Countries at UN Climate Summit Under Pressure with No Finance Deal Entering Final Day

Countries at the United Nations climate summit amped up the pressure on themselves Friday by entering the last scheduled day of talks with no visible progress on their chief goals.
From the start, COP29 has been about climate finance — money that wealthy nations are obligated to pay to developing countries to cover damages resulting from extreme weather and to help those nations adapt to a warming planet. Experts put the figure at $1 trillion or more, but draft texts that emerged Thursday after nearly two weeks of talks angered the developing world by essentially leaving blank the financial commitment.
The talks often run into overtime as wealthier nations are pressed to pay for impacts caused largely by their emissions from centuries of burning fossil fuels. The late finish also adds pressure on Azerbaijan, the oil-rich nation presiding over this year's COP, or Conference of Parties.
In a statement late Thursday, the presidency struck an optimistic tone, saying the outlines of a financial package “are starting to take shape” and promised new draft texts on Friday, The Associated Press said.
“COP29 urges all parties to engage urgently and constructively in order to reach the ambitious outcome that we all need,” the statement said.
Frustrated delegates wait to see a new draft deal As negotiators, observers and civil society organization representatives waited for a new draft text to be released on Friday, many said they were frustrated and disappointed with the talks so far.
“No deal is better than a bad deal,” said Harjeet Singh of the climate advocacy group, Fossil Fuel Non Proliferation Treaty.
Singh said the key bottleneck is rich countries’ reluctance to say how much they are willing to pay for countries to transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, adapt to the drought, storms and extreme heat and pay for losses and damages caused by climate change. Independent experts put the figure needed at $1 trillion per year.
“Things are absolutely stuck," he said. “It’s negotiation in bad faith by developed countries.”
Bryton Codd, part of Belize's negotiating team, said there is a lot of frustration felt by participants at the climate talks.
“I’m just waiting to see if that (climate finance goal) will actually be presented,” he said.
“Year after year our people come here and we dance this dance and play this game. No one comes here out of excitement, we come because we have no choice. Because we cannot let this process fail," said Tongan climate activist Joseph Sikulu with the environmental group 350.org. “Nothing less than $1 trillion in grants per year will be enough to see those most impacted by climate change on a just transition towards a safe, equitable future.”
‘Slap in the face’ for text to have no financial figure On Thursday, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev convened a Qurultay — a traditional Azerbaijani meeting — where negotiators spoke to hear all sides. He promised to find “a way forward regarding future iterations” of the deal.
Panama's Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez said the “lack of commitment transparency feels like a slap in the face to the most vulnerable."
"It is just utter disrespect to those countries that are bearing the brunt of this crisis,” he said. “Developed countries must stop playing games with our life and put a serious quantified financial proposal on the table.”
Other areas that are being negotiated include commitments to slash planet-warming fossil fuels and how to adapt to climate change. But they’ve seen little movement.
European nations and the United States criticized the package of proposals for not being strong enough in reiterating last year’s call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
US climate envoy John Podesta said he was surprised that “there is nothing that carries forward the ... outcomes that we agreed on last year in Dubai.” The United States, the world’s biggest historic emitter of greenhouse gasses, has played little role in the talks as it braces for another presidency under Donald Trump.
Days earlier, the 20 largest economies met in Brazil and didn't mention the call for transitioning away from fossil fuels. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who was at that meeting, said official language is one thing, but reality is another.
“There will be no way” the world can limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius "if there is not a phase out of fossil fuels,” Guterres said at a Thursday news conference.

The Kremlin said on Friday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed as a message to the West that Moscow will respond to their "reckless" decisions and actions in support of Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had fired the new missile - the Oreshnik or Hazel Tree - at a Ukrainian military facility.
"The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side," Peskov told reporters.
"The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities, and the contours of further retaliatory actions in the event that our concerns are not taken into account have been quite clearly outlined,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
Peskov said Russia had not been obliged to warn the United States about the strike, but had informed the US 30 minutes before the launch anyway.
President Vladimir Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov said, but he said the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden "prefers to continue down the path of escalation".
Putin said on Thursday that Russia had fired the new missile after Ukraine, with approval from the Biden administration, struck Russia with six US-made ATACMS missiles on Tuesday and with British Storm Shadow cruise missiles and US-made HIMARS on Thursday.
He said this meant that the Ukraine war had now "acquired elements of a global character".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Russia's use of the new missile amounted to "a clear and severe escalation" in the war and called for strong worldwide condemnation.

Countries at UN Climate Summit Under Pressure with No Finance Deal Entering Final Day