Tense COP29 Settles on Aid to Poorer Nations

Pushed into an extra day by persistent disagreement, negotiators at the UN Climate Change Conference reached a deal Sunday morning to provide the world's poorer nations with funding to mitigate the most serious effects of global warming. Nearly 200 nations agreed to the deal, which was being finalized, calling for developed countries to make available at least $300 billion per year by 2035 to those most vulnerable to climate crises, the Washington Post reports. That's nowhere near the $1.3 trillion per year that experts say is needed, per the New York Times, but a step up from the current $100 billion.

"Everybody is committed to having an agreement," Fiji delegation chief Biman Prasad said, per the AP. "They are not necessarily happy about everything." Negotiations at the COP29 session in Azerbaijan frequently have been bitter, not helped by the shrinking food supply for delegates and the windowless complex they're meeting in. Poor nations complain they've been left to deal with climate change on their own, while wealthier ones say they're limited by political realities back home and their own tight budgets. President-elect Trump's election complicated the talks, per the Times, given that he's expected to not keep any US commitments negotiated in Baku and has said he'll pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

The money will help the recipients move away from the coal, oil, and gas that cause the planet to overheat, adapt to future warming, and repair the damage inflicted by extreme weather brought by climate change. The idea is that money from other sources, private as well as multilateral development banks, will follow; wealthy countries have long argued more than public funding is needed. "Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources," said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta, "putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries' transitions." (More UN climate summit stories.)