Delegates from nearly 200 countries join as negotiators seek increase in $100bn-a-year target for developing nations.
Agencies
BAKU: The annual United Nations climate summit has started in Azerbaijan, with countries readying for tough talks on finance and trade, following a year of weather disasters that have emboldened developing countries in their demands for more funds.
Starting Monday, delegates from nearly 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 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 appealed for an “ambitious” new goal on providing climate funding to the world’s poorer nations, saying: “Let’s dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity.”
In welcoming delegates, Azerbaijan’s Ecology Minister Mukhtar Babayev, who also serves as COP29 president, declared that “climate change is already here”.
“COP29 is the unmissable moment to chart a new path forward for everyone.”
The COP29 talks open amid new warnings that 2024 is on track to break temperature records, adding urgency to a fractious debate over climate funding as poorer countries seek an increase in the $100bn-a-year target at the forum.
In an interview with Arab media, Damilola Ogunbiyi, UN Special Representative on Sustainable Energy, said that one of her “key expectations is on the role of climate finance”.
