Cop 29 live: Trump vow to ditch Paris agreement ‘of grave concern’ to small island states | Cop29

Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, has used his time on stage to lambast France for its colonial “crimes” in its overseas territories, continuing a longrunning diplomatic schism between the two countries.

Aliyev drew loud applause from delegates of some Pacific island nations after a speech in which he slammed Paris for its response to independence protests that rocked New Caledonia this spring.

Thirteen people, mostly indigenous Kanaks, and two police officers, have been killed and nearly 3,000 people have been arrested since police in the territory launched an investigation just days after the unrest started in May.

Tensions began after changes to the voting registry that Kanaks felt would favour recent arrivals to the Pacific archipelago.

“The crimes of France in its so-called overseas territories would not be complete without mentioning the recent human rights violations,” said Aliyev.

“The regime of President (Emmanuel) Macron killed 13 people and wounded 169… during legitimate protests by the Kanak people in New Caledonia,” he added.

Paris has long supported Baku’s regional rival Armenia, which Azerbaijan defeated in a lightning offensive last year when it retook the breakaway Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Macron has has not attended Cop29.

In the run-up to the summit, Azerbaijan was denounced for its human rights record and political repression. But Aliyev hit back at the European Union and the Council of Europe human rights body calling them “symbols of political corruption that share responsibility with the government of President Macron for the killings of innocent people”.

He also said that “all political prisoners of France must be liberated”.

Campaigners have accused wealthy nations of pushing weak language in climate finance talks at the Cop29 summit to avoid properly funding poorer countries’ adaptations to the climate crisis.

On the third day of the climate summit in Baku, where a key aim is reaching a deal on funding to help poorer nations adapt to climate shocks and transition to cleaner energy, a draft text on climate financing goals is already under negotiation.

But ActionAid International said wealthier nations are trying to push for an investment model involving “loans, corporate investment, and other finance flows that could potentially do more harm than good”.

Teresa Anderson, ActionAid’s global lead on climate justice, said:

This is a sprawling and unstructured document which includes every possible idea, option, and permutation. The text reflects developing countries’ need for a goal worth trillions of dollars in grant-based finance so they can cope with the climate crisis.

It also includes developed countries’ preferred language on an ‘investment layer’ which emphasises loans, corporate investment, and other finance flows that could potentially do more harm than good.

The ‘investment; language that rich countries are pushing hard is clearly a bare-faced pitch to avoid providing real grant-based finance, and instead use frontline countries’ desperation to open up to more corporate exploitation.

Cop9 negotiations would be more likely to make progress if negotiations focus on areas where there is already consensus, such as the principle that the core of the goal should be public finance.

Damian Carrington

The president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, caused a stir on Tuesday, when he doubled down on a previous remark that the nation’s oil and gas were a “gift from God” and that criticism of the Cop29 host’s expansion of gas production was “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail” involving “some politicians, state-controlled NGOs and fake news media in some western countries”. That was unconventional diplomacy, to say the least, for the country tasked with bringing the world together at the summit.

Today, faith leaders rejected his comments, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.

“God calls us to take good care of the divine gifts of land, water and other resources,” said Bishop Julio Murray, an Anglican from Panama, who is Moderator of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Climate Justice. “The biblical concept of Jubilee calls for the rest of the land – for the liberation of land from exploitation, extraction and drilling – to allow regeneration and renewal of our only planetary home. We know that the clock is ticking on climate change. We need to put a stop to fossil fuel extraction and production if we are to prevent the worst consequences of climate change.”

“According to Genesis 2:15, the Bible tells us that God placed people in the Garden of Eden to ‘take care of it’, emphasising a role as stewards rather than exploiters of the earth,” said Romario Dohmann from the Evangelical Church in the River Plate.

Almost 60 faith-based organisations have signed a Call to Action, released today, that states: “All countries must prioritise the urgent phase-out of fossil fuels, which are the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions.”

As briefly mentioned by my colleague Dharna Noor earlier, negotiators at Cop29 are welcoming a pledge by development banks to lift climate funding to poor and middle-income countries.

