LONDON — Keir Starmer’s decision to underwrite a major new defense commitment by slashing overseas aid spending was supposed to signal the British prime minister’s seriousness about global security. But along the way it has provoked a ministerial resignation, an internal party row — and left those in charge of the country’s ambitious international climate policies wondering if they, too, have been hobbled. The cut, expected to take more than £6 billion a year from the aid budget from 2027, was announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the end of last month. A full week on, the government is unable to say what impact the cut would have on international climate finance — a key plank of U.K. green diplomacy through which money is invested in poorer countries to help them build cleaner energy systems or protect against the effects of climate change.  “It’s too early to be able to respond,” Energy Minister Philip Hunt admitted to the House of Lords when asked on Monday. Hunt could only point peers to the government’s spending review, due in June, when more detail may be released.  Energy Secretary Ed Miliband last year promised the U.K. would step up and fill “a vacuum of leadership” on global climate policy. But government officials repeatedly refused to say, when asked by POLITICO, whether Downing Street had consulted Miliband or his department before announcing the cuts.  Secretary of State Ed Milliband representing the U.K. at COP29. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Miliband represents the U.K. at international climate summits and is jointly responsible with Foreign Secretary David Lammy for Britain’s effort to bring the rest of the world along on the road to net zero. His department had the fifth biggest foreign aid spend in the U.K. government, £440 million in 2023. “This cut was made in Number 10,” said Nick Mabey, chief executive of the E3G climate think tank and a former adviser to multiple U.K. governments. “It was a top-level, top-down political decision.” Parliament’s cross-party International Development Committee criticized the impact of the cuts Wednesday morning, citing the hit to “global efforts to address poverty, inequality and climate change.”  The Foreign Office did not respond to queries about the future of international climate finance. Hunt reiterated Starmer’s promise that the U.K. would continue to play a leading role on climate change, as well as delivering humanitarian aid in Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza. In her resignation letter on Friday, former Development Minister Anneliese Dodds said: “It will be impossible to maintain these priorities, given the depth of the cut.” MPs will discuss the impact of the cuts in parliament on Wednesday afternoon, in a debate called by two Labour backbenchers, Sarah Champion and Emily Thornberry. ‘A VERY DAMAGING MOVE’ Climate finance fosters efforts to cut emissions in developing countries and buys the U.K. influence to press its agenda at climate negotiations. But Dodds said in her letter that aid cuts will now weaken the U.K.’s position at those negotiations, while experts warned the cuts will force ministers to retrofit an international climate strategy to suit the prime minister’s new spending priorities. “Though defense spending needed to be increased, this was probably the most diplomatic- and influence-expensive way of doing it,” said Mabey. “It was a very damaging move.” The government has recommitted to its current target to deliver £11.6 billion in climate aid between 2021 and 2026, Hunt told the House of Lords. But it is unclear what happens after Starmer’s overseas aid cut comes into effect in 2027. Labour entered government pledging to return Britain to a global leadership position on climate change. In November, Miliband announced a new target for reducing planet-destroying carbon emissions in the period up to 2035, required this year under the terms of the Paris Agreement. The same month, the U.K. was a key player at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, which concluded with a deal to triple the flow of climate finance to developing countries over the coming decade. “We can’t believe — given the scale of the cut — that the increase in climate finance we were hoping to see following Baku … will be taken forward,” said Mabey. Alok Sharma, a former Tory minister who presided over the COP26 climate conference and now sits in the House of Lords, has asked the government repeatedly in the past week whether existing commitments would remain intact. Keir Starmer’s Labour entered government pledging to return Britain to a global leadership position on climate change. | WPA pool photo by James Glossop/Getty Images That includes the £11.6bn target, set by the previous Conservative government.  Sharma also asked Hunt about several multi-billion pound clean energy partnerships brokered between G7 countries and emerging economies such as South Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia. Neither Hunt, nor a departmental spokesperson when asked by POLITICO, would clarify the future of those projects. JOINING THE CLUB “It is hard to see the cuts as anything but a retreat from the U.K’.s international responsibilities and an unacceptable balancing of the books on the backs of the world’s most marginalized people,” said Catherine Pettengell, the executive director of Climate Action Network UK, a green NGO. They come on the back of enormous and sudden reductions in the U.S. aid program, ordered by President Donald Trump, and follow similar announcements in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Finland, where spending priorities have also shifted toward defense. This will force the U.K. to undertake a long-overdue “radical reform” of how aid money is spent, Mabey argued. Ministers would “get much more value for money out of each pound” by sharing technical and financial expertise, he said.  “All the developing countries we speak to, would really value that,” Mabey added. “They want to talk to the people who run our grid, not someone employed by our development finance [agency] who is a consultant.”

