviously, is the words transitioning from fossil fuels and building further on that, not just mentioning it, but building further on, but expressly referencing it.
Saudi Arabia have been working hard to wipe it from everywhere, and it has to be, if it isn’t, in my view, the Cop is not doing its job. They been blocking everything, from what I’m hearing from lots of sources, and you know, they’ve been blocking gender, they’ve been blocking trying to get rid of this language.
Robinson is one of a group of senior Cop veterans who are seeking some reform to the process to prevent too much power being wielded by petrostates, especially as hosts. She said:
I think we will see in the new year, moves to address some of the problems, for example, the over presence of the fossil fuel lobby, that has a chilling effect. It has an effect on negotiations that have effect on the results. If you’ve got a petrol state, it affects the presidency.
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A new text of the Cop29 deal has yet to emerge, but civil society activists have not given up hope, reports Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.
Hilda Nakabuye, 27, from Fridays for Future campaign group in Uganda, said:
We are holding on to hope. As a mother I am here to represent my people, my community, but also future generations that we hold close and dear to our hearts and why we are all in this fight. The ones least responsible for climate change undergo its worst effects.
We know what power we hold: the power to act. We are in an emergency. This COP is all about the money, but communities on the ground are not seeing the money. When the climate hits we need to respond like any other emergency, because it is an emergency. We all know deep down there is more than enough money to fill the loss and damage fund with trillions, so why are we still pleading for the bare minimum?
What we can take from this discussion is hope. Hope that change will happen at the speed of empathy. We need action, more than ever.
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The world’s biggest consulting firm has been criticised for working with clients it knew were on a trajectory to push the world towards 3 to 5 degrees of global warming, write Ben Stockton in New York and Hajar Meddah in London
McKinsey & Company has worked with some of the world’s biggest emitters, including many of the largest fossil fuel producers. It has previously argued it is necessary to engage these clients to help them transition to cleaner forms of energy and hit the target of limiting global warming to less than 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
But the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the Guardian have learned of an internal analysis of client emissions carried out by McKinsey in 2021 which showed that the companies the firm works with were set to exceed this target. Despite this, an internal email alleges that no senior members of staff were willing to “push the effort forward”.
The revelations follow an investigation published in the Guardian yesterday, based on more than a dozen interviews with former insiders, internal documents and hundreds of pages of court records, which revealed new details about the firm’s work with the fossil fuel industry.
Many of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers have been significant sources of revenue for McKinsey, such as the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, and oil majors Shell and BP, according to an analysis of bankruptcy court records.
“It is not a secret that McKinsey is in deep with big polluters, but now we know just how wide that hole is and how deep they’re digging,” said Rachel Rose Jackson from the campaign group Corporate Accountability. “The more it continues to partner closely with and profit from the very actors condemning people and the planet, the more complicit it becomes.”
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Azerbaijan has urged negotiators at the Cop29 summit to bridge their differences to come up with with a finance deal, as the UN climate talks looked set to, once again, run into overtime.
In a note to delegates on Friday, reported by Reuters, the Cop29 presidency said:
We encourage parties to continue to collaborate within and across groups with the aim of proposing bridging proposals that will help us to finalise our work here in Baku.
Past COPs have traditionally run over time.
Cop29 will run well into overtime, WWF has said, as delegates from nearly 200 nations awaited a fresh draft of a summit deal on Friday afternoon.
Decisions at the annual UN climate talks are made by consensus, meaning that it is possible for a small number of objectors to easily hold up commitments.
On Thursday, negotiations stretched late into the night in the cavernous sports stadium that has been adapted as a venue for the climate talks, with the promise that a new draft would be published at about midday today.
That deadline has now passed.
Developing countries are pushing for $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2030, with at least $500bn coming directly from richer nations. But the EU and other major contributors are hesitant to offer such a vast sum and insist a greater share of the burden must be taken by the private sector.
The new draft is expected to offer more clarity on the numbers, after an earlier version on Thursday said that developing countries need at least “USD [X] trillion” per year.
UK government pledges £239m to tackle deforestation
Britain will give £239m to help forest-rich nations tackle climate change.
The UK government, which made the pledge at Cop29, said the money would go towards tackling deforestation in countries such as Colombia and Indonesia, in recognition of “the critical role of forests in those countries as ‘carbon sinks’ that absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere annually than the UK and USA emit combined.”
According to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the funding comprises:
£188m to support “the development of high-integrity forest carbon markets’;
£48m for blended finance to unlock private investment in sustainable forest enterprises across the tropical forest belt;
And £3m for the UNFCCC to help countries protect their forests.
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said:
Forests are the lungs of our planet – without them climate security is impossible. We’re determined to play our part in mobilising finance to protect and restore global forests in these critical years for climate action.
The climate crisis has no borders and these issues impact people back home in the UK – we’re already seeing the damage flooding and record heatwaves can do to businesses and the most vulnerable in our communities.
Providing this funding now helps prevent the escalating costs of climate catastrophe at home and abroad, this is what the UK means by climate leadership.
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News is so sparse on the final day of Cop29 that the Associated Press, US-based news agency, took a board game to the climate summit, and then reported on people playing it.
Activists and experts who are pushing world leaders to save an overheating planet learned it’s not so easy, even in a simulated world.
The Associated Press brought the board game Daybreak to the United Nations climate negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan. Experts from three countries were asked to play the game, which involves players working together to curb climate change, caused by the release of greenhouse gas emissions when fuels like gasoline, natural gas and coal are burned. The goal of the game is to prevent the world from getting too hot or overrun by devastating extreme weather events.
Three times activists, analysts and reporters took turns being the United States, China, Europe and the rest of the world, coping with weather disasters, trying to reduce emissions with projects like wetlands restoration and fighting fossil fuel interests, all according to the cards dealt.
