Page 2 - Un Climate Talks

COP29: Talks in Baku make progress on climate funding as deadline nears

Distractions were bigger than deals in the first week of United Nations climate talks, leaving a lot to be done, especially on the main issue of money. In week one, not a lot of progress was made on the issue of how much money rich countries should pay to developed ones move away from dirty fuels, cope with rising seas and temperatures and pay for damage already caused by climate-driven extreme weather. But more is expected when government ministers fly in for week two to handle the hard political deal-making at the negotiations known as COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Countries remain about a trillion dollars a year apart in the big number to be settled. All the developing countries look very united behind USD 1.3 trillion. That's not a ceiling. That's what they want. That's what they think they need, said Debbie Hillier, policy lead at Mercy Corps. The U.S. and Canada are constantly talking about a floor of USD 100 billion.... So you've got USD 100 billion at one end and USD 1.3 ...

Protesters gear up for biggest day at UN climate talks amid slow progress

The United Nations climate talks neared the end of their first week on Saturday with negotiators still at work on how much wealthier nations will pay for developing countries to adapt to planetary warming. Meanwhile, activists planned actions on what is traditionally their biggest protest day during the two-week talks. The demonstration in Baku, Azerbaijan is expected to be echoed at sites around the world in a global day of action for climate justice that's become an annual event. Negotiators at COP29, as the talks are known, will return to a hoped-for deal that might be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to poorer nations. Many are in the Global South and already suffering the costly impacts of weather disasters fuelled by climate change. Several experts have said USD 1 trillion a year or more is needed both to compensate for such damages and to pay for a clean-energy transition that most countries can't afford on their own. The talks came in for criticism on several fronts .

A 34-page complex climate finance draft sparks concern in COP29 summit

An overly lengthy 34-page draft on a new climate finance goal emerged on the third day of the UN climate talks in Azerbaijan's Baku on Wednesday, but the text is filled with repetitions and duplications, making it difficult to work with. While it includes all the elements everyone wanted, there is growing concern as three days have already passed with little progress. Observers say all negotiating groups have now asked the co-facilitators to condense the document to make it more manageable. The G77 and China group requested the co-chairs to organise the draft text by themes and not add new ideas to it. There were three options for structuring the climate finance goal in the draft framework prepared in October by the co-chairs of the Ad Hoc Work Programme on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). The new draft now presents 13 sub-options too. The new finance text is expected to include the same options for the goal as the previous two drafts. One of the options is a specific dol

COP29: Experts call for $1 trn annual investment to fight climate change

At the COP29 climate summit, prominent voices in the climate action arena voiced a call for greater accountability, real climate finance, and transparent data from developed countries and called for USD 1 trillion per year in cross-border finance to developing countries. Avinash Persaud, Special Advisor on Climate Change to the President, Inter-American Development Bank from the Inter-American Development Bank, highlighted the enormous financial need for climate adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage. We need an NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) that is relevant to actual climate finance needs, he stated, calling for USD 1 trillion per year in cross-border finance to developing countries. Persaud also noted that transparency is critical to finance accountability, arguing that clear data on financial flows and impact is essential. He cautioned, however, that loss and damage finance should be grant-based and separate from adaptation and mitigation to ensure funds reach the m

COP29: United Nations calls for urgent climate action, financial commitment

Soaring rhetoric, urgent pleas and pledges of cooperation contrasted with a backdrop of seismic political changes, global wars and economic hardships as United Nations annual climate talks began Monday and got right to the hard part: money. In Baku, Azerbaijan, where the world's first oil well was drilled and the smell of the fuel was noticeable outdoors, the two-week session, called COP29, got right to the major focus of striking a new deal on how many hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars a year will flow from rich nations to poor to try to curb and adapt to climate change. The money is to help the developing world transition their energy systems away from planet-warming fossil fuels and toward clean energy, compensate for climate disasters mostly triggered by carbon pollution from rich nations and adapt to future extreme weather. These numbers may sound big but they are nothing compared to the cost of inaction, the new COP29 president, Mukhtar Babayev, said as he to

