COP29 summit: Will climate aid deal emerge from stalemate?

Baku: Nations remain in deadlock over a crucial pact on climate aid, with divisions over who pays and how much, threatening chances of a deal being landed at next month's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) summit.

The UN conference starts just six days after the US election and the possible return of Donald Trump — who pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement — looms over the negotiations.

World leaders will attend a two-day gathering at the opening of the summit in Azerbaijan, which faces scrutiny as the latest petrostate with limited tolerance for dissent to host the preeminent annual climate talks.

COP29 is the biggest international event Azerbaijan has ever hosted, bringing unprecedented scrutiny to a country that Human Rights Watch has described as "repressive", AFP reported.

Organisers say over 50,000 attendees are expected between November 11-22 in the capital Baku.

COP29 has been dubbed a "finance COP" because rich countries — the most responsible for global warming — are supposed to commit to substantially increasing their assistance to poorer countries for climate action.

The current amount of $100 billion a year expires in 2025 and is considered well below what developing nations need.

But major donors, including the European Union and the US, have still not said how much they are willing to pay, resisting pressure to put even a ballpark figure on the table.

They are being urged to turn billions into trillions at COP29, but the appeal for vast new sums of government money comes at a time of political and economic uncertainty for many donors.

'Complex negotiations'

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic between Russia and Iran with little experience in international diplomacy, has urged parties to make the most of the "critical final stage" before COP29.

On Wednesday, government ministers will gather in Baku to try and make headway.

"These are complex negotiations — if they were easy, they would have been resolved already — and ministers will succeed or fail together," said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, a former oil executive and Azerbaijan's ecology minister, in September.

"The eyes of the world are now upon them."

Observers say climate leadership has been missing in action this year, with attention elsewhere even as fires, floods, heatwaves and drought have hit every corner of the globe.

As they stand, international efforts to reduce planet-heating greenhouse gases are insufficient to cap global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the safer limit of the Paris Agreement.

"We are potentially headed towards 3C of global warming by 2100 if we carry on with the policies we have at the moment," Jim Skea, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told The Telegraph in October.

Developing nations suffer disproportionately from climate change and are seeking a deal at COP29 that ensures upwards of $1 trillion annually in "climate finance", 10 times current amounts.

They want the new agreement to cover not just money for low-carbon technology and adaptation measures like sea walls but for disaster recovery as well, something developed countries do not want to include.

Amnesty International and US senators have raised concerns about a crackdown in Azerbaijan in recent months, with critical voices jailed on dubious charges.

"The situation on the ground is quite grim... By the time Azerbaijan actually hosts COP29 there won't be much of civil society left," said independent Azerbaijani journalist Arzu Geybulla.

The summit has a much lower profile than the extravaganza in Dubai and it remains unclear how many world leaders will attend, with COP30 in Brazil next year considered of greater import.