Stakes high as officials discuss summit’s key question of how much rich countries should pay for developing nations to cope with climate crisis and decarbonize their economies
The draft text really is not going down well at Cop29 this morning. My colleague Patrick Greenfield has just been listening to the EU’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra who said it is “clearly unacceptable” in its current form.
Speaking at a press conference in Baku this morning, Hoekstra was asked for reaction to the lack of a clear figure on the climate finance – which currently just has an “X” for the target on the new collective quantified goal (NCQG).
“It is clearly unacceptable as it stands,” said Hoekstra, giving little else away.
There will be no cover text at Cop29, the host country’s lead negotiator repeated on Wednesday. For Cop aficionados, that might seem extraordinary – the cover text has been a key document in several recent Cops.
At Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, for instance, the cover decision text contained the crucial resolutions to limit global heating to 1.5C and to “phase down” coal (not “phase out”, at the last minute insistence of China and India).