BRUSSELS ― In 2024, you’d be forgiven for feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. Syria was back in the news, European leaders had to focus again on migration and, across the Atlantic, Donald Trump is preparing for his return to the White House, sending more shock waves through the political establishment in an unprecedented year of elections. The wars that defined 2023 continue to rage, in some cases escalate, at great cost to human life.  And, as our charts show, even all that could be overshadowed by the threat posed by a world getting hotter, which looms over humanity’s future. Despite a plethora of warnings from scientists and international organizations, countries are still failing to contain global warming — and, if his rhetoric is to be believed, Trump’s second term could further weaken the international effort. So this holiday season may not feel as jolly as it should. But as we hope for cheerier news in 2025, POLITICO’s data journalism team is here to illustrate how the old year played out. WAR, WAR AND ANOTHER WAR With over 44,500 Palestinians dead and a further 105,000 estimated to be wounded, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, the humanitarian cost of the Israel-Hamas war continues to rise. Geospatial analysts estimate that almost 60 percent of buildings in the Gaza Strip had likely been damaged by November 2024, meaning many of the 1.9 million internally displaced people there will have no home to return to. The Israel-Hamas war increased hostilities across the region, with assassinations, bombings and missile barrages spilling the Iran-Israel proxy conflict into the open. After almost a year of exchanging missile strikes, conflict between Israel and Hezbollah peaked in October, with Israel’s ground invasion in southern Lebanon, although attacks reduced significantly following a cease-fire agreement.  In neighboring Syria, the dramatic overthrow of Bashar Assad’s regime, swiftly followed by Israeli airstrikes on the country’s weapon stocks and the arrival of ground forces via the demilitarized zone, increased uncertainty in the region.  At the other end of Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues. Ukrainians chalked up some successes in 2024, becoming a dominant force in the Black Sea despite the country’s tiny navy, and mounting a counteroffensive into Russia’s Kursk region in August. But they are ending this year on the back foot, having lost many of their territorial gains and having seen many of their soldiers killed. But Russia’s constant pressing comes at a huge cost for its troops too, with the past few months being extraordinarily brutal. The Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, estimated there were 53 Russian casualties for every square kilometer of Ukrainian territory gained between September and November of 2024.  BLOCKBUSTER ELECTION YEAR With votes in more than 60 countries including France, the U.K., Bulgaria, India, Japan and the U.S., as well as for the European Parliament, 2024 was a huge election year. As right-wing forces broadly consolidated their position firmly in the political mainstream, the polls themselves saw social media platforms like TikTok have ever greater influence and even shape campaigns. Europe’s lurch to the right was on display in many of this year’s votes. In some countries, far-right parties rose to power; in others, they gained a position to exert significant pressure on governments. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists became EU power brokers after the June European Parliament election. French President Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to call a snap election in the aftermath of the EU vote plunged the country into political chaos. What was interesting is that the far right’s success in many of the votes called for an update to the stereotypical image of their voters being angry old men. Instead, elections, exit polls and surveys in different parts of the bloc suggested young voters were increasingly throwing their support behind far-right parties. A German youth survey showed the growing popularity of the Alternative for Germany party among the country’s youngest voters. The forecast that artificial intelligence would take over our democracy did not quite come to pass — but recent events offered us a chilling preview. In December, Romania’s top court annulled a presidential election after ultranationalist underdog Cǎlin Georgescu won the first round, citing evidence of widespread interference and a TikTok influence operation — allegedly orchestrated from Russia. And while TikTok did not give Europe’s far-right forces an outright victory in June’s European Parliament election, it did provide them with a huge platform to reach new voters. PANIC ABOUT MIGRATION LIKE IT’S 2015 Wars and political instability in the EU’s neighborhood, coupled with a marked rightward shift in the political landscape, put migration firmly back on European leaders’ agenda. A surge in support for hard-right, anti-immigration parties in several European countries led governments to adopt increasingly restrictive policies. Gone are the days of Europe’s open-door policy for Syrian refugees, epitomized by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s slogan “We can do it!” Securing Europe’s borders has become the No. 1 priority, and in some places the political debate has even started to include removing migrants from the EU’s territory entirely. Brussels has been no exception to this reality. The European Commission, reconstituted on Dec. 1 under President Ursula von der Leyen (who was confirmed by a right-leaning majority in the European Parliament), has already promised to get tough on migration. Policies once considered fringe and extreme, such as setting up “return hubs” and “hot spots” in third countries to hold asylum-seekers waiting for their claims to be processed, as well as forced deportations, are now firmly in the political mainstream. Schengen — the world’s largest free-travel area and a crown jewel of European integration — is also falling victim to anti-immigration sentiment. Several countries including Germany have reintroduced temporary border controls within the zone, citing security risks, terrorism and migration as reasons for the renewed checks. These restrictions are supposed to be temporary, but some have been extended so many times that they have become nearly permanent. AND EUROPE’S PROBLEMS DON’T STOP THERE … The EU has other concerns going into 2025. With disappointing economic growth, issues with competitiveness and a struggling industrial sector, the last thing Europe needs right now is a trade war.  But that might be exactly what it gets. Trump’s threat of 10 percent tariffs on all goods and a whopping 60 percent on Chinese goods has Europeans scared of possible knock-on effects. It will be a struggle for the bloc to juggle a conflict between the U.S., the EU’s largest trading partner, and China, its second-largest trading partner and largest source of imports.  … OR THERE Putting tariff terror into perspective is the fact that 2024 is on course to be the hottest year on record. It will also be the first year that is 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial levels. The inability to contain warming to 1.5 degrees — a commitment countries made at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference — is symptomatic of international climate cooperation’s failure. The latest U.N. assessment confirmed that global climate action is woefully insufficient. Current plans and policies will lead to 2.6 to 3.1 degrees Celsius of global warming this century, with no prospect of limiting the temperature increase to the 1.5C target. The Paris Agreement’s upper limit of 2C is also at grave risk.  The severity and frequency of dangerous heat waves, destructive storms and other disasters rises with every fraction of warming. Scientists say that with warming of 3C the world could pass several points of no return that would dramatically alter the planet’s climate and increase sea levels, including through the collapse of polar ice caps. This year’s COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, was once again marked by controversies and contradictions. While negotiators reached a deal that would see wealthier countries provide a minimum of $300 billion per year by 2035 to aid poorer nations in their battle against climate change, several analyses found that this amount falls far short of the trillions of dollars needed to help vulnerable countries that will have to withstand droughts and floods, rising seas and worsening storms. Trump’s return in January casts doubt not only on the future of the deal but international climate conferences as a whole. The president-elect, who has called global warming a hoax, is likely to roll back many U.S. climate policies at a terrible time for the planet. Júlia Vadler contributed to this report.

LONDON — U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is planning to visit China early in 2025, with climate change and trade in green goods likely to dominate the agenda. According to two business figures familiar with government plans, Miliband will travel to the country — which dominates global supply chains for solar power and electric vehicles — in the first three months of the new year, most likely in March. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the U.K.’s Labour government has sought to re-establish strong ties with China, after successive Conservative administrations adopted a more hawkish stance. Last month Starmer became the first U.K. prime minister to meet President Xi Jinping in person since 2018. Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited China in October, only the second such visit in six years. The trip would be an opportunity to revive the so-called U.K.-China Energy Dialogue, a forum for talks on climate and energy aims launched in 2010 under former Prime Minister David Cameron, but which has not held a formal session since 2017. The U.K. and China are “overdue” to hold the sixth such dialogue, one of the business figures said. Any visit would also be politically sensitive. The Conservatives in opposition have accused Starmer and Miliband of making the U.K. over-reliant on China in their push to decarbonize Britain’s electricity grid and ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. The government has also faced calls from some of its own MPs to guarantee solar panel components imported from China have not been produced using Uyghur forced labor in the Xinjiang region. The U.K. sees China as a lynchpin of international efforts to combat climate change. At the last United Nations climate summit, COP29, Miliband emphasized the importance of China paying its fair share of climate finance to developing countries to help them decarbonize their economies. The U.K. also wants to play a supporting role to Brazil — host of next year’s climate summit COP30 — in encouraging ambitious emissions reduction targets for 2035 from China and other major polluters.

BRUSSELS — The planet is heating up, but the geopolitical landscape is freezing over, European Union climate chief Wopke Hoekstra warned in an interview with POLITICO. Donald Trump, a fossil fuel evangelist and climate heretic, is back. Across Europe, far-right, anti-green crusaders are rising. And in Brussels, Hoekstra’s own center-right political family is questioning the EU’s climate ambitions. “We clearly have entered a geopolitical winter,” Hoekstra said in his office in the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters describing “tremendously challenging geopolitical times” that “will get worse before it gets better in the years that we have ahead of us.” Hoekstra is not a new figure to Brussels, having taken over as EU climate chief in 2023. But he was recently reconfirmed for his role at the Commission, the EU’s executive branch, starting a new term on Dec. 1.  For the Dutch commissioner, who oversees international climate negotiations for the EU as part of his job, the next few years are likely to be a bumpy ride as he tries to convince the rest of the world to accelerate efforts to cut planet-warming emissions.  “We’re truly making progress in tackling climate change and implementing measures here, but Europe alone cannot save the day,” he said. “The way the heating of the Earth works is that climate change is indiscriminate. It doesn’t matter where CO2 is being pumped into the air. It affects the whole planet.” Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump promised to dismember President Joe Biden’s climate legislation, pump out more planet-warming fossil fuels and yank the United States from the Paris climate agreement once again. Given the U.S. is the world’s second-largest source of carbon emissions, the stakes are massive. Hoekstra refused to get drawn into commenting on the future U.S. administration, as Brussels is first trying to extend olive branches to the incoming president instead of facing him head-on.  But when it comes to tackling climate change, Hoekstra is well aware that Europe cannot go it alone, as the bloc’s emissions account for only 6 percent of global pollution.  “Even if you reduce everything back home, but you don’t manage to take the others along, you still face all the problems that we’re currently facing. So diplomacy and applying carrots and sticks and incentivizing others to do more is essential,” Hoekstra said, without specifying the potential sticks.  One stick the EU is about to impose on the world is a carbon border tax, which will charge importers a levy on emissions-intensive goods starting in 2026. The move has drawn fierce criticism from countries such as Brazil, India, China and South Africa, which also sought to discuss the issue at last month’s COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan. Regarding global climate diplomacy, Hoekstra insisted that the EU would have to “engage” with all major emitters, whether that’s China, the Saudis or the U.S. under Trump. Donald Trump, a fossil fuel evangelist and climate heretic, is back. | Magali Cohen/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Noting that the G20 economies are responsible for the vast majority of planet-warming emissions, Hoekstra said it was essential that they boost their climate ambitions ahead of next year’s pivotal COP30 summit in Brazil.  “It makes sense that this whole group — by the way, including the Europeans — does make a step up,” he said. “We’re not going to move the needle if we try to offload this problem on other countries who have way below average per-capita emissions. … So everyone needs to play ball.” At the same time, the former finance and foreign minister also wants to square the circle between the EU’s ambitious climate goals and industry’s needs to stay competitive in the face of Chinese and American competition.  Hoekstra said Brussels in the next five years has to be “much more explicit about combining green transition with a viable business climate.” According to him, the EU has to make sure that “heavy industry cannot only survive, but actually can strive on European soil, that we give way more room for clean tech, and we make this into a positive business case. So there we truly bridge between climate and business.” Precisely because of that, Brussels has to stay on course on its climate targets, he stressed. “Many companies are asking for predictability and staying the course rather than changing the rules of the game simply because they cannot cope,” he said. “Particularly heavy industry have very long investment cycles, sometimes decades ahead, and you are then not helped by politicians who are in the habit of constantly changing their minds.” 

