Baku - The world's most climate-imperilled nations stormed out of consultations in protest at the deadlocked UN COP29 conference on Nov 23, as simmering tensions over a hard-fought finance deal erupted into the open. Diplomats from small island nations threatened by rising seas and impoverished African states angrily filed out of a meeting with summit host Azerbaijan over a final deal being thrashed out in a Baku sports stadium. 'We’ve just walked out. We came here to this COP for a fair deal.
We feel that we haven’t been heard,’ said Mr Cedric Schuster, the Samoan chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). An unpublished version of the final text circulating in Baku, and seen by AFP, proposes that rich nations raise to US$300 billion (S$404 billion) a year by 2035 their commitment to poorer countries to fight climate change. COP29 host Azerbaijan intended to put a final draft before 198 nations for adoption or rejection on Nov 23 evening, a full day after the marathon summit officially ended. But, in a statement, AOSIS said it had “removed” itself from the climate finance discussions, demanding an “inclusive” process. “If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29,” it said. Sierra Leone climate minister Jiwoh Abdulai, whose country is among the world’s poorest, said the draft was “effectively a suicide pact for the rest of the world”. An earlier offer from rich nations of US$250 billion was slammed as offensively low by developing countries, who have demanded much higher sums to build resilience against climate change and cut emissions. British energy secretary Ed Miliband said the revised offer of US$300 billion was “a significant scaling up” of the existing pledge by developed nations, which also count the United States, European Union and Japan among their ranks.