BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – United Nations annual climate talks started stuttering on Monday with more than nine hours of wrangling behind him over what should be on the agenda for the next two weeks. He then moved on to the main problem: money.

In Baku, Azerbaijan, where the world’s first oil well was drilled and the smell of fuel was visible in the air, the talk was more about the smell of money – in huge quantities. Countries are negotiating how rich nations can pay so that poor countries can reduce carbon pollution by switching away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy, offset climate disasters and adapt to future extreme weather.

In an attempt to start the 12 days of talks, called COP29, with a victory, Monday’s session appeared to find a solution to a nagging financial issue about the trading of carbon pollution rights – one that has eluded negotiators for years. It could free up up to $250 billion in spending a year to help poor nations, new COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev said.

But Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, warned that advancing resolutions at the start of the conference “without discussion or debate sets a dangerous precedent for the entire negotiation process.”

When it comes to talking about finance, the amount of money being talked about to help poor nations could reach $1.3 trillion a year. That’s the need in the developing world, according to African nations, which produced 7 percent of the heat-trapping gases in the air but have faced multiple climate crises, from floods TO drought.

People walk through a Green Zone exhibit at the UN COP29 Climate Summit, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Sergei Grits

Whatever amount nations come up with would replace an old agreement that had a goal of $100 billion a year. Richer nations wanted figures closer to this figure. If an agreement is reached, the money is likely to come from a variety of sources, including grants, loans and private financing.

“These numbers may sound high, but they are nothing compared to the cost of inaction,” Babayev said as he took over.

Signs of climate disasters abound

This year, the world is in step for 1.5 degrees of warming and it’s on track to be the hottest year yet in human civilization.

A goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times was set in the Paris Agreement in 2015. But that’s about two or three decades, not one year of that amount of heating and “not possible. , it’s simply not possible,” to give up on the 1.5 target just yet, said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

The effects of climate change in disasters like hurricanes, droughts and floods are already here and they are painful, Babayev said.

“We are on the road to ruin,” he said. “Whether you see them or not, people suffer in the shadows. They die in the dark. And they need more than compassion. More than prayers and papers. They cry out for leadership and action.”

United Nations Climate Secretary Simon Stiell, whose native island Carriacou was devastated earlier this year by Hurricane Berylused the story of his neighbor, an 85-year-old named Florence, to help find “a way out of this mess.”

Her home was demolished and Florence focused on one thing: “Being strong for her family and her community. There are people like Florence in every country on Earth. Knocked down and gets up again.”

That’s what the world needs to do with climate change, Stiell said.

A backdrop of war and turmoil looms over the talks

In the past year, nation after nation has experienced political upheaval, the most recent being in the United States – the largest carbon emitter in history – and Germany, a leading climate nation.

The the election of Donald Trumpwhich challenges climate change and its impact and collapse German government coalition is changing the dynamics of climate negotiations here, experts said.

“The Global North needs to cut emissions even faster… but instead we have Trump, we have a German government that just collapsed because one side wanted to be even slightly ambitious (on climate action) ” Imperial said. Friederike Otto, climatologist at College London. “We’re a long way off.”

Initially, the organizers in Azerbaijan hoped that nations around the globe would stop fighting during the negotiations. That did not happen as the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere continued.

Dozens of climate change activists at the conference – many of them wearing Palestinian kafiyeh – held signs calling for climate justice and for nations to “stop fueling genocide”.

“It’s the same systems of oppression and discrimination that put people on the front lines of climate change and put people on the front lines of the conflict in Palestine,” said Lise Masson, a protester from Friends of the Earth International. She criticized the United States, Britain and the EU for not spending more on climate finance, while also supplying arms to Israel.

Mohammed Ursof, a climate change activist from Gaza, called on the world to “return the power to the indigenous people, the power back to the people”.

Jacob Johns, a Hopi and Akimel O’odham community organizer, came to the conference with hope for a better world.

“In the sight of destruction lies the seed of creation,” he told a panel about indigenous hopes for climate action. “We must realize that we are not citizens of one nation, we are the Earth.”

Hopes for a strong financial result

The financial package unveiled at this year’s talks is important because each nation has until early next year to come up with new — and likely stronger — targets for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

How much money is on the table could inform how ambitious some nations can be with their climate plans.

Some Pacific climate scientists have said the amount of money on offer is not the biggest issue for small island nations, which are some of the world’s most at risk from rising seas.

“There may be funding there, but getting access to that funding for us here in the Pacific is an impediment,” said Hilda Sakiti-Waqa of the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. “The Pacific really needs a lot of technical help to create these apps.”

And despite the stalled start, there was still a sense of optimism.

“My experience at the moment is that countries are really here to negotiate,” said German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.

“We cannot leave Baku without a substantial result,” Stiell said. “Now is the time to show that global cooperation is not down. It rises to the present moment.”

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Associated Press reporter Charlotte Graham-McLay in Wellington, New Zealand contributed.

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