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Countries agreed to a deal early Sunday that asks rich, developed nations to pay at least $300 billion to help poorer countries shift their economies away from polluting fuels, bringing to a close two weeks of contentious talks that threatened at multiple points to fall apart. It didn’t come easily, or without caustic criticism. The figure is short of what developing countries had been calling for, and is not in line with the trillions that they’ll need over the next decade. But it was likely the best they could get at a time of geopolitical turbulence and hardening divides between wealthier and more impoverished nations, with a second Donald Trump era looming in Washington. Developing countries responded with a mix of acceptance and anger. “This has been stage managed, and we are extremely, extremely disappointed,” Chandni Raina, India’s negotiator, said to the plenary hall after the gavel fell. Calling the sum “paltry” and the deal “nothing more than an optical illusion,” she said her country — the most populous on Earth — “opposes the adoption of this document.” Tina Stege, the climate envoy of the Marshall Islands, denounced the climate talks as a display of “political opportunism,” then added: “We are leaving with a small portion of the funding climate-vulnerable countries urgently need. It isn’t nearly enough, but it’s a start.” In the end, it came down to a deal between old and new powers, an unswerving Saudi petrostate and a Democratic U.S. government that has staked its legacy on climate leadership but knows its priorities will be taking at least a four-year hiatus while Trump occupies the White House. The talks also produced a deal that settles the rules for global carbon markets, a profit-oriented means of raising climate money, after a decade of negotiations. That could help countries meet their global climate targets and deliver money to developing nations if they can overcome issues with shoddy credits that have plagued existing voluntary markets. But the bigger prize was the new funding goal, and all that came with it. The $300 billion or more will come from public finance and related cash transfers, including money delivered through multilateral development banks from many countries — even developing ones such as China. That in effect pulled China and other developing nations, which already contribute to the World Bank and other international financial institutions, into helping rich countries meet their new obligations. The EU and U.S. had pressed for China and other high-polluting, emerging economies to join them as contributors to the new finance target, and that provision allows the EU, U.K. and U.S. to claim a partial victory. “The new finance goal rightly reflects the importance of going beyond traditional donors like Britain, and the role of countries like China in helping those on the frontline of this crisis,” said British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. The deal also opened up the possibility for developing nations such as China to contribute even more, or not, on a voluntary basis without having their status as developing countries reclassified — which also could let both sides claim a win. “We are not prepared to erase the definitions,” said a Brazilian negotiator, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The final text package also nodded to an agreement at last year’s climate summit in which countries pledged to move away from using fossil fuels, but this time did it without referring directly to the energy sources that cause climate change. Nor did it lay out actions to accelerate toward that goal, which European and U.S. negotiators had pushed for. That push was rebuffed by Saudi Arabia’s delegation, along with a group of emerging economies that included China and India. “It’s disappointing,” said Miliband. “It’s important not to make any bones about it.” The agreement, and the days of chaos preceding it, tested the ability of oil-rich Azerbaijan to host the crucial climate talks while sparring with European governments and critics of its democracy and human rights record. Next year, another oil producer — Brazil — will take on the challenge, with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hosting the talks in Belém, a port city known as the “gateway to the Amazon.” BATTLE LINES FORM The money battle divided rich countries and poorer ones. Wealthier countries such as the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Germany grew their economies on polluting oil, gas and coal and have the money to shift to greener sources. In developing nations, by contrast, tens of millions of people still don’t have electricity and government budgets are constrained, often by debt repayments. But the divide is even more complicated than that. Small islands and dozens of deeply poor countries have contributed few of the emissions warming the planet and yet are highly vulnerable to the heat waves, floods and other disasters that warming inflicts. Then there are oil-rich Gulf states and emerging economies such as Brazil and India, whose greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly accelerating. And China is the world’s largest carbon polluter, a green energy powerhouse and second-largest economy. If poorer countries don’t have the money to move away from polluting activities, everyone suffers. “Finance is not a hand-out,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters as the talks entered their final days. “It’s an investment against the devastation that unchecked climate chaos will inflict on us all.” The finance battle has been a long time coming. And countries have spent the past three years preparing to resolve it at these talks, known as COP29. The new target replaces a 15-year-old pledge in which richer countries promised to deliver $100 billion annually from 2020 to 2025. They didn’t meet that pledge until 2022. Since then, the costs of climate-fueled disasters and the money needed to shift entire economies away from polluting energy have dramatically accelerated. Developed countries now need roughly $1 trillion each year in external funding through 2030 to meet their climate targets, according to a study by U.N.-backed experts. Public-related finance flows should account for $300 billion until 2030 — in line with where the talks landed. That figure needs to increase to at least $390 billion a year by 2035, the study says. Yet an early draft of the new proposal caused an uproar in the convention halls on Thursday for being full of options or missing sections entirely. Developed countries offered no new figure. Privately, European diplomats called the package “empty,” “not helpful,” “unserious” and, in one instance, “shit.” Things did not get much better from there. Even after POLITICO reported on Monday that the European Union had discussed an annual finance target of $200 billion to $300 billion, developed countries refused to name any number or range they would be willing to offer, or to disclose details of their internal negotiations. Their reluctance to put money on the table prompted accusations from many developing countries that they weren’t negotiating in good faith. Meanwhile, the U.S. delegation — just two months away from having a new president who rejects the reality of climate change — maintained a quiet presence. When nearly a dozen countries held a press conference Thursday to announce they would set “ambitious” new climate targets by February, American officials showed up even though the U.S had dropped its participation in the initiative. “You can either get things done or you can take the credit,” a senior U.S. official told POLITICO. They’ve been equally mum on the new finance target, saying only that they were pushing for something ambitious but achievable. U.S. officials have tried to put their best spin on Washington’s reluctance to stake bolder positions in public. On finance, they’ve said they’re negotiating for a deal they can eventually contribute to — whenever an American president wants to do so. “I think we were an important voice for ambition in these negotiations,” John Podesta, Biden’s senior climate adviser, told reporters after the deal landed Sunday. Others at the talks have had a saltier take on the American posture. The U.S. officials have “behaved as if they have got more influence than they have when they have only got weeks left in power,” said one European diplomat who was granted anonymity to speak freely. The Europeans, in turn, said $300 billion was as high as they could go. But even among the EU delegations, some diplomats wondered if leaving it until the final days of the summit to discuss a specific target was the right way to go. “Why, why, why would you wait till two days before crunch time to say a number?” one senior European diplomat said on Saturday afternoon. “I don’t think we’ve been handling this well.” Developing countries say outside funding is necessary for them to meet their national climate targets and harden their defenses against a growing onslaught of extreme weather. If the ultimate purpose of these talks is to get countries to take increasingly stronger action to lower their planet-warming pollution, then money is the thing that drives them forward. “Mitigation is in our interest because we can’t adapt to a world of 3 degrees or 2.8 forever,” said Ali Mohamed, climate envoy of Kenya, which currently chairs the Africa Group of negotiators. “However, that requires investment, that requires support.” A proposal offering $250 billion finally dropped on Friday afternoon, to much criticism from the poorer countries and vulnerable island states. The next offer from wealthy governments was a $300 billion take-it-or-leave-it proposal Saturday that landed with a thud on the more than 100 developing countries. In a closed-door meeting Saturday afternoon meant to allow countries to hash out their differences, a group of the world’s poorest countries, known as the LDCs, said they were temporarily leaving the negotiations because they hadn’t been included. “We don’t think as LDCs we have been consulted when these versions were drafted,” said Jiwoh Emmanuel Abdulahi, environment minister for Sierra Leone. The bloc of small island nations echoed that sentiment. “We feel as though we’re left with nothing from this COP,” Samoan natural resources minister Cedric Schuster, representing the Alliance of Small Island States, told other countries in the meeting. “Is this how we treat the countries with the moral high ground in the process, who stand to lose the most and have already lost so much?” The final agreement contained a small but crucial difference: Wealthy countries would offer at least $300 billion. “I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome … to meet the great challenge we face,” Guterres said after the summit ended. “But this agreement provides a base on which to build.”

BAKU, Azerbaijan — The U.S. has played the powerbroker in more than 30 years of global negotiations on fighting climate change — a quest that has swept in an army of diplomats, the world’s biggest companies and every nation on Earth. The first climate summit since Donald Trump’s second White House victory underscored the volatile side of that legacy. In a 14-day conference focused on hundreds of billions of dollars in climate finance, everybody recognized that the incoming U.S. president will refuse to pay any amount the Biden administration agrees to. President Joe Biden’s emissaries helped orchestrate a multinational pledge for “ambitious” carbon-cutting, but they declined to join it. And as the U.S. prepares to recede from global leadership, much of the rest of the world is looking to China to fill the void. Trump’s upcoming presidency is the most important source of the instability on display at the COP29 summit, despite all the Biden administration’s efforts to send signals that America is still on board with the climate cause, said Carlos Fuller, Belize’s permanent representative at the United Nations. “This has become the COP of uncertainty because of that change,” Fuller told POLITICO. “Whatever the U.S. says here — now, it could be with the best intentions — will they follow through? Or will they just say, ‘I can give you everything,’ but then it means nothing?” Trump’s rise and resurgent far-right political movements across Europe were just one of many shadows over the climate talks that ended early Sunday, held in the capital city of oil-rich Azerbaijan. Saudi resistance torpedoed any effort to end the summit with a call to move away from fossil fuels — never mind that a pledge to do just that was the supposedly triumphant achievement of the last climate summit less than a year ago. All the while, scientific evidence mounted that the Earth’s temperatures are rising toward catastrophic levels. “The worst part is the unpredictability,” Brazilian climate chief Ana Toni told POLITICO. “The whole world says that on finance, on policy, we need a roadmap, we need predictability. “And then,” she added, “you have the U.S. going in and out.” Here are key takeaways from this year’s climate talks, and what they bode for what’s next: HOPES FOR MEETING AMBITIOUS TEMPERATURE TARGETS ARE A BUST COP29 began with inauspicious news: The World Meteorological Organization said that this year would eclipse 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming since the pre-industrial age for the first time. The mark, which set a record for the modern era, is in some ways symbolic: Crossing that threshold for one year is less dire than doing so over a 30-year climatological timescale, the point at which catastrophic effects of warming — runaway ice melt, heatwaves and droughts that make parts of the world virtually uninhabitable, and rising seas that swallow low-lying lands and islands — would become irreversible. Still, the milestone showed that the world is most likely heading past 1.5 degrees for the long haul, despite nearly a decade of vows by world leaders to avert it. Even before Trump takes office, the U.S. is already on track to miss Biden’s target of halving its greenhouse gas pollution during this decade, relative to 2005 levels. Trump’s policies, which include vows to leave the 2015 Paris climate agreement, unwind Biden’s climate law, reverse vehicle fuel economy standards and pump more oil and gas, would throttle the pace of emissions reductions and global cooperation. Some nations at COP29 echoed Trump’s approach. Populist Argentine President Javier Milei openly flirted with exiting the Paris pact, while Saudi Arabia blocked attempts to restate last year’s fossil fuel pledge. The U.S., meanwhile, declined to join a coalition including the European Union, Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and Norway that promised during the conference to embrace “ambitious” new climate plans by early next year. U.S. officials did not explain their absence from the effort, even though the Biden administration had helped orchestrate the pledge. Broadly, nations arrived unwilling to move from their “red lines” on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, said South African Environmental Minister Dion George, who co-chaired that negotiating track. He said the U.S. was more “subdued” when “normally they talk a lot.” Taking hardened positions is “not in anybody’s interest, frankly, but I think that’s a reflection of where we are heading in the world,” he told POLITICO. “What’s required in this type of environment where we are seeing very interesting geopolitical shifts: Leadership is required. And bravery. And I’m not seeing much of it.” SHOW ME THE MONEY (ONCE DEMS ARE BACK IN POWER) The summit’s most contentious issue involved how much money wealthy nations would offer poorer countries to help them cope with climate disasters while moving their economies toward clean energy. Factions arrived poles apart — with some rich countries pushing for $200 billion in climate financing each year for the next decade, even though studies indicate the real need is more than $1 trillion a year. An independent analysis by finance experts said developing nations needed $300 billion per year of public, mostly grant-based funding that charges little or no interest, plus a total of $1 trillion annually provided by other sources such as the private sector. Senior U.S. officials acknowledged that the looming four years of Trump 2.0 and at least two years of full Republican control of Congress moderated how much climate finance the United States could expect to deliver. Instead, they sought to craft a deal that a future, climate-friendly administration could meet. The summit ended with a call for at least $300 billion in annual finance, which representatives of developing countries called insufficient to meet their needs. “The U.S. elections and many other geopolitical events have changed what [the rich countries] could have provided,” said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a coalition of island states. Trump and congressional Republicans zeroed out climate finance during the president-elect’s first term. Biden spent four years slowly rebuilding those U.S. efforts, hitting $11.4 billion this year and