Ne­go­tia­tors con­tin­ued to grap­ple over text yes­ter­day at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP29) in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, as cli­mate fi­nance re­mains the key item on the agen­da.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean’s pre­mier COP29 event, Dis­cussing SIDS-led So­lu­tions for En­hanced Loss and Dam­age Re­sponse, Ruean­na Haynes said it was still ear­ly in the sec­ond week of COP and all hope is not lost.

The Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean di­rec­tor said, “We’re not in the best shape. We still have a very, very long text on the ta­ble for cli­mate fi­nance, but I’ve heard that at least with the text that is present now, most par­ties are com­fort­able and feel as if their is­sues are well rep­re­sent­ed, so that’s at least a start­ing point. We’re not sure where it will go from here.

“We know that par­ties will be giv­en time over the next cou­ple of days to try to fig­ure out what needs to be fig­ured out at the tech­ni­cal lev­el be­fore min­is­ters are brought in for fi­nal de­ci­sion-mak­ing from about Wednes­day.”

Haynes said while the COP was not in a good place as it per­tains to cli­mate fi­nance and what Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) want, “there is still room to go up from here.”

Mean­while, as the G20 Sum­mit kicked off in Rio de Janeiro yes­ter­day, Haynes went fur­ther in say­ing that the group needs to do their part in fi­nanc­ing the cli­mate fight. She added, “Al­most in every room, whether we’re talk­ing about mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion, loss and dam­age, or fi­nance, this is the dis­cus­sion for SIDS. This is where we’re com­ing from. We need two things: we need the coun­tries with the great­est re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and the great­est ca­pac­i­ty to do their part, those in the G20, and we al­so need fi­nance be­cause we are suf­fer­ing now.”

Mean­while, Kevin Hope, who is the Debt Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant at Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean, backed up Haynes. There has been a floor that has been pro­posed of $US39b for SIDS.

Hope told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the event in which he was a speak­er, “We are of the im­pres­sion that if we can come as close to that floor, it would be a fair start or good base­line. Notwith­stand­ing that, we see the ben­e­fit of greater part­ner­ships be­tween the Green Cli­mate Fund, the Adap­ta­tion Fund, and our mem­ber states and how we can lever­age a num­ber of our de­vel­op­ment part­ners.”

He said a num­ber of these agen­cies are now tak­ing ini­tia­tives to build more readi­ness, fi­nance, and sup­port for coun­tries with­in the re­gion. He said while lever­ag­ing part­ner­ships, the re­gion must al­so con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate at COP for as much cli­mate fi­nance as pos­si­ble.

Al­so ap­pear­ing at the Cli­mate An­a­lyt­ics Caribbean event at the Cari­com Pavil­ion in Baku was David Maslo, who serves as Chief Risk Man­age­ment Of­fi­cer at the Caribbean Cat­a­stro­phe Risk In­sur­ance Fa­cil­i­ty (CCRIF) Seg­re­gat­ed Port­fo­lio Com­pa­ny.

He told Guardian Me­dia it is tak­ing too long for is­lands to re­ceive loss and dam­age funds. Maslo ex­plained, “We know it takes time. It took a long time for loss and dam­age to be ap­proved. It took a long time to get mon­ey pledged. It’s tak­ing too long to get the mon­ey com­mit­ted and paid out. To a large ex­tent, the amounts that we are talk­ing about are not go­ing to meet our ex­pec­ta­tions.”

He point­ed out that the fi­nance “needs to go rapid­ly to scale” be­cause the re­gion is 20 or 30 times low­er than what it re­quires.

Speak­ing about CCRIF’s in­sur­ance cov­er­age of the re­gion, Maslo said that as much as they have grown and con­tin­ue to grow, they need more in­vest­ments and more com­mit­ments of fund­ing in­to in­sur­ance to be able to close the pro­tec­tion gap that is con­tin­u­ous­ly widen­ing.

COP29 has en­tered its fi­nal week and will con­tin­ue to­day with ne­go­tia­tors hop­ing to fur­ther progress on key out­stand­ing is­sues that will de­ter­mine the out­come of the UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence.