Germany accuses Azerbaijan of backing oil and gas hijack of COP29

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Germany has accused COP29 host Azerbaijan of backing an try by fossil gas producing nations to hijack the world’s most vital local weather summit as talks ran virtually a day late. 

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s overseas affairs minister, warned {that a} “few fossil gas states” have been trying a “geopolitical energy play” in Baku, the place virtually 200 nations are debating a brand new local weather finance aim and the best way to make progress on the shift away from oil, fuel and coal.

A number of folks concerned within the talks instructed the Monetary Instances that nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia have been trying to dam any references to advancing final yr’s settlement to transition away from fossil fuels. 

“It’s clear who’s pulling the strings of the COP29 presidency,” stated one negotiator.

The UN local weather summit has been overshadowed by Donald Trump’s US presidential victory. His election has stoked fears that world local weather motion can be rolled again in a yr that’s anticipated to be the most well liked on report.

Talking in Baku, Baerbock stated oil and fuel producing nations have been enjoying a sport on the “backs of the poorest and most susceptible nations”.

“We because the European Union won’t settle for a deal that comes on the expense of those that undergo most from the local weather disaster,” she stated. 

“We won’t permit essentially the most susceptible to be ripped off by the few fossil gas producing nations, who at this second have the backing of the COP29 presidency.”

Azerbaijan depends on fossil fuels for export earnings to help its economic system whereas Ilham Aliyev, its president, even praised the nation’s “God-given” oil and fuel in speeches in the course of the opening days of COP29. 

The COP29 presidency staff, led by ecology and pure assets minister Mukhtar Babayev, declined to remark. Saudi Arabia didn’t reply to a request for remark and an individual near Russia’s delegation stated they’d no remark.

Final week, G20 nations did not make express point out of dumping fossil fuels within the leaders’ declaration at a gathering in Rio de Janeiro. In New York in September, Saudi Arabia and different oil and fuel producers have been additionally accused of making an attempt to dam a reference to fossil fuels within the so-called UN Pact for the Future. 

In Baku, rich western nations are underneath hearth over a proposal for $250bn in climate finance that was branded inadequate and insulting by poorer nations.

Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomèz, Panama’s head of delegation, stated the EU was enjoying “sport[s]” by guaranteeing the negotiations dragged on.

“That is what they all the time do,” he stated on Saturday. “They break us on the final minute . . . they push and push it and push it till the negotiators depart, till we’re drained, till we’re delusional from not consuming, from not sleeping.”

That finance aim, which is geared toward serving to growing nations shift to inexperienced vitality and adapt to a warming world, was anticipated to be elevated to $300bn in negotiations on Saturday night.

However within the stadium the place the summit is going down, protesters chanted “No deal is best than a foul deal” and urged the G77 group of growing nations to stroll away. The G77 has known as for at the least $500bn in finance. 

Baerbock rejected the criticism of the low provide, arguing that no amount of cash can be sufficient with out emission reductions.