Climate finance adaptation grew by 32% in 2022, but large gap remains: UN

International public finance to help developing countries adapt to climate change increased from USD 22 billion in 2021 to USD 28 billion in 2022, but there remains a huge gap between what is needed and what is being delivered, according to a new UN report. At the UN climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, developed nations were urged to at least double their adaptation funding for developing countries from about USD 19 billion in 2019 by 2025. The UN climate summit in Dubai in December 2023 repeated this call, asking developed countries to report progress in 2024. The "Adaptation Gap Report 2024: Come Hell and High Water" from the United Nations Environment Programme on Thursday said even achieving the Glasgow Climate Pact goal would only reduce the adaptation finance gap, estimated at USD 187-359 billion per year, by around 5 per cent. Earlier in the day, European climate change agency Copernicus said it is almost certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first .

UN climate talks head highlights urgency of financial help for poor nations

The head of upcoming climate negotiations told world leaders Wednesday that a new financial aid package for poor and disaster-struck nations is the urgent, make-or-break goal of United Nations talks this fall. Time lost is lives, livelihoods and the planet lost, said Mukhtar Babayev, the Azerbaijan ecology minister and president-designate of November climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. At the same time, Simon Stiell, the United Nations' top climate official, made an emotional plea for a stepped-up fight against the growing cost of unchecked climate carnage from his hurricane-demolished hometown of Carriacou, Grenada, in some of the first video from the devastated island. Beryl is yet more painful proof, Stiell, executive secretary of the UN's climate agency, said from the remnants of a neighbour's house that had lost its roof and walls. Every year fossil fuel-driven climate costs are an economic wrecking ball hitting billions of households and small businesses. If governments ...

India can play bigger role in climate talks; should host COP: Sunita Narain

India can play an "even bigger" role in climate talks by emerging as the voice of the global south and presenting the challenges faced by them, leading environmentalist Sunita Narain said as Prime Minister Narendra Modi eyes hosting the UN climate summit in 2028. In an interaction with PTI editors here, Narain, the Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said the Conference of Parties, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was the only forum where multilateral decisions can be taken to deal with the challenges posed by climate change. "We can play an even bigger role as a country which stands for countries of the south. We have challenges. We can talk about our challenges, not paper over them. And, we can help the world to find a better way ahead. We can play a leadership role," Narain said. Modi, in his address at the Conference of Parties (COP-28) in Dubai, had offered to host the climate conference in India in 2028. The COP presidency ...

Battleground 2024: In Bengal's tea belt, climate and politics boil over

As BJP, TMC fight for dominance, tea gardens hope for a change in the weather and, perhaps, their fortunes

Climate change: Drought in southern Africa leaves some 20 mn facing hunger

Delicately and with intense concentration, Zanyiwe Ncube poured her small share of precious golden cooking oil into a plastic bottle at a food aid distribution site deep in rural Zimbabwe. I don't want to lose a single drop, she said. Her relief at the handout paid for by the United States government as her southern African country deals with a severe drought was tempered when aid workers gently broke the news that this would be their last visit. Ncube and her 7-month-old son she carried on her back were among 2,000 people who received rations of cooking oil, sorghum, peas and other supplies in the Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe. The food distribution is part of a program funded by American aid agency USAID and rolled out by the United Nations' World Food Programme. They're aiming to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late 2023. It has scorched the cr

Azerbaijan minister, state oil company veteran to lead COP29 climate talks

The country has an estimated 2.5 trillion cubic metres of natural gas reserves, according to the 2021 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and it aims to double its gas exports to Europe by 2027

India's 2023 natural calamities: A wake-up call for climate action

Flash floods, cloudbursts, landslides, wildfires, earthquakes... 2023 kept reminding us that the climate clock is ticking for humans

No alternative to green industrial strategy

Sustainable growth requires an industrial policy that prioritises outcomes like clean growth and healthy ageing, moving away from the traditional focus on sectors

1.5 degrees Celsius climate goal: Relevance, current warming scenario

Here's a lowdown on origin, measurement, and current status of the global temperature rise target in the aftermath of COP28

