Germany accuses Azerbaijan of backing oil and gas hijack of COP29

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Germany has accused COP29 host Azerbaijan of backing an try by fossil gas producing nations to hijack the world’s most necessary local weather summit as talks ran nearly a day late. 

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s overseas affairs minister, warned {that a} “few fossil gas states” had been making an attempt a “geopolitical energy play” in Baku, the place nearly 200 nations are debating a brand new local weather finance objective and how one can make progress on the shift away from oil, gasoline and coal.

A number of folks concerned within the talks instructed the Monetary Occasions that nations led by Saudi Arabia and Russia had been making an attempt to dam any references to advancing final 12 months’s settlement to transition away from fossil fuels. 

“It’s clear who’s pulling the strings of the COP29 presidency,” mentioned one negotiator.

The UN local weather summit has been overshadowed by Donald Trump’s US presidential victory. His election has stoked fears that international local weather motion can be rolled again in a 12 months that’s anticipated to be the most well liked on report.

Talking in Baku, Baerbock mentioned oil and gasoline producing nations had been taking part in a recreation on the “backs of the poorest and most weak nations”.

“We because the European Union is not going to settle for a deal that comes on the expense of those that undergo most from the local weather disaster,” she mentioned. 

“We is not going to permit essentially the most weak to be ripped off by the few fossil gas producing nations, who at this second have the backing of the COP29 presidency.”

Azerbaijan depends on fossil fuels for export earnings to assist its financial system whereas Ilham Aliyev, its president, even praised the nation’s “God-given” oil and gasoline in speeches through the opening days of COP29. 

The COP29 presidency workforce, led by ecology and pure sources minister Mukhtar Babayev, declined to remark. Saudi Arabia didn’t reply to a request for remark and an individual near Russia’s delegation mentioned that they had no remark.

Final week, G20 nations did not make specific point out of dumping fossil fuels within the leaders’ declaration at a gathering in Rio de Janeiro. In New York in September, Saudi Arabia and different oil and gasoline producers had been additionally accused of attempting to dam a reference to fossil fuels within the so-called UN Pact for the Future. 

In Baku, rich western nations are beneath hearth over a proposal for $250bn in climate finance that was branded inadequate and insulting by poorer nations.

Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomèz, Panama’s head of delegation, mentioned the EU was taking part in “recreation[s]” by making certain the negotiations dragged on.

“That is what they at all times do,” he mentioned on Saturday. “They break us on the final minute . . . they push and push it and push it till the negotiators depart, till we’re drained, till we’re delusional from not consuming, from not sleeping.”

That finance objective, which is aimed toward serving to growing nations shift to inexperienced vitality and adapt to a warming world, was anticipated to be elevated to $300bn in negotiations on Saturday night.

However within the stadium the place the summit is going down, protesters chanted “No deal is best than a foul deal” and urged the G77 group of growing nations to stroll away. The G77 has referred to as for no less than $500bn in finance. 

Baerbock rejected the criticism of the low provide, arguing that no sum of money can be sufficient with out emission reductions.