achieving its goal of quadrupling 2016 levels. But the pendulum will almost certainly swing back. While Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment on the finance talks, the president-elect has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a hoax designed to weaken the United States, and he has put Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of an effort to find trillions of dollars in cuts from government spending. At the same time, the U.S. took part in a contentious meeting among major economic powers early Saturday, after which it joined Australia and European countries in agreeing to set the number at $300 billion a year. One European negotiator criticized the U.S. positioning, saying the Americans “behaved as if they have got more influence than they have when they have only got weeks left in power.” The emergence of Trump in the U.S. and European leaders who complained of fiscal constraints in their capitals led to “a lot of posturing” and blame shifting on finance, said Ruleta Camacho-Thomas, Antigua and Barbuda’s climate ambassador. “There’s a lot of waiting and seeing what the other country will do and what the other group of countries will do: ‘But if these people are not doing this, then I can’t do that,’” she said. “That is global politicking. And this is about survival for us.” As wide as the divide on climate was, Trump’s emergence made it more important to not let COP29 fall to pieces, one European diplomat said. “The developing countries are now saying that it is better to have no agreement than a bad one,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks. “Normally that is true but in this case, with the upcoming presidency in the U.S., it should be crucial for them to have an agreement now.” CHINA IS ASCENDANT The U.S. receding under Trump amid his likely withdrawal from the Paris Agreement make room for China to take over the global climate leadership role. But how China will lead is a major question. Beijing’s massive subsidies for its clean energy technology have reduced costs for developing nations’ green transitions, yet its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure lending program has saddled those countries with onerous debt. While reports show China’s greenhouse gas pollution may have peaked, it is still by far the world’s top driver of climate change. Accelerating China’s carbon-cutting is key for staying below 1.5 degrees, but it’s still building more coal-fired power plants. China also routinely resists pleas for transparency for its pollution-cutting measures. The same is true on climate finance. “China is a bit complex, but at the same time, we do see leadership from China,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director with the environmental group Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. Trump’s rise will likely give China more of the global market, clean energy analysts have said. Ending Biden’s consumer incentives for buying electric cars, which Republicans have targeted, and subsidies for making batteries, solar panels and wind turbines would curtail burgeoning U.S. efforts to compete in realms that China dominates. China has also led a backlash against efforts by the U.S. and other wealthy nations to impose industrial policies that would blunt China’s stranglehold over key raw materials and technologies for green energy. It has prodded emerging economies to criticize policies such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and and the EU’s carbon border tariff, arguing they make greening their economies more expensive. At COP29, Trump’s impending return to power gave the U.S. less leverage to corral China into making compulsory contributions to the finance goals. China — which has the world’s second-largest economy — hung onto a 1992 U.N. determination that it is poor enough to avoid paying into those efforts, though the final agreement leaves the door open for countries that have since grown wealthier to make commitments if they desire. China, however, sought to disarm criticism when it for the first time offered a figure for the amount of finance it has provided to other nations through its long-touted “South-South Cooperation.” The total is $25 billion since 2016, the Chinese said. Zia Weise contributed to this report.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Negotiators reached a deal early Sunday in which rich countries agreed to provide at least $300 billion per year in financing by 2035 to help poorer nations fight climate change. The agreement, struck and approved early Sunday at the COP29 climate summit, emerged after days of public and closed-door recriminations and finger-pointing among the nearly 200 nations represented at the gathering by the Caspian Sea. Those included a testy, shout-filled meeting before dawn Saturday in which major economic powers including the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and China battled over how the cash would be delivered and by which countries, two people familiar with that discussion told POLITICO. Afterward, large rich nations agreed to bump up their offer from a $250 billion proposal that the summit’s hosts had floated on Friday. Still, a minimum of $300 billion is far below the trillions of dollars that poorer and vulnerable countries will need to withstand ever-rising seas and worsening storms, droughts and floods, several analyses have found. Other ways exist to raise those funds — such as private capital, and carbon credit trading whose rules also reached a final deal Saturday. But representatives of poor and vulnerable countries such as Malawi, the Marshall Islands and the Maldives said the sum was simply insufficient to meet their needs. The financial agreement also comes with a pile of uncertainty about the final amount any rich country would pay — especially as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who calls climate change a hoax, prepares to take power in Washington. The EU, already by far the largest donor bloc, expects to have to shoulder more of the burden as U.S. participation recedes. The deal was broadly in line with the expectations set by a U.N. report last week, which estimated the amount of public finance and related cash transfers needed to protect climate-threatened countries and finance