BAKU, Azerbaijan: The final deal, agreed in Azerbaijan, will see the world developed countries pay $300 billion a year by 2035 to help poorer countries lessen the impact of climate change.
The negotiations lasted for two weeks and delegates at the UN climate summit COP29 hosted by Azerbaijan in Baku, agreed late on Saturday to provide funding for developing countries transition to cleaner energy and adapt to global warming, reports AFP.
Under a framework established by the UN in 1992, 23 developed countries — and the European Union — historically responsible for most planet-heating emissions are obliged to contribute to climate finance.
The Baku accord raises the amount of money that developed countries must provide to at least $300 billion per year by 2035.
It is higher than the $100 billion that is currently required under a previous agreement that runs until next year.
But it falls well short of the $500 billion that some developing countries had demanded at the fraught negotiations in Baku.
The deal states that the money will come directly from a “wide variety of sources” including government budgets, private sector investment, and other financing.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that the climate finance deal agreed early Sunday in Azerbaijan did not go far enough, as he urged nations to view it as a “foundation” on which to build.
“I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome — on both finance and mitigation — to meet the great challenge we face,” Guterres said in a statement, adding that he is appealing “to governments to see this agreement as a foundation — and build on it.”
US President Joe Biden praised the COP29 deal Saturday as a “significant step” to fighting global warming, and pledged continued action by America.
“While there is still substantial work ahead of us to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” Biden said in a statement.
After two exhausting weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan, the pact hammered out commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
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Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband welcomed late Saturday a deal reached between nearly 200 nations at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan as “a critical eleventh hour deal at the eleventh hour for the climate”.
“It is not everything we or others wanted but is a step forward for us all,” Miliband said in a statement released shortly after the deal was announced.
He added the pledge to provide $300 billion a year in finance by 2035 to the developing world “rightly reflects the importance of going beyond traditional donors like Britain, and the role of countries like China in helping those on the frontline of this crisis”.
“If this finance is used in the right way, it could cut the equivalent emissions of one billion cars and could protect nearly a billion people from the impacts of climate change,” he said.
Sky news report, more than 190 countries in Baku agreed a target for richer polluting countries such as the UK, EU and Japan to drum up $300bn a year by 2035 to help poorer nations both curb and adapt to climate change.
It is a far cry from the $1.3trn experts say is needed, and from the $500bn that vulnerable countries like Uganda had said they would be willing to accept.
But in the end they were forced to, knowing they could not afford to live without it, nor wait until next year to try again, when a Donald Trump presidency would make things even harder.
Bolivia’s lead negotiator Diego Pacheco called it an “insult”, while the Marshall Islands’ Tina Stege said it was “not nearly enough, but it’s a start”.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell said: “This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country.
