Abdulai, from Sierra Leone, called it critical to get a financial target that meets the developing world’s needs.
“If we continue to do this delay, eventually this becomes a food insecurity issue,” Abdulai said. “It becomes a water insecurity issue. And it will end up being a security issue in Europe.”
Dwindling days
Whatever deal emerges from this week’s talks will have ramifications for decades. Some countries argue that without the money needed to build cleaner energy systems, they’ll end up relying on the available resources, which may well be more of the fossil fuels creating the crisis.
Referencing a major pipeline and extraction program in Uganda, Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa said oil and natural gas are “a natural resource, which other countries used to develop. And if you want Uganda to abandon it, you find an alternative. … So where is this climate money? Where is it?”
Half a world away, Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders in Rio de Janeiro for the Group of 20 summit endorsed several initiatives to enhance the money available for climate and clean energy investments. They said in their communiqué that they looked forward to a “successful outcome” at COP29.
“We recognize the need to catalyze and scale up investment from all financial sources and channels for bridging the funding gap for energy transitions globally, especially in developing countries,” the statement says, acknowledging that developing countries “need to be supported in their transitions to low carbon emissions” and that climate finance needs to scale up “from billions to trillions from all sources.”
Some observers and finance experts hope that will send a political signal to officials in Baku.
“There is no backing down here,” Avinash Persaud, a climate adviser to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, said in a message.