Finance deal remains elusive at Cop29 as UN climate talks stretch into overtime
Negotiations at Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan were scheduled to finish on Friday evening but a final deal on climate finance remains elusive.
Countries have worked through the night to broker a deal on climate finance at the UN climate summit as negotiations stretched into overtime.
Patience is wearing thin on the ground at Cop29 in Azerbaijan as negotiations in the host city, Baku, hit a deadlock again on Saturday afternoon – almost 24 hours after the summit was scheduled to finish.
The Cop29 presidency scheduled a plenary hearing for 7pm local time on Saturday where countries will present their final views on a draft deal.
But behind the scenes, there was little sign of a breakthrough over how much rich countries should pay in public finance to poorer ones to help them cope with the impacts of global warming, or on how to cut climate-heating emissions.
As the talks became increasingly precarious on Saturday, contractors were already taking down the temporary buildings around the Olympic Stadium, which had hosted the nearly two-week summit.
Following days of deadlock, the host Azerbaijan presidency team released the latest draft for a global agreement on Friday afternoon, which indicated that governments were closing in on a compromise.
The text included long-awaited specific numbers on climate finance, which meant countries could finally begin wrangling over the details of a deal.
The core target put forward was 250 billion dollars in public money and a wider goal of 1.3 trillion dollars, including many types of finance, to be flowing into poorer countries each year by 2035.
