Diplomats have insisted that Trump's win will not distract COP29 from the serious work at hand, particularly an agreement on a new global climate finance goal for developing countries
The COP29 climate summit started Monday in Azerbaijan, just a few days after Donald Trump was re-elected as the US president. Trump has earlier called climate change a “hoax” and pledged to row back on the United States' carbon-cutting commitments. His return has surfaced fears of less ambition on the negotiating table with an imminent US departure from the Paris agreement.
"We cannot afford to let the momentum for global action on climate change be derailed," Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu's special envoy for climate change and environment, told AFP. He added, "This is a shared problem that will not solve itself without international cooperation, and we will continue to make that case to the incoming president of one of the world's largest polluters."
The ex-president of US Joe Biden will not be present, as will many leaders who have traditionally made an early appearance in COP summits. Only a handful of leaders from the Group of 20, whose countries account for nearly 80 per cent of global emissions, are attending, as mentioned in a report by AFP. However, Afghanistan will be sending a delegation for the first time since the Taliban took power.
Diplomats, as cited in the report, have insisted that the absences and Trump's win will not distract COP29 from the serious work at hand, particularly an agreement on a new global climate finance goal for developing countries. Parties must increase a $100bn-a-year target to help developing nations prepare for worsening climate impacts and decarbonising their economies.
"It's hard. It involves money. When it comes to money, everybody shows their true colours," Adonia Ayebare, the Ugandan chair of a bloc that groups over 100 mostly developing countries and China, told AFP.
Developing countries are pushing for trillions of dollars which is insisted to be in the form of grants mostly rather than as loans. They have warned that without the money they will struggle to offer ambitious updates to their nationally determined contributions which are required to be submitted by early next year.
COP29 starts with fresh warnings that the world is far off track to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius target set by the Paris agreement. Earlier this year, the UN warned the world is on its way to a catastrophic 3.1 degrees Celsius of warming this century with the current pace of climate actions.
"Everyone knows that these negotiations will not be easy," Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told AFP. "But they are worth it: each tenth of a degree of warming avoided means fewer crises, less suffering, less displacement." More than 51,000 people are expected at the talks, which will end on November 22.