Coun­tries of the world took turns re­ject­ing a new but vague draft text re­leased ear­ly Thurs­day which at­tempts to form the spine of any deal reached at Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate talks on mon­ey for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to tran­si­tion to clean en­er­gy and adapt to cli­mate change.

The draft left out a cru­cial stick­ing point: how much wealthy na­tions will pay poor coun­tries. A key op­tion for the low­est amount donors are will­ing to pay was just a place­hold­er “X.” Part of that is be­cause rich na­tions have yet to make an of­fer in ne­go­ti­a­tions.

So the host Azer­bai­jan pres­i­den­cy with its dawn-re­leased pack­age of pro­pos­als did man­age to unite a frac­tured world on cli­mate change, but it was on­ly in their un­ease and out­right dis­taste for the plan. Ne­go­tia­tors at the talks — known as COP29 — in Baku, are try­ing to close the gap be­tween the $1.3 tril­lion the de­vel­op­ing world says is need­ed in cli­mate fi­nance and the few hun­dred bil­lion that ne­go­tia­tors say rich­er na­tions have been pre­pared to give.

No fig­ure for cli­mate cash leaves many dis­ap­point­ed

In­de­pen­dent ex­perts say that at least $1 tril­lion is need­ed in fi­nance to help tran­si­tion away from plan­et-warm­ing fos­sil fu­els and to­ward clean en­er­gy like so­lar and wind, bet­ter adapt to the ef­fects of cli­mate change and pay for loss­es and dam­ages caused by ex­treme weath­er.

Colom­bia’s en­vi­ron­ment min­is­ter Su­sana Mo­hamed said with­out a fig­ure of­fered by de­vel­oped na­tions, “we are ne­go­ti­at­ing on noth­ing.”

Pana­ma’s Juan Car­los Mon­ter­rey Gomez said the “lack of com­mit­ment trans­paren­cy feels like a slap in the face to the most vul­ner­a­ble.”

“It is just ut­ter dis­re­spect to those coun­tries that are bear­ing the brunt of this cri­sis,” he said. “De­vel­oped coun­tries must stop play­ing games with our life and put a se­ri­ous quan­ti­fied fi­nan­cial pro­pos­al on the ta­ble.”

Gomez list­ed places where ne­go­tia­tors worked on the is­sue: South Africa, Ger­many, the Philip­pines, Egypt, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, Dubai, Colom­bia and a few times here in Baku, ask­ing “For God’s sakes, what’s the next stop? Mars? Do we need to go to out­er space to get a quan­ti­ta­tive num­ber from our de­vel­oped coun­tries to be able to start ne­go­ti­at­ing here?”

Esa Ain­uu, from the small Pa­cif­ic is­land of Ni­ue al­so blast­ed the lack of a num­ber in the draft deal.

“For us in the Pa­cif­ic, this is crit­i­cal for us,” Ain­uu said. “We can’t es­cape to the desert. We can’t es­cape some­where else. This is re­al­i­ty for us. If fi­nance is not bring­ing any pos­i­tive, (then) why’re we com­ing to COP?”

Mo­hamed Ad­ow, di­rec­tor of the think tank Pow­er Shift Africa, al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the lack of a fig­ure. “We need a cheque but all we have right now is a blank piece of pa­per,” he said.

Iskan­der Erzi­ni Ver­noit, di­rec­tor of Mo­roc­can cli­mate think-tank Imal Ini­tia­tive for Cli­mate and De­vel­op­ment, said he was “at a loss for words at how dis­ap­point­ed we are at this stage to have come this far with­out se­ri­ous num­bers on the ta­ble and se­ri­ous en­gage­ment from the de­vel­oped coun­tries.”

Even Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­res said, “I don’t think you can go on and on and on with­out clar­i­fy­ing the key as­pects of the ne­go­ti­a­tion.”

Ne­go­tia­tors slam an ‘un­bal­anced’ draft

Lead ne­go­tia­tor Yalchin Rafiyev em­pha­sized how bal­anced the plan was, but all sides kept say­ing it was any­thing but bal­anced and point­ed time was run­ning out.

