India, developing World face E U resistance to climate finance

Talks on global climate finance Virtually ground to a halt last week at COP29, the annual United Nations (UN) Climate Change event in Baku, Azerbaijan, as the developed world, led by the European Union (EU), and developing countries including India, Brazil, South Africa, and a clutch of island nations and African countries faced awide chasm between their expectations.

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This has raised doubts about whether an agreement can be reached this week orwhether talks will spill over to COP30, to be held next year in Benem, Brazil.

:@ participants in Baku said overthe weekend, as talks enter the concluding week of COP29. Developing nations like India are staring at a 13-fold gap between their fiscal demands and what the Global North, led by the EU, is willing to offer. Climate activists and participants close to the talks pegged the annual requirement at $1.3 trillion, mainly in the form of grants to be disbursed for loss and damage to the environment and for adapting to climate change. After including private sector finance and investments, the number increases to $5-6 trillion, which includes climate mitigation, where countries invest in renewables and sustainable fuels to keep global \ ! Any deferment ofthe talks hurts c o P z 9 warmingbelow a2 degrees Celsius countries like India, which are counting on a global corpus of grants and soft loans to make the energy transition to cleaner forms. India's annual requirement may be as high as $1 trillion, based on its current nationally determined contributions (NDCs), a former UN official involved with COP talks said.

A new NDC, which forms the basis of climate finance, must be submitted by next February, according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).