November 23, (THEWILL) – Representatives of climate-vulnerable islands and least-developed countries, on Saturday, stormed out of high-stakes United Nations negotiations over climate funding.
Over 200 countries have gathered for the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, trying to agree on a new financial settlement to channel money to developing countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.
Negotiators have asked industrialised nations to increase funding for climate change actions. On Friday, the least developed countries like Mozambique and low-lying island nations like Samoa rejected an offer of $250bn (£199bn) per year by 2035 pushing for a significant increase
While demanding a portion of the fund should be allocated to them, given they are bearing the brunt of climate impacts like rising seas and drought, the least developed countries however expressed concerns on Saturday over the talks.
According to reports, “They feel like they are not being listened to, and that they have not been included enough in the negotiations so far, with the richer countries talking mostly among themselves.”
Walking out of the negotiations, Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment who doubled as chairman of Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, told reporters: “We’re here as a group of AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and LDCs (Least Developed Countries). We’ve just walked out.
“We have just walked out, we came here to this COP for a fair deal and we feel we haven’t been heard. We are here to negotiate but we have walked out… at the moment we don’t feel we are being heard in there.”
In a statement after the walkout, the AOSIS said, “We have presently removed ourselves from the stalled NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) discussions, which were not offering a progressive way forward.
“We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be INCLUSIVE. If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29.”
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