The World Bank is among the group that on Tuesday announced a joint goal of increasing this finance to $120 billion by 2030, a roughly 60% increase on the amount in 2023.

“I think it’s a very good sign,” Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s climate minister, told Reuters on Wednesday. “But that on its own won’t be enough,” he added, insisting countries and companies must also contribute.

Ryan’s view was echoed by Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation who welcomed the announcement as “a shot in the arm for the climate finance discussion”

Securing an international climate financing agreement that ensures up to trillions of dollars for climate projects is a key aim of negotiators in Baku over the next two weeks. Developing countries are hoping for big commitments from rich, industrialised counterparts that are the biggest historical contributors to global warming, and some of which are also huge producers of fossil fuels.

“Developed countries have not only neglected their historical duty to reduce emissions, they are doubling down on fossil-fuel-driven growth,” climate activist Harjeet Singh told Reuters.

Damian Carrington

Christmas has come early at Cop29 with the arrival of Sustaina Claus, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.

Philip McMaster, from Canada, who has been to 10 Cops, has a particular solution to the world’s climate and other problems: better childhoods to produce better leaders.

“My focus is to make childhood great again – that’s our little slogan” he says. “Why? Because childhood produced Trump, childhood produced Biden, it produced you, it produced me. The childhood period is very informative and produces the next generation of leaders.”

“But if you’re putting a phone up in their face, and they don’t get outside and don’t play, and they’re over pharmaceuticalised, you’re just gonna have a bunch of blobs,” McMaster says.

“For 600,000 years, we’ve been having childhoods, feet in the ground, family relations, social relations, scrape your knees, fall down, understand how things work, physicality.

“But childhood is certainly not working now. It has produced the people who are making these decisions now, and they have lost their touch with reality. They’ve lost their touch with childhood.”

Damian Carrington

Dickon Mitchell, prime minister of Grenada, gave a powerful speech – as leaders of nations on the frontline of the climate crisis are able to do, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.

“I lead a country which experienced in the first half of the year a 50 year drought. Then on the first day of the second half, we experienced the earliest category five hurricane on record,” he said. “The island was devastated by flash flooding and landslides, all in a couple of hours.”

“We are not here to beg, or to ask for sympathy,” Mitchell said. “It is one planet. It may be small islands today, but it will be Spain tomorrow and Florida the next day.”

He called for a partnership with rich nations, in which Grenada shared how it is learning to cope with climate chaos.

He called particularly for the finance to be provided for the Loss and Damage fund, which is for rebuilding communities after climate catastrophes: “Put the money in the fund, and make it available to those who suffer.”

Earlier, Siaosi Sovaleni, Prime Minister of Tonga, expressed his country’s support for Australia’s bid to host Cop31 in 2026, and run it as the “Pacific Cop”. He says: “Climate change was, is, and will be the most existential threat to Pacific islands including Tongo.” Turkey is also making a strong pitch to host that summit.

The profits of oil and gas producers could pay the entire annual bill for loss and damage caused by climate breakdown, according to a new analysis.

Global Witness, a climate NGO, says the world’s top 30 oil and gas companies (excluding those based in poorer countries) recorded a combined average of $400bn per year in free cash flow since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015.

That is the same amount researchers from Loss and Damage Collaboration said should be considered the minimum annual funding needed by lower-income countries to deal with the aftermath of climate disasters.

Sarah Biermann Becker, a senior fossil fuels investigator at Global Witness, said:

From super-charged hurricanes in the US to typhoons in the Philippines, ordinary people are already paying for the climate crisis. They’re paying with their health, homes and livelihoods, and doing what they can to build back in the wake of disaster.

But as people struggle in the wake of climate chaos, there is one sector that’s raking in billions and avoiding any culpability for its role in the devastation – the fossil fuel industry.

It’s time to end this injustice. We need billions of dollars to deal with climate impacts, and Big Oil firms are some of the richest companies on the planet – it’s time they paid their fair share to repair the damage they’ve done.

A fund to help poorer countries respond to the effects of climate-related disasters was set up two years ago at Cop27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. But, as pointed out by Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, yesterday, so far pledges to the fund total just $700m.

