Almost 200 countries are represented, with negotiators seeking to agree on an increase in the $100bn-a-year target for developing nations.
The annual United Nations climate summit opened in Azerbaijan against a backdrop of intense preparation by countries for hard negotiations over finance and trade following a year of weather disasters that have considerably emboldened developing nations’ demands for more funds.
Starting Monday, delegates from almost 200 countries will be at the two-week COP29 forum in the capital city of Baku for talks being held under the long shadow cast by the re-election of Donald Trump, who has threatened to roll back the United States’s carbon-cutting commitments.
In his opening speech, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that world leaders must show that global cooperation “is not down for the count.”
“Here in Baku, we must agree on a new global climate finance goal. If at least two-thirds of the world’s nations cannot afford to cut emissions quickly, then every nation pays a brutal price,” he warned.
Stiell also called for an “ambitious” new goal of providing climate funding to the world’s poorer nations, saying, “Let’s dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity.” Welcoming delegates, Azerbaijan’s Ecology Minister Mukhtar Babayev, also president of COP29, announced that “climate change is already here”.