“We would like to cor­rect the bal­ance. It is com­plete­ly tilt­ed,” Pak­istan del­e­gate Romi­na Khur­shid Alam said.

The Eu­ro­pean Union’s cli­mate en­voy Wop­ke Hoek­stra called the draft “im­bal­anced, un­work­able, and not ac­cept­able.”

And Xia Yingx­i­an, a mem­ber of Chi­na del­e­ga­tion, al­so said the cur­rent draft text con­tains many “un­sat­is­fied and un­ac­cept­able” parts.

In a state­ment, the COP29 Pres­i­den­cy stressed that the drafts “are not fi­nal.”

“The COP29 Pres­i­den­cy’s door is al­ways open, and we wel­come any bridg­ing pro­pos­als that the par­ties wish to present,” the Pres­i­den­cy said in a state­ment. It added that pos­si­ble num­bers for a fi­nance goal will be re­leased in the next it­er­a­tion of the draft.

COP29 Pres­i­dent Mukhtar Babayev con­vened the Qu­rul­tay — a tra­di­tion­al Azer­bai­jani meet­ing — where ne­go­tia­tors spoke to hear all sides and ham­mer out a com­pro­mise. He said that “af­ter hear­ing all views, we will out­line a way for­ward re­gard­ing fu­ture it­er­a­tions.”

Na­tions big and small want more on slash­ing fos­sil fu­els

Oth­er ar­eas that are be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed in­clude com­mit­ments to slash plan­et-warm­ing fos­sil fu­els and how to adapt to cli­mate change. But they’ve seen lit­tle move­ment.

Eu­ro­pean na­tions and the Unit­ed States crit­i­cized the pack­age of pro­pos­als for not be­ing strong enough in re­it­er­at­ing last year’s call for a tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els.

“The cur­rent text of­fers no progress” on ef­forts to cut the world’s emis­sions of heat-trap­ping gas­es, said Ger­many del­e­ga­tion chief Jen­nifer Mor­gan. “This can­not and must not be our re­sponse to the suf­fer­ing of mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. We must do bet­ter.”

U.S. cli­mate en­voy John Podes­ta said he was sur­prised that “there is noth­ing that car­ries for­ward the ... out­comes that we agreed on last year in Dubai.” The Unit­ed States, the world’s biggest his­toric emit­ter of green­house gas­es, has played lit­tle role in the talks as it braces for an­oth­er pres­i­den­cy un­der Don­ald Trump.

But mem­bers of the Be­yond Oil and Gas Al­liance such as Colom­bia, Ire­land and Den­mark, who are push­ing for an end of fos­sil fu­els, said the lack of word­ing on tran­si­tion­ing away from fos­sil fu­els is not a deal killer for them.

Days ear­li­er, the 20 largest economies met in Brazil and didn’t men­tion the call for tran­si­tion­ing away from fos­sil fu­els. Guter­res, who was at that meet­ing, said of­fi­cial lan­guage is one thing, but re­al­i­ty is an­oth­er.

“There will be no way” the world can lim­it glob­al warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius “if there is not a phase out of fos­sil fu­els,” Guter­res said at a Thurs­day news con­fer­ence.

Al­so on Thurs­day, the EU, Mex­i­co, Nor­way and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries an­nounced they would re­lease plans to rapid­ly cut emis­sions over the next decade to meet the land­mark Paris agree­ment’s goal of re­strain­ing glob­al warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius (2.7 Fahren­heit) above pre-in­dus­tri­al times, al­though they did not de­tail how those cuts would hap­pen.

Un­der the agree­ment, coun­tries need to de­tail their vol­un­tary plans for re­duc­ing green­house gas emis­sions by ear­ly next year.

“There is a re­al risk of falling short,” said Tore Sand­vik, Nor­way’s min­is­ter of cli­mate and en­vi­ron­ment. “We must re­in­force the mes­sage that the Paris agree­ment is func­tion­ing as in­tend­ed.” —BAKU, Azer­bai­jan (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by SIBI ARA­SU, SETH BOREN­STEIN and MICHAEL PHILLIS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Ahmed Hatem and Olivia Zhang con­tributed to this re­port.