Time ‘rapidly running out’ on COP29 climate finance deal: Guilbeault

Canada’s environment and climate change minister was critical of Azerbaijani leadership at the United Nations climate summit as tense negotiations on a new finance deal came down to the wire.

Steven Guilbeault, speaking late Thursday, said he had so far been “disappointed” by the talks hosted by Azerbaijan, adding that time was “rapidly running out.”

With the conference known as COP29 stretching into overtime, negotiators are still hashing out how much money wealthier — and historically higher-emitting — countries will pledge to their developing counterparts in the fight against global warming.

The latest draft negotiating text released Friday pledged $250 billion by 2035, more than double the previous goal set 15 years ago, but less than a quarter of what developing countries requested.

Catherine Abreu, a leading Canadian climate policy analyst, called it a “lowest common denominator offering.”

Speaking Friday from the conference in Baku, Abreu said developing countries such as Canada must speak up “really quickly” in order make the deal more ambitious.

Several independent experts have suggested developing countries may need upwards of $1 trillion to help them transition away from fossil fuels, adapt to expected climate effects and pay for damages already caused by extreme weather.

On Thursday, Guilbeault said Canada “certainly doesn’t debate that we need to get to something around $1 trillion by 2030.”

“The question is how. It’s not going to be all public money. It’s not happening,” he said in an interview Thursday evening.

Guilbeault was critical of Azerbaijan for tabling negotiating texts earlier in the week that failed to acknowledge previous international agreements to reduce fossil-fuel dependency and scale up energy efficiency.

“These are things that we’ve already agreed to,” he said. “These should be no-brainers.”

The previous climate finance goal, agreed to in 2009, saw countries pledge $100 billion annually by 2020. That goal was met two years late, and countries agreed to come up with a new target by 2025, setting up COP29 as a forum to hammer out the details.

Guilbeault said that fixating on a dollar figure cannot come at the expense of making that money more transparent and more accessible to developing countries.

Canada has also pushed for China and Saudi Arabia to be among the countries added to the list of climate finance donor nations, in recognition of both their growing economies and their share of emissions.

“A number was put forward in Copenhagen in 2009 without a lot of thinking about the overall architecture of what a good financial package would look like,” he said.

“This idea that a number will fix everything — been there, done that, got the T-shirt, didn’t work.”

Julie Segal, with Environmental Defence, said the new $250 billion proposal is “stingy” and would be “basically the status quo, if not less,” once it is adjusted for inflation.

“This current proposal from wealthy countries has so many holes and is unacceptable relative to the needs,” she said in an interview Friday.

Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said she has never attended UN climate negotiations so clouded in uncertainty, so close to their deadline.

“Given the fact that we are during the hottest year on record and the crucial nature of this COP for climate multilateralism as a whole, (that) is a really scary and dangerous place to be,” she said in an interview from Azerbaijan late Thursday.

— With files from The Associated Press.