COP28: Nations strain for consensus as climate talks stretch into overtime

Hectic negotiations continued behind closed doors at the Dubai Expo City Centre long after the 11 am deadline, with officials trying to find common ground on key sticking points, including finance and fossil fuels. Around 10 pm, a COP28 spokesperson updated the media that consultations will continue until 3 am (Dubai time), which effectively means a plenary session to adopt a deal could be held in the morning. "Overnight and throughout today, the COP28 President and his team have been engaging in extensive consultations with a wide representation of negotiating groups and Parties. This is to ensure everyone is heard, and all views are considered. He is determined to deliver a version of the text that has the support of all Parties," the spokesperson said. Released after 11 days of intense negotiations, Monday's draft deal exposed stark disparities in the expectations of both developed and developing nations. Rich countries, such as the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the ...

Global South disappointed over GST draft at COP28; calls for revisions

Developing countries have deplored the latest draft of the global stocktake, the most important document of the ongoing climate conference (COP28) here, calling for major changes, including in the section offering options to slash planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, negotiators from the Global South said on Tuesday. The latest global stocktake (GST) draft, which will be the centrepiece of the final deal document, does not mention the "phase-out of fossil fuels". However, it includes stronger language on coal usage, which is problematic for heavily coal-dependent countries like India and China. Approximately 40 per cent of global CO2 emissions stem from coal, with oil and gas contributing to the remaining percentage. India, relying on coal for about 70 per cent of its power generation, aims to add 17 gigawatts of coal-based power generation capacity in the next 16 months. India has voiced strong concerns about the specific targeting of coal. Together with other developing ...

UAE trying nearly 90 detainees on terror charges during COP28: Report

The United Arab Emirates is conducting a mass trial of nearly 90 prisoners on terrorism charges as it hosts the United Nations' COP28 climate summit, including one man whose case was highlighted by demonstrators at the negotiations, an activist organization reported Monday. Emirati authorities did not immediately respond to questions over the report by the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center, a group run by Emirati Hamad al-Shamsi, who lives in exile in Istanbul after being named on a terrorism list by the UAE himself. The state-run WAM news agency also has not run a report on the trial. Al-Shamsi gathered the information from multiple individuals with direct knowledge of the trial. Those on trial face charges of establishing a terrorist organization, supporting and financing it, the center said in a statement. The center is highly troubled by the UAE's apparent fabrication of new charges to extend the sentences of those already released, reflecting the Emirati authorities' ongoing .

India's transport sector's electrification push major opportunity: US envoy

Calling the electrification drive in India one of the most significant opportunities, US Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry said the quicker India pursues this initiative, the more it mitigates greenhouse gas emissions, leading to a reduction in pollution and enhancement of the country's overall security. He said embracing rapid electrification not only aligns with environmental goals but also contributes to a cleaner, more sustainable, and secure future for the country. Speaking at an event at the Indian Pavilion during the global climate talks COP28, Kerry said: Electrification in India is one of the biggest opportunities that we have. The faster that India can do this, the more it cuts greenhouse gas emissions and it cuts pollution, it increases India's security." He said supply chains play a critical role in India's booming economy, which is currently witnessing the rapid growth of new urban centres. Embracing Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's visionary concept of a ...

Climate activists' biggest COP28 protest yet in UN Blue Zone despite ban

Hundreds gathered inside the COP's Blue Zone - officially United Nations territory for the two week of negotiations - alternating between the war in Gaza and climate change to lodge their protest

Observers see Opec 'panicking' as COP28 focuses on fossil fuel phase-out

The oil industry is starting to sweat as United Nations climate talks heat up and threaten to plug fossil fuel-belching wells for good, veteran negotiation observers say. A reported letter from OPEC's leader pleading with the oil cartel's member countries to block any language in an agreement at climate talks that would phase out or phase down fossil fuels hit negotiations like a thunderclap. Host and fellow petrostate United Arab Emirates is trying to tamp down its reverberations in a process where one or two key nations can block everything. Environmental activists, still smarting from 30 years of soft power from oil interests keeping such discussions from seeing the light of day, smirked at signs that the mighty cartel was circling the wagons. I think they're panicking, said E3G analyst Alden Meyer. Maybe the Saudis can't do on their own what they've been doing for 30 years and block the process. Former Ireland President Mary Robinson said, They're scared. I think they're ...