With the cur­tain set to come down on glob­al cli­mate change talks in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, on Fri­day, those most vul­ner­a­ble to the im­pacts are nowhere clos­er to ben­e­fit­ting from key promis­es made in the past, with hopes of a turn­around fast-fad­ing.

The gen­er­al feel­ing among those at­tend­ing COP29 has been one of frus­tra­tion, with the for­mer UN sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon and for­mer UN cli­mate chief Chris­tiana Figueres among those open­ly stat­ing that the struc­ture of the meet­ings is no longer fit for pur­pose and there­fore can­not de­liv­er the change re­quired at ex­po­nen­tial speed and scale.

For small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS), such as those in the Caribbean, and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries, this is a fight ground­ed in hope, rather than con­fi­dence.

In 2009, there was agree­ment for de­vel­oped coun­tries, as the ma­jor pol­luters, to put to­geth­er a fund of US$100 bil­lion to help SIDS and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries mit­i­gate the im­pact of cli­mate change and ad­just to­wards more sus­tain­able sources of en­er­gy.

With just US$700 mil­lion con­tributed to the fund since then, Bar­ba­dos’ Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley this year pre­sent­ed a dif­fer­ent path, sug­gest­ing a fee of US$5 per tonne of CO2 for fos­sil fu­el ex­trac­tions to raise US$210 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, and an­oth­er fee of US$100 per tonne of CO2 for the ship­ping of fos­sil fu­els, to raise in ex­cess of US$80 bil­lion per year.

Whether her views will be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly is left to be seen.

How­ev­er, from our per­spec­tive, it ap­pears a fea­si­ble pro­pos­al to add to the ex­ist­ing plans, as it places the costs square­ly at the feet of those most re­spon­si­ble for the ex­trac­tion and us­age of fos­sil fu­els.

What lead­ers have pro­posed at COP29 is called a New Col­lec­tive Quan­ti­fied Goal (NC­QG) on Cli­mate Fi­nance, aimed at mo­bil­is­ing $1.1 tril­lion an­nu­al­ly start­ing in 2025, in­creas­ing to about $1.8 tril­lion by 2030.

The funds would come main­ly from de­vel­oped coun­tries, and from pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ments and con­tri­bu­tions from emerg­ing economies such as Chi­na and In­dia.

But as with all cli­mate change talks, con­sen­sus and com­mit­ment are not guar­an­teed, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the re­luc­tance of some coun­tries with­in the Eu­ro­pean Union to broad­en the donor base to in­clude emerg­ing economies.

Don­ald Trump's win has al­so cast the Unit­ed States' fu­ture role in cli­mate talks in doubt, rais­ing more ques­tions on whether the ap­proach to fund­ing will suc­ceed.

As frus­trat­ing as this is for coun­tries in our re­gion, giv­ing up is not an op­tion.

This year hot­ter wa­ters led to Beryl be­ing the ear­li­est hur­ri­cane ever of the At­lantic sea­son to reach Cat­e­go­ry 4 and Cat­e­go­ry 5 lev­els.

Ahead of the Baku meet­ing, Cari­com lead­ers took a uni­fied stance that SIDS must be­come the cen­tral fo­cus of all mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion plans, re­in­forced by those weath­er events that high­light our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the ne­ces­si­ty for ef­fec­tive fi­nan­cial mech­a­nisms to sup­port re­cov­ery ef­forts.

Even if we leave Baku dis­ap­point­ed, our lead­ers must con­tin­ue to spot­light our con­cerns at every op­por­tu­ni­ty we get to glob­al au­di­ences.

With 2024 set to be­come the hottest year on record for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive time, there is no telling what lies ahead for us next hur­ri­cane sea­son, prepa­ra­tions for which must be­gin soon.

In the im­mor­tal words of Bob Mar­ley, "Who feels it knows." It is our bat­tle to fight more than any oth­er.