After 'paltry' funding offers, day of chaos, fury at COP29

WEALTHY NATIONS RAISED OFFER OF CLIMATE FUNDING TO $300BN, A RISE OF MERE $50BN THAT WAS SEEN AS INSULTINGLY LOW'

- Jayashree Nandi

Negotiators returned to the table late on Saturday in a last-ditch effort to salvage the COP29 climate talks, hours after dramatic walkouts by developing nations and heated protests threatened to derail the conference entirely.

The renewed push for consensus came at the end of a turbulent day that saw delegates from the world's most vulnerable nations storming out of negotiations, climate activists heckling the US climate envoy, and workers beginning to dismantle conference furnishings even as diplomatic efforts continued.

"We've just walked out. We came here to this COP for a fair deal. We feel that we haven't been heard," Cedric Schuster, the Samoan chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, had declared earlier in the day, leading an exodus of delegates from nations most threatened by rising seas.

The crisis deepened when a leaked 3 pm draft text, proposing $300 billion annual climate finance by 2035, sparked further anger after Friday's offer of $250bn both significantly short of the $1 trillion developing countries sought. "The current deal is unacceptable for us," said Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries group, as his delegation left the room. Colombia's environment minister Susana Mohamed characterized the departures not as protests but as expressions of being "highly dissatisfied."

Tensions escalated further as climate activists confronted US climate envoy John Podesta, accusing the United States of "a legacy of burning up the planet" and failing to pay its fair share of climate finance.