Political direction needed to resolve disputes on new climate finance goal: COP29 president

NEW DELHI: The president of this year's UN climate summit has said that political direction is required to resolve disagreements on a new financial target to support developing countries' climate actions post-2025.

Climate finance will be at the centre of the UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the world will reach the deadline to agree on the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) -- the new amount developed nations must mobilise every year starting in 2025 to support climate action in developing countries.

But achieving consensus will not be easy, given the disappointing progress made on the issue at the mid-year UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

"There are disagreements on key elements that will require political direction and we must focus high-level discussions on these points," COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev said in a letter to nearly 200 countries that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Babayev said climate finance has been one of the most challenging topics in the negotiations and climate diplomacy more broadly, and the politically complex issues cannot be solved by negotiators alone.

At the 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen, rich nations historically responsible for climate change pledged to provide USD 100 billion annually from 2020 to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to impacts.

However, delays in achieving this goal have eroded trust between developed and developing countries and have been a continual source of contention during annual climate negotiations.

Babayev said an agreement on a fair and ambitious NCQG, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries, is the Azeri presidency's top priority.

"We must all go the extra mile together to deliver this historic milestone," he said, adding that countries' work on climate finance should represent a progression beyond previous efforts.

Babayev's letter to all countries came on a day when the head of the UN climate change body, Simon Steill, called on every country to put climate action at the top of their cabinet agendas.

Steill, who is visiting the island of Carriacou in his homeland of Grenada in the wake of Hurricane Beryl, said the G20 countries -- responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions -- must lead the way with game-changing new national climate plans due early next year.

He called on all governments to "supercharge" efforts to prevent climate disasters.

"Just in the past month, we have seen heatwaves with a four-figure death toll in India. Over a thousand pilgrims died on their Haj to Mecca this year. Two years ago, one-third of Pakistan was under water, over a thousand people lost their lives, millions were displaced, and 3.5 million (35 lakh) children were out of school," Steill said.

Citing a recent report by Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, he said climate impacts could cost the global economy around USD 38 trillion a year by 2050.

Climate impacts have decreased global food production and increased food prices and other living costs. If governments do not step up, every economy and all eight billion (800 crore) people will face this blunt-force trauma continuously, Steill warned.