Contentious COP29 deal shows climate cooperation fraying at edges

During negotiations at COP29 in Azerbaijan, geopolitical turmoil and worries of a looming U.S. withdrawal from global climate cooperation loomed large.

When COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev stepped to the podium at the closing meeting of the Baku climate summit on Sunday morning, hoping to clinch a hard-fought agreement on global climate finance, he carried with him two speeches.

One was crafted around a hoped-for deal being struck, while the other for the possibility of a summit-collapsing impasse, according to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

One of the sources — a person in the COP29 presidency — told Reuters that they worked through challenging negotiations until the last minute to ensure what it called the Baku Breakthrough, but still prepared different versions of the final speech for different possible outcomes.

In the end, Babayev managed to gavel through the $300 billion finance plan to help developing nations cope with the soaring costs of global warming over the next decade before critics had time to object, allowing him to read the more positive speech.

He praised the agreement as a breakthrough and shamed the deal’s doubters as “wrong,” even as many of the climate deal’s intended recipients slammed it as woefully inadequate.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/climate-change/cop29-deal-climate-cooperation-fraying-rcna181686

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