Last week, the world’s biggest annual climate conference kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan. This year’s UN climate summit is struggling to focus attention on the health of the planet, with turbulent geopolitics, a confrontational host and the re-election of US climate skeptic Donald Trump stealing the limelight.

The annual conference that aims to produce global agreements to limit the warming which is tipping the world towards climate catastrophe is becoming a forum of frustration for negotiators seeking a finance deal.

Oil producer Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s 29th Conference of the Parties (COP), is tasked with the limited goal of rallying countries around a target for annual financial aid for developing nations facing the rising costs of climate change.

It is a mandate that pales in comparison with the agenda for next year’s confabulations in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, where governments will chart a course for the next decade. But it is considered all-important for many countries ahead of Brazil’s COP30 and achieving it requires subtle diplomatic skills.

The trickiest issue facing the climate negotiations at COP29, goes by the fancy name of the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG), as it sounds more dignified than a “climate dereliction fun” to be funded by the developed world. The NCQG is meant to replace the longstanding goal of an annual spending $100bn a year on climate finance from richer countries to poorer ones. It is supposed to be in place by next year, when all countries are expected to say what they are going to do to cut emissions in the next ten years.

A report in The Economist says that the good news is that in many of these countries, a little help from public financing can go a long way towards luring investors and cutting down borrowing costs.

Another trickier........

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