World leaders gathered at United Nations climate talks in Azerbaijan have been urged to consider taxing business class air travel, large stock and cryptocurrency trades and plastics as negotiations over finance grind on. These talks, focused on raising a vast sum of finance from the developed world for the developing world to cope with adaptation to climate change and pay for the transition to cleaner economies were always going to be contentious, but the thumping election victory of Donald Trump has added to pressure on negotiators. The oil industry still dominates Baku, host to the COP29 United Nations climate talks.
Credit: AP Negotiators have to agree on not only how much moneyper year for the task, but also which nations should be donors and which ones recipients. When the world agreed on the process as part of the Paris accord under the UN climate treaty, nations such as China and Saudi Arabia were considered still to be developing. Now they have grown in wealth, some developed nations want to see them join the ranks of the donors.
Then there are negotiations over the form that the finance should take. How much would take the form of public grants and donations? How much would be delivered via the private sector? How could development banks like the World Bank be reformed to ensure developing nations could access finance at reasonable rates? The sum being negotiated is staggering. The finance is set to replace an existing fund which expires in 2025 and provides US$100 b.
