Developing countries need $1 billion a day to protect themselves from the climate crisis

UN estimates at the opening of COP29.Babayev:“We are heading towards climate ruin”

By Mario Piccirillo and Vincenzo Giardina

ROME – Finance and environment.In opening of COP29, the twenty-ninth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).The main topic on the agenda remains "sustainability":the funding needed by vulnerable communities to build protection against climate impacts.According to a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Developing countries need around $1 billion a day just to deal with current extreme weather impacts.And they can only count about 75 million dollars a day.One tenth.

While funding for so-called “adaptation” increases somewhat (from $22 billion in 2021 to $28 billion in 2022), the devastating impacts of the climate crisis increase much more rapidly.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said it in starker terms:“Climate calamity is the new reality and we are not keeping pace.The climate crisis is here.We cannot delay protection.We have to adapt now.Those responsible for all this destruction, particularly the fossil fuel industry, reap enormous profits and subsidies.” According to the UN, 230-415 billion dollars would be needed.

A call to "act", to "unite" and to "give results" opened the conference this morning in Baku, Azerbaijan.These words were uttered by Sultan al-Jaber, president of the previous COP, which was held last year in the United Arab Emirates.The manager recalled the commitment agreed in Dubai by the UN member states represented to "gradually abandon fossil fuels".Both the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan are countries rich in hydrocarbons, major exporters of fossil fuels, a factor considered relevant to global warming.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, between 2014 and 2023 the increase in global temperatures averaged above 1.2 degrees centigrade compared to the end of the 19th century.A few days ago, estimates from the European Copernicus service indicated that it is "practically certain" that 2024 will be the warmest year on record.

“We are heading towards ruin”, said Mukhtar Babayev, former oil manager, minister of environment and natural resources of Azerbaijan, who assumed the presidency of Cop29 this morning in Baku.According to the manager, who spoke at the inaugural session of the works, the consequences caused by planetary warming "are not future problems" but current ones.

Babayev was the manager of Socar, the state hydrocarbon company of Azerbaijan, a leading exporter of oil and natural gas, for 26 years.Fossil fuels are considered a major factor contributing to climate change.The prospects of Cop29 are influenced by the possibility that the United States, the second country in the world after China in terms of CO2 emissions, withdraws from the Paris Agreement signed in 2015.

Last Friday, the New York Times newspaper reported that aides of newly elected President Donald Trump have already prepared the executive orders and announcements that would accompany the decision.
According to the newspaper, the new American strategy would focus on an increase in drilling and mining activities.