Joseph Mangiben from Buenguet Province, the Philippines, said:

When I was a child, strong typhoons didn’t come consecutively every single year. But today they come one after the other. I feel scared and I’m worried about what might happen. The ones who suffer most are poor nations like the Philippines.

Ali Zaidi, climate advisor to the US president Joe Biden, has touted his country’s plans to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050 as a bipartisan project that could survive Donald Trump’s resuming power in January.

The reelection of Trump, who has vowed to pull the US out of the Paris agreement and even questioned the reality of anthropogenic climate breakdown, has cast a long shadow over the Cop29 talks in Baku.

Biden is not attending the summit, but according to AFP US officials in Baku have been trying to reassure their counterparts from other countries that Trump will be unable to halt US climate action.

Speaking to delegates, Zaidi suggested the nuclear plans in particular were an example of that. He said:

I would remind you that this is an area that has witnessed not only bipartisan support… but also an area where Democratic and Republican administrations have passed the baton, one to the other, to keep progress going.

These targets are bold, but they are also achievable.

Many nations have already said they believe growing nuclear power will be the best way to meet net-zero commitments, in spite of the heavy cost of building reactors and the fear of catastrophic accidents.

Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has used his statement in Baku to warn that Europe needs to devote more resources to responding to the impact of climate disasters.

His country has doubled its renewable energy output since 2014, but in recent years has also struggled to recover from multiple floods and wildfires . This year, it had its hottest summer on record, after a winter with barely any rain.

Addressing delegates, Mitsotakis said, according to Reuters:

We cannot focus so much on 2050 that we forget 2024.

We need more resources to prepare to respond in time, in order to save lives and livelihoods and to help people and communities rebuild after disaster.

Europe accounted for a diminishing share of global emissions but was almost alone in defending the rules of free trade and should make sure that the energy transition will not hurt its economy, Mitsotakis said.

We need to ask hard questions about a path that goes very fast at the expense of our competitiveness, and a path that goes somewhat slower but allows our industry to adapt and to thrive. It is our responsibility to weigh these trade offs carefully

Donald Trump’s pledge to exit the Paris climate agreement is “something of grave, grave concern” to climate-vulnerable countries, Ambassador Dr. Pa’oleilei Luteru, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told the Guardian, writes Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter for the Guardian US.

In many places, climate disaster causes temporary devastation. But for small island states, the threat is existential, said Lutero, who is also the permanent representative of Samoa at the UN.

“Our survival is very much at risk,” he said.

As the world’s largest economy and top contributor to historic emissions, the US has an “ethical responsibility” to lead the climate fight, Lutero said. And without decisive climate action, the threat to other countries will also become more pronounced, Lutero said.

“This is not just a crisis for small island developing states. Although we are the ones at the forefront, it will come to everyone if we do not act,” he said. “The US doesn’t live on a different planet.”

The UK should also increase its ambition on climate action, Lutero said. Britain’s recent refusal to advocate for strong UN treaty language on fossil fuel phaseout has been “disappointing,” he said, as have cuts to the country’s development budget.

UK officials have told him more aid budget cuts are possible, though they assured that they do not foresee a “drastic reduction in the amount of resources.”

“Obviously, if you going to cut the budget it’s going to have an impact,” he said.

Cop29 negotiators must quickly set a goal for climate finance, Lutero continued — a main task for negotiators at Cop29, since an (often broken) 2009 pledge expires this year.

“It’s of critical importance that we agree on, or at least have a very good idea of, the quantity that we’re talking about,” he said.

Poor nations need at least $1tn annually to cope with climate costs, and developed countries are willing to ensure about half of that comes from public money, leaving a yawning gap that countries are hoping to fill by other means. But “you can’t fill the gap if you don’t know what the starting point will be in terms of resources,” Lutero said.

In addition to making ambitious financial commitments, rich nations should help vulnerable countries employ green technologies, while pressuring the global financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to restructure with climate justice in mind.

A multilateral approach to the climate crisis is needed, Lutero argued.

“It’s only when we come together that we can address global issues,” he said.

