Developing countries were being urged by civil society groups to reject “a bad deal” at the UN climate talks on Friday night, after rich nations refused to increase an “insulting” offer of finance to help them tackle the climate crisis.
The stage is set for a bitter row on Saturday over how much money poor countries should receive from the governments of the rich world, which have offered $250bn a year by 2035 to help the poor shift to a low-carbon economy and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.
That is “nowhere near enough” according to poor country groupings and campaigners at the talks. “This is unacceptable,” said the Alliance of Small Island States in a statement. Climate finance at this level would not enable countries to green their economies to the extent needed to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, they warned. “The proposed $250bn a year by 2035 is no floor, but a cap that will severely stagnate climate action efforts.”
The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said there were growing calls for a walkout, and that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, as the Cop29 UN climate summit dragged on through Friday night. There is still no end in sight to the talks, which were scheduled to finish on Friday at 6pm Baku time.
Wafa Misrar, the campaigns and policy lead of Climate Action Network Africa, said: “[This is] a profound disrespect to the people on the frontlines of the climate crisis – those losing their lives, homes and livelihoods every day. It is disheartening to witness the lack of commitment from global north countries, who seem willing to disregard our realities.”
Safa’ Al Jayoussi, the climate justice lead at Oxfam International, said: “This is a shameful failure of leadership. No deal would be better than a bad deal, but let’s be clear – there is only one option for those grappling with the harshest impacts of climate collapse: trillions, not billions, in public and grants-based finance.”
According to the draft text of a deal circulated on Thursday, developing countries would receive at least $1.3tn a year in climate finance by 2035, which is in line with the demands most submitted in advance of this two-week conference.
But poor nations wanted much more of that headline finance to come directly from rich countries, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans. They said the offer of $250bn coming from rich countries, with few safeguards over how much would come without strings attached, was much too little.
On Friday evening Greta Thunberg called the current draft “a complete disaster”. “The people in power are yet again about to agree to a death sentence to the countless people whose lives have been or will be ruined by the climate crisis,” she posted on X. “The current text is full of false solutions and empty promises. The money from the global north countries needed to pay back their climate debt is still nowhere to be seen.”
The offer from developed countries is supposed to form the inner core of a “layered” finance settlement, accompanied by a middle layer of new forms of finance such as new taxes on fossil fuels and high-carbon activities, carbon trading and “innovative” forms of finance; and an outermost layer of investment from the private sector, into projects such as solar and windfarms.
These layers would add up to $1.3tn a year, which is the amount that leading economists have calculated is needed in external finance for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis. Many activists have demanded more – figures of $5tn or $7tn a year have been put forward by some groups, based on the historical responsibilities of developed countries for causing the climate crisis.
But rich countries are facing their own budgetary crises, with rampant inflation, wars including the one in Ukraine, the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and threats from rightwing parties to weaponise the climate crisis as an issue.
Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s climate minister and a former green activist, said: “Countries like Canada are not denying what the needs are. We have made it clear that we cannot get to trillions with public dollars. It’s simply not possible.”
Most countries – and campaigners – know this, he added. “Some people are being disingenuous. They have known from the beginning that we would not get to trillions with public money. Our public would not allow that to happen, but we can mobilise more than we have so far and that’s exactly what we are doing.”
Azerbaijan, which holds the presidency of the talks, also came in for criticism on Friday as countries complained that draft texts of an agreement left out and played down a key commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels”.
That commitment was made a year ago at the Cop28 talks in Dubai, but some countries want to unpick it. Saudi Arabia has been widely accused of taking the commitment out of drafts at every opportunity, to the fury of developed countries that want to build on the commitment to force a global shift away from high-carbon energy.
Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator for Azerbaijan, responded by accusing rich countries of failing to come up with an adequate offer of climate finance. “It [the $250bn] doesn’t correspond to a fair and ambitious goal,” he said.
Delegates expect a further draft text on Saturday morning. That will also be subject to fierce negotiations and potentially further iterations.
