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No concrete steer from G20 on tricky finance talks
At a press conference in Baku yesterday, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev sent a cry for help with unlocking finance talks to the G20 leaders summit in Rio de Janeiro.
“The world is waiting to hear from them,” he said, adding “we want them to provide clear mandates to deliver at COP29 – this is their chance to show leadership.”
While Baku slept, G20 leaders in Rio put out a joint statement on tackling everything from hunger to artificial intelligence.
But the section on the COP29 finance goal was brief. “We look forward to a successful New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) outcome in Baku,” it said.
“We pledge our support to the COP29 Presidency and commit to successful negotiations in Baku,” it added.
At the UN climate summit, officials and campaigners alike had hoped for more of a boost. Reuters reported yesterday that, according to two diplomats, the communique had planned to mention developing nations’ voluntary contributions to climate finance – one of the main sticking points in the COP29 finance talks where rich nations want to expand the donor base. But that did not make it into the final text.
Veteran climate campaigner Harjeet Singh accused G20 leaders of a “stark failure”. He said: “Their rehashed rhetoric offers no solace for the fraught COP29 negotiations, where we continue to see a deadlock on climate finance”.
“Without decisive progress on finance at COP29, we are steering towards a catastrophic temperature scenario, where the most vulnerable will bear the gravest consequences,” he added.
Still, some other analysts gave a more positive take on the G20 declaration. Andreas Sieber of climate campaign group 350.org said it could not be described as a “breakthrough” but had “got us a step closer to agreeing a finance deal here”, calling the leaders’ backing for the finance talks “significant”.
There was also hope that climate finance could eventually get a boost from the G20 leaders’ support for a tax on the super-rich, with the communique noting that “we will seek to engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed”.
Rebecca Thissen, global advocacy lead at Climate Action Network International, said this aim “provides a clear pathway to raise the trillions of dollars required for climate action and sustainable development”.
On efforts to cut emissions and boost clean energy, the G20 leaders said they “fully subscribe to the ambitious and balanced outcome” from COP28 in Dubai last year. But Ani Dasgupta, head of the World Resources Institute, said it was “unfortunate that the G20 failed to reiterate the commitment to shift away from fossil fuels” – widely viewed as a historic outcome from the COP28 summit.