https://link.thetimes.co.uk/view/643dae8e52f5b18ea2028d73me5hq.1nr/82eb99cf
By Ben Spencer – Science Editor, The Sunday Times
When the gavel finally came down in Baku, shortly before 3am on Sunday morning, the room rose in a standing ovation. Delegates applauded not out of joy for the $300 billion a year of climate finance that wealthy countries had agreed to pay the developing world by 2035, but in relief that a deal had been done at all. Cop29 was supposed to have finished at 6pm on Friday; in the intervening 33 hours a group of climate-vulnerable countries had walked out, many delegates had left to get their flights, and rumours were circulating that the whole thing may fall apart.
But initial relief quickly gave way to rancour. Within minutes of the deal being done statements from campaign groups started to pour in. The $300 billion was “woefully inadequate” said Greenpeace; it was a “giant Ponzi scheme” said Oxfam; and – most dramatically – posed “nothing less than a death sentence” to poor countries, according to WaterAid.
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Cop29 was described by veteran negotiators as the worst UN climate summit they had experienced: wind was taken out of its sails before it even started with the election of climate-sceptic Donald Trump in the US; the Azerbaijan hosts, with an economy saturated in oil, never committed to the summit’s aims; and many world leaders stayed at home. Senior climate figures called for an overhaul of the entire process, proposing smaller, more focused Cop summits, and hosts to be rejected if they do not support a move away from fossil fuels.
Now, though, attention turns to the Brazilian city of Belem – gateway to the Amazon – which will host Cop30 next year. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has promised to deliver the “turnaround Cop”. With global warming now projected to hit 2.7C by the end of the century, and climate diplomacy hanging by a thread, he will need to deliver that promise if the Cop process is to retain the confidence of its 196 members.
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Related:
BBC: UN climate talks ‘no longer fit for purpose’ say key experts
