The tepid endorsement comes as presidents and prime ministers fly into Antalya for the conference’s leaders’ summit on Wednesday and Thursday.
In the corridors, and occasionally in press conference rooms, negotiators voiced concerns about the pledge’s alignment with emissions-slashing efforts, the financial aid needed to implement the goal, and whether a brand-new target is necessary at all.
“On the electrification issue, the target is clear, but how can we move together?” asked Adão Soares Barbosa, climate envoy of Timor-Leste and chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group in a press conference on Tuesday.
“The LDCs are categorized as [having] limited economic capacity to address this electrification issue, this 35×35. So we call upon all parties … to provide financial support. So that we can move together.”
Explicit endorsements were limited to a handful of developed countries, island nations and governments involved in hosting current or upcoming climate summits. Fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia, or big polluters such as China and India, remained silent.
Germany, Norway and Ethiopia — which is hosting next year’s COP32 summit — were among the countries that publicly backed the pledge in the ministerial meeting. The European Union, though it still has a few bureaucratic boxes to tick, is poised to sign up to the target, POLITICO reported earlier on Tuesday.