The 29th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP29) threat­ens to go in­to over­time as ne­go­tia­tors strug­gle to agree on cli­mate fi­nance. The Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence is sup­posed to wrap up in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, to­day but up to late last night, ne­go­tia­tors were still un­clear on a way for­ward to com­pro­mise. New text from the COP29 pres­i­den­cy is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased this morn­ing in Baku though sev­er­al ne­go­tia­tors from small is­land states are pes­simistic it will draw both sides of the di­vide clos­er.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, in­com­ing chair of the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) Ilana Seid said, “We think it’s been dis­ap­point­ing. Gen­er­al­ly in most COPs we see de­layed tac­tics and then things tend to kick in­to gear three days be­fore but we haven’t seen that hap­pen yet. We got text last night and this morn­ing and there’s noth­ing we can agree to. Every­body is un­hap­py, par­tic­u­lar­ly on NC­QG (new col­lec­tive quan­ti­fied goal) we are ne­go­ti­at­ing a blank brack­et and that was the head­line of this COP. So we think the pres­i­den­cy has to step up its ef­forts but we’re very con­cerned that we’re head­ed to a low am­bi­tion COP.”

Seid said most of the AO­SIS del­e­ga­tion is sched­uled to leave Baku to­mor­row and she is con­cerned they will not have enough rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the ne­go­ti­at­ing room. She said it would be un­for­tu­nate if the COP doesn’t have an out­come. “I think we’re go­ing to get there but we’re go­ing to have to run re­al­ly fast,” she added.

When pressed on whether the out­come of the COP tru­ly mat­ters for SIDS giv­en that Glob­al North coun­tries have failed to de­liv­er on pledges in the past, Seid said, “I think that is a frus­tra­tion for a lot of coun­tries but we al­so have to recog­nise that the Paris Agree­ment has ac­com­plished quite a bit. With­out it, we would be in a much dif­fer­ent place glob­al­ly. Yes, some­times things aren’t de­liv­ered but we al­so have to re­alise that the al­ter­na­tive is much worse.”

Seid, who is from Palau, is set to take up the chair of AO­SIS next year. Asked about her plans for the next two years in which she will be chair, she said, “De­pend­ing on what hap­pens at this COP we want to in­crease mit­i­ga­tion am­bi­tion and al­so ac­cess to adap­ta­tion fund­ing for SIDS. Next year we re­al­ly want ND­Cs to be wrapped up. I think that’s an out­come that we re­al­ly hope for in Brazil. We are al­ready hav­ing plans to speak to Brazil pres­i­den­cy ear­ly in March to as­sist where pri­or­i­ties are com­mu­ni­cat­ed but then to al­so pre­pare the team for the COP next year, so we’re fund­ed and we have the staff to fight and we’re there in large num­bers.”

AO­SIS makes up 20 per cent of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) block.