BAKU, Azerbaijan: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday warned the world’s climate negotiators of the risks of failure to agree on a climate finance deal, urging a “major push” to seal a deal in Baku.
“Let’s be frank. Many substantive differences are still remaining,” Guterres told reporters as he returned to the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan.
“We need a major push to get discussions over the finishing line,” he said. “Failure is not an option.”
Guterres, who also attended COP29 when it opened early last week, said he visited negotiators and felt they were “still largely with their initial positions”.
“Now is the moment to move from the initial positions and to find the areas of possible compromise,” Guterres said.
He said that a key goal would be seeking an “ambitious” finance goal for poor countries worst hit by climate change.
Earlier on Tuesday, speaking at a session on sustainable development and energy transition at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Guterres said, “Failure of climate finance deal at Baku conference not an option.”
“I ask you please to take my words not as a briefing, but as a deeply felt appeal. Our climate is at a breaking point. Unless we limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, spiralling disasters will devastate every economy. Current policies would take us over 3°C. That means catastrophe,” the UN chief told G20 leaders.
Just a day before the COP29 in Baku is due to come to a close, negotiators continue to be at a standstill over a new climate finance goal to help developing countries fight climate change.
As the first draft of a text outlining a potential decision at the conference dropped, it was met with criticism from politicians and civil society advocates alike.
“The text as it now stands is clearly unacceptable,” Wopke Hoekstra, EU commissioner for climate action, told reporters at the conference. “There’s not a single ambitious country who thinks this is nearly good enough.”
The draft text is largely divided into two different parts, reflecting the different options proposed by the developing block of countries on one hand, and industrialized nations on the other.
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Most attention has so far been focused on the funding goals included in the text. Called the “Finance COP”, a central aim of the two-week conference is for 200 countries to reach an agreement on a new funding target that would replace the current goal of $100 billion per year, DW reported.
According to the draft text out today, as cited by DW, developing countries want industrialized nations to commit to an undefined funding goal in the trillions of dollars from 2025 to 2035 “provided and mobilized from developed to all developing countries”.
Industrialized countries also refer to an undefined funding goal in the trillions but say it should be met by 2035 and include “all sources of finance, including domestic resources,” implying that developing countries should themselves be contributing to funding needed to deal with climate change impacts.