their clean industries. It also largely meshed with the $200 billion to $300 billion in annual funding that EU nations had discussed in private, as POLITICO reported on Monday. In the lead-up to the talks, the U.S. and the EU pressured China and other wealthy, but technically developing, countries to join them as a donor nation. The deal opened up the possibility for developing nations such as China to contribute, or not, on a voluntary basis — potentially allowing both sides to claim a win. The $300 billion-plus goal will also include all finance from international institutions such as the World Bank — such as money provided by China and other developing country shareholders. The inclusion allows countries that had pressured China to contribute to say they had made progress. The final text nodded to an agreement made last year in Dubai to transition away from fossil fuels. But this year countries declined to directly mention the energy sources that cause climate change. Nor did the deal lay out actions to accelerate toward that goal, something European and U.S. negotiators had wanted. They were repeatedly rebuffed by Saudi Arabia’s delegation, along with a group that included China, India and other emerging economies, according to a European diplomat, who was granted anonymity in order to discuss the contents of private meetings.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Negotiators from several of the world’s most powerful economies held a contentious meeting in Saturday’s wee hours as they sought to push through a $300 billion-per-year climate financing deal and break a stalemate at the COP29 summit, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO.  The poorer countries that most need the money, and will suffer hardest from the continued failure to lower global carbon pollution, were not in the room. Now the success or failure of the U.N. climate talks will come down to whether those countries will accept the new financing pledge, just a day after dismissing a $250 billion-a-year proposal as insufficient — or walk.  European Union Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said: “It is iffy whether we will succeed.” Organizers of the nearly 200-nation gathering on the Caspian Sea have yet to announce a final agreement as the talks, originally scheduled to close Friday, dragged into their 13th day. Saturday’s overnight meeting started after 1 a.m. and finally broke up just before sunrise in Baku. There was, according to a European diplomat briefed on the discussions, “lots of shouting.” Saudi Arabia was the lightning rod for anger during the gathering at Azerbaijan’s Olympic Stadium in Baku, which featured diplomats from Saudi Arabia, China, the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Australia, according to the European diplomat and one other person familiar with the details. Both officials, like others in this story, were granted anonymity to discuss the tense and ongoing negotiations.  Saudi Arabia’s representatives said they would not answer questions from the press until the conference had officially ended. The oil-rich kingdom had been smarting for a year after agreeing during the last COP conference in Dubai to a text that committed the world to transition away from fossil fuels. During this year’s conference in Baku, the Saudis have obstructed almost every effort to negotiate on how that transition might actually happen, according to four European diplomats and two from Latin America. After the meeting, the rich nations in the room — the U.S., Australia and those from Europe — had agreed to transfer $300 billion per year by 2035 to poor countries to help them fight climate change and transition to cleaner energy, according to two diplomats from Europe, one from South Africa and one from Latin America. That was around $100 billion per year more than most, in particular the U.S., had hoped to agree on coming into the meeting, said the European diplomat, and another official from the same region. The U.S. State Department has repeatedly declined to confirm the amount it was prepared to offer at the talks.  Those details are yet to be confirmed in any draft deal published by the conference organizers. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres spent much of Friday cajoling wealthy countries to raise the number they were promising, after an initial draft offered $250 billion. Analysis by the U.N. and others has found the needs of developing nations run into the trillions every year. But private capital can also be used to fill the gap. Saudi Arabia was the lightning rod for anger during the gathering at Azerbaijan’s Olympic Stadium in Baku. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images Speaking to POLITICO, Irish Climate Minister Eamon Ryan confirmed that wealthy countries had agreed to increase the finance goal and that Saudi Arabia had blocked any discussion on lowering greenhouse gas pollution. On Saturday afternoon, U.S. climate envoy John Podesta said negotiators had worked all night and were still crafting an outcome. Asked if they were close, he said: “These things have a shelf life.”  On Saturday morning, top negotiators from the Marshall Islands and Belize said they were unaware of any deal brokered overnight.  Around that time, according to Ryan and another person familiar with the discussions, the Azerbaijani government’s conference organizers held meetings with representatives of 38 small island nations and informed them of the contours of what most expect to be a final take-it-or-leave-it deal, set to be published sometime later Saturday. “This is what always the developed world does to us in all multilateral agreements,” said Panama’s climate envoy, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez. “They push and push and push until the last minute. They get us tired, they get us hungry, they get us dizzy, and then we come to terms with agreements that don’t truly represent the needs of our people.”  Sitting on a couch in the rapidly emptying conference venue, Belize’s permanent U.N. representative Carlos Fuller said: “For us, this isn’t only about money. It’s about survival. I think that gets forgotten here.” Gómez told a reporter: “I’m also listening to ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ by Rihanna nonstop.”

