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The gap in climate finance remains unbridgeable
At the start of the two weeks of talks in Bonn, the UN Climate Change Supreme Court, Simon Stiell, called negotiators to “make every hour count” and “move from project zero to real options” in a post-2025 financial objective. “We cannot afford to arrive in Baku with a lot of work still to do,” he warned.
But at the last session in Bonn on this new climate finance target on Tuesday afternoon, the gap between developed and developing countries remained bridgeless, and instead of “real options,” all negotiators have to show is an informal 35-page report input paper.
Perhaps the biggest divide is over setting a dollar target. Developing countries presented numbers such as 1.1 billion and 1.3 billion dollars. Developed nations have suggested nothing other than that it should be higher than the previous target of 100 billion dollars.
“Every time there was [one] one excuse or another for not being able to discuss the quantum issue”, said the furious Saudi negotiator yesterday.
Australia’s representative responded poetically. The number is just the “star on top of the Christmas tree”, she said – and therefore should only be decided after the objective structure has been defined.
A branch from that Christmas tree pays. China’s negotiator has made it clear that it shouldn’t be them – and developing countries have supported him so far. “We have no intention of making your number look good,” he told developed countries.
He was, however, magnanimous enough to wish Swiss negotiator Gabriela Blatter a happy birthday. She later said that arguing about all this once again wasn’t a great way to spend it, but invited her fellow negotiators to join her at a Bonn Biergarten last night anyway.
Will a night at the Kolsch make negotiators more willing to reach an agreement by the next round of negotiations (dates yet to be defined)? It is more likely that ministers will have to get involved and use their authority to reduce disparities between the two sides.
The representative of Barbados laid out what is at stake in the real world as climate-related disasters increase. The talks must be accelerated, he said, before more and more small islands and least developed countries “disappear from this meeting because we disappear from the planet.”