The yellow-red crisis cards are the ones that set players back the most. And every round comes with a new card, such as, “Storms: Every player adds 1 Community in Crisis” per 0.1 degrees Celsius (0.2 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature rise, or “Sea Level Rise: Every player loses 1 Infrastructure Resilience.”
Those are tempered by blue cards that represent local projects, such as around fertilizer efficiency, which eliminates one game token of methane-spewing livestock, or universal public transport, which eliminates a token of polluting car emissions.
In each game, the temperature went beyond the limit that the world set in the 2015 Paris Agreement: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times, roughly the mid-1800s. Technically, the game isn’t lost until a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is reached. However, 1.5 degrees has been ingrained as a threshold in climate circles, so the shoulders of players drooped in defeat when their fictional world blew past it.
After just one round of play, which lasted about 20 minutes in the second game, the global thermometer rose to 1.45 degrees Celsius (2.61 degrees Fahrenheit).
“How did that happen? It happened so quickly,” said Borami Seo, head of food and agriculture at Solutions for Our Climate in South Korea. She purposely chose Europe, arguably the world leader in climate policy and financial aid, so she would be in a position to help the rest of the world.
She couldn’t.
“I thought this game was supposed to give us hope. I’m not gaining any hope,” Seo said in a voice somewhere between curiosity and frustration.
Hopes of a breakthrough at the deadlocked UN climate talks have been dashed after a new draft of a possible deal was condemned by rich and poor countries, write Guardian reporters in Baku.
Faith in the ability of the Azerbaijan presidency to produce a deal ebbed on Thursday morning, as the draft texts were criticised as inadequate and providing no “landing ground” for a compromise.
Instead of setting a global goal for at least $1tn in new funds for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis, the text contained only an “X” where numbers should have been.
Oscar Soria, a director at the Common Initiative thinktank, said: “The negotiating placeholder ‘X’ for climate finance is a testament of the ineptitude from rich nations and emerging economies that are failing to find a workable solution for everyone.
“This is a dangerous ambiguity: inaction risks turning ‘X’ into the symbol of extinction for the world’s most vulnerable. Without firm, ambitious commitments, this vagueness betrays the Paris agreement’s promise and leaves developing nations unarmed in their fight against climate chaos.”
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Poor countries face compromises on climate cash, former envoy says
Poor countries may have to compromise on demands for cash to tackle global heating, a former UN climate envoy has said, as UN talks entered their final hours in deadlock, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor.
In comments that are likely to disappoint poorer countries at the Cop29 summit, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said on Thursday night that rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“It’s finance, and it’s absolutely vital, and it’s the responsibility of the developed world,” she told the Guardian in an interview. “But you can’t squeeze what isn’t squeezable.”
Rich countries have yet to make any formal offer of finance to the poor world as of Thursday night, even as two weeks of talks stretched into their final official day on Friday. The summit is focused on finding $1tn (£790bn) a year for poor nations to shift to a low-CO2 economy and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.
But the rich world is expected to offer only about $300bn a year at most in public finance, far less than many developing countries hoped for. The developed world is likely to argue that the remainder of the $1tn can be made up from other sources, including private sector investment, carbon trading and potential new sources such as taxes on fossil fuels.
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Welcome to day 11 of negotiations at Cop29: the hurry up and wait phase. And we may be waiting for a while, though nobody can be sure just how long, writes Adam Morton, Guardian Australia climate and environment editor.
Ministers and negotiators met until the early hours this morning trying to find common ground on the issues where they have been at loggerheads. The big ones are the lack of dollar figures in a draft text on a climate finance goal, and the resistance by some countries - notably Saudi Arabia and other gulf states - to allow previously agreed goals of tripling renewable energy and transitioning away from fossil fuels to be explicitly repeated.
In a five-hour plenary session on Thursday, dozens of countries expressed anger at the state of what the Azerbaijani Cop presidency had put forward. Quite what this meant was hard to gauge. On the one hand, we have been here before many times. Despair over an insufficiently ambitious text is not unusual at this stage of climate summits.
On the other, the UN consensus process is a tricky beast and there is plenty of opportunity for disruptive forces to tip the cart if they choose to. The Saudis have been clear all year that they are unhappy about the reference to a fossil fuel transition in the text agreed in Dubai, and have held on to that position in Baku. They were uncharacteristically explicit about it in Thursday’s plenary, albeit when talking about the climate finance debate, when the Saudi delegate Albara Tawfiq declared “the Arab group will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels”.
It underlined how tough the battle may be over the coming hours and days. But some observers saw an upside - at least he had said the quiet bit out loud. What China, which has also expressed reservations about repeating the fossil fuel language but is considered more open to changing its position, does from here will be crucial.
The other major sticking point has been the reluctance of wealthy nations to be clear about how much they are collectively prepared to stump up in climate finance to help the poor develop clean economies, adapt to inevitable change and repair the damage from the climate crisis they largely have not caused. At least $1tn a year is needed, and the frustration from some of the world’s most vulnerable countries is real.
Ultimately, if there is going to be an agreement in Baku these two issues – climate finance and emissions reduction – will need to be decided hand-in-hand. A bigger finance goal could allow a more ambitious mitigation text – and vice versa. Some cracks in the text may have to be papered over to get there, and it will take leadership from the hosts that has not always been evident. Let’s see what today brings.
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Good morning! This is Damien Gayle, environment correspondent in London, with you again for another morning of updates from the Cop29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Once again, I’ll be helming this live blog while our team in feeds updates on the latest from the UN climate talks. If you have any comments, tips of suggestions, then feel free to drop me a line at damien.gayle@theguardian.com.
