Many poorer nations have dismissed the agreement reached by negotiators at the United Nations climate talks on a $300bn target to help developing nations adapt to climate change, describing as insufficient.
The agreement came on Sunday, a day after the COP29 talks were supposed to end in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. According to reports, richer nations agreed to pay at least $300bn a year by 2035 to help poorer countries make their economies more environmentally-friendly, and prepare for natural disasters.
The number is an increase from a previous $100bn pledge, but was still $200bn less than the number called for by a group of 134 developing countries. A larger target of $1.3 trillion per year was also part of the deal, but most of that would come from private sources.
A delegate from India, Leena Nandan, called the agreement an “illusion”.
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“The amount that is proposed to be mobilised is abysmally poor. It’s a paltry sum,” said Nandan. “This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
Hours earlier, delegations from small island states and the least developed nations walked out of negotiations on the funding package, saying their climate finance interests were being ignored.
“We’ve just walked out. We came here to this COP for a fair deal. We feel that we haven’t been heard,” said Cedric Schuster, the Samoan chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, a coalition of nations threatened by rising seas.
“[The] current deal is unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do,” Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group, said.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
