COP29 Host Says Deal on Climate Aid Essential but Offers Few Details
Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan's Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources and President of COP29, delivers a speech of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue (Petersberger Klimadialog) meeting at the Foreign Office in Berlin, on April 25, 2024. Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
- By Agence France-Presse (AFP)
- April 25, 2024 6:25 PM
Paris, France -- The president of this year's UN climate talks said Thursday that governments must agree on how to find the billions of dollars needed to help poorer countries respond to global warming, but offered few concrete details.
Disagreements over climate aid have dogged past COP negotiations, with richer nations most responsible for planet-heating pollution criticised for not coughing up their fair share.
Previous funding pledges have not been honoured and just a fraction of the money needed to fund clean energy and build resilience to extreme weather in less developed countries is raised each year, eroding much-needed trust between countries.
Mukhtar Babayev, who is hosting the COP29 summit in the petro-state of Azerbaijan in November, said climate finance was a "pillar" of his presidency and governments must finally overcome the impasse this year.
"We know that the world needs to increase the overall flow of climate finance by several multiples. We must address the issues that hold the developing world back from their full ambitions," Babayev said in a speech in Berlin.
"At COP29, we need to agree a new climate financial goal."
But the former executive of Azerbaijan's national oil giant did not outline a detailed timeline, financial targets, or other concrete steps toward breaking the long-running deadlock in the months ahead of COP29.
Babayev acknowledged the issue had been one of the thorniest in climate negotiations and "there are strong and well-founded views on all sides".
He assured they were listening to the concerns of all parties but stressed there was "no single initiative that will unlock climate finance and deliver the multiples we need".
"When we meet at COP29 to agree on a new goal, we will look to see what has been done elsewhere to ensure that our money is used to the greatest possible effect," Babayev told the gathering of government ministers and diplomats at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says wealthy nations likely provided $100 billion in climate finance to poorer nations in 2022.
But this is far from the estimated $2.4 trillion annually that it says developing countries -- excluding China -- will need to meet their climate and development needs.
© Agence France-Presse
