World News | Tension Boils over at COP29; Two Blocs of Vulnerable Nations Leave Negotiations Meeting Room Mid-way

Baku (Azerbaijan), Nov 23 (PTI) At least two groups of the world's most vulnerable countries staged a walkout of the negotiation room at the UN climate conference here on Saturday expressing strong dissatisfaction with the draft agreement on climate finance for the Global South.

Negotiators from the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) walked away from the meeting room as the developing and the developed nations discussed the latest draft.

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The LDC said they were not consulted on the draft and that it lacks a minimum financial allocation for them.

“We can't engage on the basis of this text,” one negotiator stated.

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A statement by the AOSIS said, “We have presently removed ourselves from the stalled NCQG discussions, which were not offering a progressive way forward.”

The LDCs and the SIDS - Small Island Developing States - have been demanding that they should be given a minimum of USD 220 billion and USD 39 billion, respectively, from the total climate finance package.

Meanwhile, the G77 group, representing over 130 developing countries, called for the draft to reference Para 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, making it mandatory for developed nations to provide finance to developing countries.

They also demanded at least USD 500 billion in climate finance by 2035.

Other developing nations criticised the draft, calling the proposed climate finance package “grossly insufficient” and “a joke.”

Brandon Wu, an expert from the US-based advocacy group Action Aid said the US is demanding that the draft agreement should not refer to Para 1.

“This is the end game of the 10-year US strategy to exit from their obligation to provide climate finance to the global south,” he said.

At the UN climate conference here, countries are required to reach an agreement on a new climate finance package --- termed as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) –-- to help developing countries cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the warming world.

The summit was scheduled to conclude on Friday but spilled into overtime as developed nations only presented a concrete climate finance figure in the closing hours.

The USD 250 billion amount offered by the rich nations is a far cry from the trillions required to tackle the escalating climate emergency.

Developing nations have been demanding at least USD 1.3 trillion annually -- 13 times the USD 100 billion pledged in 2009 -- starting in 2025 to address their escalating climate challenges.

They have said that a significant portion of this USD 1.3 trillion should come directly in public funding from developed countries.

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