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Organizers of the United Nations climate summit issued a draft agreement Friday that would see the U.S., EU and other wealthy governments send $250 billion annually in climate finance to developing nations by 2035 – an amount that falls far short of the trillion-plus figure that poorer countries had sought. The agreement comes with many uncertainties about which nations would provide exactly how much money, especially with President-elect Donald Trump — who has scoffed at the reality of climate change and vowed steep cuts in government spending — about to take power in the U.S. The finance question has been the main topic of contention at the COP29 talks in Azerbaijan’s capital. The new target is for money to help poorer nations green their economies and cope with the effects of a heating planet. Talks had been due to end Friday but were almost certain to go into overtime, given how far apart the parties remain. “It’s ridiculous. With this number, they are spitting in our faces,” said Panama’s climate envoy Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez. “We don’t take that seriously,” said Kenyan climate envoy Ali Mohamed, referring to the $250 billion figure. Whatever agreed-upon sum comes out of the talks will be a follow-up to a $100 billion target that richer nations agreed to in 2009. They finally met that target two years after a 2020 deadline. Since then, climate needs and the damage from worsening disasters have grown more expensive and severe. The figure included in the latest draft text is unlikely to appease poorer governments, many of which had already balked at reports in POLITICO that the European Union was internally discussing a range of $200 billion to $300 billion per year. Blocs of developing countries that negotiate together have sought anywhere from $500 billion to $1.3 trillion annually from wealthier governments’ public funds. The date they want the target to come due is 2030, five years earlier than in Friday’s draft. “Is this supposed to be the developed countries ‘taking the lead’?” a senior negotiator for a large developing country wrote in a message accompanying a crying emoji. Several analyses have shown developing countries will need more than $1 trillion annually from outside sources to prevent global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius since the mid-19th century, the stretch target that the world’s governments set in the Paris climate agreement. The draft deal indicated that the shortfall, of as much as $1.3 trillion, could be filled largely using private capital by 2035. Even though the number fell short of developing countries’ wishes, a European negotiator said it will still strain some rich nations. “Higher than thought,” said the negotiator, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters. “Some in the group will have to go back to capitals.” Another European negotiator said that for his country, $250 billion was “a good ballpark figure.” Senior Biden administration officials have noted they are negotiating a deal that a future Democratic or climate-friendly government could meet. Four years of Trump and at least two years of full Republican control of Congress will likely diminish, if not obliterate, U.S. climate finance contributions, moderating what the U.S. can reasonably achieve. Environmental organizations said governments can likely hit a loftier number. Changes already underway to lending practices at multilateral development banks such as the World Bank should free up tens of billions of dollars of more finance that primarily flows from rich to poor countries, Joe Thwaites, senior advocate for international climate finance at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. Countries could also reach for “modest increases” in country-to-country finance, he said. A further major bone of contention at COP29 has been U.S. and European demands that wealthy, but technically still developing, nations, such as China, Singapore and the Gulf states, should also pay into the pot. The draft essentially left that option up to those countries under pressure to donate, inviting “developing country Parties to make additional contributions” either as part of the goal, or “supplementing” it through what China often calls “South-South” finance. That represents little change in the stance of China, which came into the talks refusing to budge but also saying that it had provided around $25 billion in total since 2016.

BAKU, Azerbaijan — It was the most trumpeted achievement of last year’s climate conference. One year later, it’s nowhere to be found. The call to “transition away” from coal, oil and gas that came out of December’s COP28 summit in Dubai was historic — the first time 200 countries, including major oil and gas producers such as Saudi Arabia and the United States, had explicitly agreed on the need to wind down fossil fuels. But in Baku, Azerbaijan, COP29 is taking place after a U.S. election that handed the presidency back to Donald Trump, who has vowed to massively expand oil and gas production. And the host country’s president, Ilham Aliyev, used his keynote address to call fossil fuel resources a “gift of the God.” Against that backdrop, even getting this summit to reiterate last year’s nonbinding agreement has faced “pushback,” Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s climate minister, told reporters on Thursday. And some advocates for strong climate action appeared to be accepting defeat. Money is still the most contentious issue at the Azerbaijan summit: Less than 24 hours before talks were scheduled to conclude on Friday, negotiators were still battling behind closed doors about how many hundreds of billions of dollars in climate aid for poorer nations should come from wealthy governments such as the U.S. and the European Union. But the question of how to handle the 2023 fossil fuel pledge is a symbol of how far global climate politics have shifted. A group of 22 Arab countries has refused to accept any mention of the fossil fuel language, according to three European negotiators, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. During a public meeting on Thursday, Saudi Arabian negotiator Albara Tawfiq, speaking on behalf of the Arab group, said any reference to fossil fuels would be “unacceptable.” “The Arab group will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels, and no proposal on economic policies in developing countries even on an encouragement basis,” he said. Ugandan Energy Minister Ruth Nankabirwa told POLITICO the country wanted the freedom to exploit its own energy resources: “Any statement which would be towards phasing out completely of fossil fuel, that Uganda does not support. It is not just. It is not just.” Failing to repeat the fossil fuel language from COP28 would be disappointing, said Colombia’s minister of environment and sustainable development, Susana Muhamad. “What is the point of having an agreement and a convention if we cannot deal with the issue that creates the problem?” she asked. An early draft of the final deal for the COP29 talks, released early Thursday, contained no mention of fossil fuels and no commitment to the broader Dubai agreement. G20 leaders who met this week in Rio de Janeiro said they “welcome and fully subscribe” to last year’s agreement, but declined to repeat its contents. At a press conference on Thursday in Baku, Aagaard would say only that the fossil fuels pledge was “close” to a red line for Denmark. “Everybody’s going to go away somewhat unhappy tomorrow,” said Ireland’s climate minister, Eamon Ryan. “There’s going to be red lines crossed.” And while rich countries and those nations vulnerable to climate change insist that the talks must also send a clear signal on cutting greenhouse gas pollution, Ryan suggested that the talks on delivering a new finance goal should not collapse over it. Failure to get a deal “would be unforgivable, would be historically shameful,” he said. “And we can’t do that, we have to reach compromise.” The European Union has insisted that the final agreement in Baku needs a strong component on cutting emissions, describing any backtracking as a “red line.” But senior European negotiators appeared open to not repeating the fossil fuel language this week. “What we would like to avoid — that’s a red line — is watering down the agreed text,” said Attila Steiner, co-leader of the EU’s COP29 team, in an interview on Wednesday. The EU could “live with” just restating last year’s language, he added. When asked whether there needs to be an explicit reference to fossil fuels again, Steiner said: “What we agreed in Dubai … it’s a package. The exact wording is a different question.” Instead, Europeans appeared keen to focus their attention on a deal that describes how countries will move away from fossil fuels. In a statement to reporters Wednesday, German climate envoy Jen Morgan said COP29 needs to speed up the implementation of the energy goals agreed in Dubai, but did not mention the fossil fuel transition call when enumerating what that means. “Concretely, we are looking for a decision on the need to cooperate on the expansion of electricity grids and energy storage, as well as the promotion of green skills, the tackling of all fossil fuel subsidies [and] agreeing no new coal,” she said.