Fiona Harvey wrote this week about how to fill the climate finance gap:

As we mentioned earlier, today global leaders have been the delegates in Baku.

According to the US-based news agency AP, many were expected to detail their nations’ first hand experiences of the catastrophic weather-related disasters becoming more frequent as a result of climate breakdown.

Dickon Mitchell, prime minister of Grenada, told how his country had for most of the year suffered a 15-month drought, which only broke with the catastrophe of the category 5 Hurricane Beryl. He said:

At this very moment, as I stand here yet again, my island has been devastated by flash flooding, landslides and the deluge of excessive rainfall, all in the space of a matter of a couple hours.

It may be small island developing states today. It will be Spain tomorrow. It will be Florida the day after. It’s one planet.

Small island states are among those suffering the worst of the impacts of climate breakdown. Philip Edward Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas, also came with stern words for delegates, warning that progress on the climate was too often set back by changes of governments, such as in the US and Germany recently.

If we leave climate action to the whims of political cycles, our planet’s future becomes precarious, very precarious.

The climate crisis does not pause for elections or to accommodate the way of changing political ideas or ties. It demands continuity, commitment and most of all, solidarity.

Hello, this is Damien Gayle taking over the liveblog for a few hours now, with thanks to Matt for getting things going this morning. Please do send us any comments or tips, or suggestions for that matter, on things we ought to be taking a look at. You can reach the team at cop29@theguardian.com.

Ajit Niranjan

A common theme around Cops is that climate summits are a waste of time – from the leaders of poor countries fed up with failed promises from the rich world, to activists sceptical of delegates flying to semi-petrostates, to teenagers aghast at the persistent lack of action from people who claim to care.

Sigrid Karl, an Austrian youth delegate at Cop29, described feeling overwhelmed, hopeful and needing stamina. “Even though it’s difficult sometimes, there’s so many people here really trying to fight.”

She said the Europeans had been willing to engage with young people perhaps more than some other delegations. Still, she added, the rhetoric around listening to young people can be “frustrating” if it shifts the responsibility to solve problems. “It’s not young people that are able to take these political positions.”

Karl said she understood people who felt disengaged with climate talks. “I totally get that it seems far away, but this is a very important process to talk about these issues globally and find solutions together.”

Still, not everyone has to be engaged with these processes, she said. “There’s so many things to do nationally and in your communities.”

As negotiations continue in Baku this piece outlining what a successful Cop29 would look like by my colleague Fiona Harvey is worth a read

The Guardian’s editorial published last night [and in this morning’s print edition in the UK] pulls no punches, arguing for urgent action and warning the world faces a “menacing moment” as signs of climate breakdown escalate around the world

Simon Evans from Carbon Tracker has a useful update on the talks from Cop29

My colleague Phoebe Weston has some analysis from the UN biodiversity conference which ended in disarray earlier this month. She reports that the event held in Colombia saw a record number of lobbyists from the meat, oil and pesticides industries in attendance

Small, climate-vulnerable island states have the right to be angry with rich nations for their failure to lead on climate action, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.

“You are on the sharp end of a colossal injustice, an injustice that sees the very future of your islands threatened by rising seas,” he said.

Guterres praised the nations for their ambitious climate pledges, saying, “you are the first responders,” and urged wealthy G20 nations to take their lead.

To support vulnerable islands, negotiators must finalise the creation of a loss and damage fund and boost funding for adaptation and mitigation, Guterres said.

In September, the UN called for the transformation of international financial institutions to relieve debt and promote access to climate aid, the secretary-general noted.

“We must push for implementation of these commitments starting here and now,” he said.

Transforming the architecture of financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund is a key priority for vulnerable, heavily-indebted nations, Ambassador Dr. Pa’oleilei Luteru, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, told the Guardian.

“We’re not saying give us free money,” he said. “What we’re saying primarily is we want an even, level playing field.”

Away from Baku my colleague Jonathan Watts has been reporting on the real world impacts of the escalating climate crisis – this time from flood hit Spain. And he says that as the weather gets more extreme – anger is rising among the public.