Climate talks teeter, with rich and poor countries in a tug of war

BAKU, Azerbaijan — A two-week marathon of climate talks has entered its grueling final dash. Developed and developing nations were still deadlocked over how many hundreds of billions of dollars wealthy countries should invest to help speed the global transition to cleaner energy and protect the most vulnerable countries against the drumbeat of catastrophes that accompany global warming.

The deliberations at the summit, scheduled to end Friday, resemble a tug of war: The world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries have banded together with newly industrialized economic giants like China and India to demand that history’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters, including the United States and Europe, come up with a plan to provide $1.3 trillion in climate financing per year.

To put that number in context: Western countries have struggled to cobble together the $100 billion per year they promised at a climate summit 15 years ago. The financing question has become even trickier with a recent rightward political shift in some of those countries, notably the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president just a week before the start of this year’s climate summit, known as COP29.

Though U.N. climate summits normally run into overtime, they rarely collapse entirely. But money is such a contentious issue that the possibility of failure loomed over the negotiations Thursday.

The overarching objective of the talks, being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, is to set a new goal for annual financial flows. The $1.3 trillion number is based on cost estimates by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, a new body appointed by the United Nations, for developing and deploying technology that would hold the global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with the preindustrial average.

“There is a clear obligation from developed countries,” said Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s lead negotiator, reacting to a draft resolution made public Thursday morning that showed the two sides still far apart. “It is very frustrating. We need a justifiable number that will meet what we need.”

The United States, the world’s biggest economy and history’s biggest emitter, is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement when Trump takes office, which means the country would very likely renege on whatever financial commitments the final agreement sets out.

That has prompted Western negotiators in Baku to try to shift more reliance onto the private sector and lending institutions as ultimate sources of climate finance.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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