Activists stage a protest during a closing ceremony after negotiations concluded in Nizami Plenary Room in Blue Zone during United Nations Climate Change Conference COP29, an event held by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Baku Olympic Stadium. COP29, running from November 11-22 focuses on climate funding. The negotiators did not reach an agreement in this period and the negotiations were extended till Saturday, 23rd of November.
Initially, there were significant concerns about Azerbaijan hosting the conference due to its human rights record, particularly regarding the treatment of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. "We've been negotiating this for over three years. We have been here in Baku for over two weeks. So we had enough time to get to a consensus text. However, you know, the developed nations didn't throw their figure until barely up to two days ago. And as I said earlier, this is what they always do. You know, they throw texts at us at the last minute, shove it down our throats. And then for the sake of multilateralism, we always have to, like, accept it and take it.
"We are frankly deeply concerned at this stage about what we view as a glaring imbalance in the text thus far. In particular, we want to underscore that the treatment of mitigation in the current draft is absolutely unacceptable. We join many others and are surprised that there is nothing that carries forward the central work of mitigation and the key mitigation outcomes that we agreed on last year in Dubai.
"Minister Fouad and I heard from developing countries a requirement of $1.3 trillion of finance mobilised. But we heard different proposals for the split between the provided element and the element which would be mobilised from that provision quantum. For example, we have heard three different proposals for the provided quantum of $900 billion, $600 billion and $440 billion.