BRUSSELS: With less than three months until this year’s COP29 UN climate negotiations, countries remain far from agreement on the summit’s biggest task: to agree a new funding target to help developing countries cope with climate change.
A negotiations document published by the UN climate body on Thursday set out the splits between nations, ahead of a meeting in Baku next month, where negotiators will attempt to inch forward some of the stickiest issues.
The document suggests seven options, reflecting countries’ competing positions, for a possible COP29 deal. The new target will replace wealthy nations’ current commitment to provide $100 billion each year in climate finance to developing countries.
Vulnerable and developing countries want a far larger funding goal. Donor countries such as Canada and the 27-nation European Union say stretched national budgets mean a huge jump in public funding is unrealistic.
“We have come a long way but there are still clearly different positions we need to bridge,” said incoming COP29 summit president Mukhtar Babayev.
Babayev, who is Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources, said the COP29 presidency would organize intensive negotiations on the finance goal ahead of the COP29 summit in Baku in November.
One option in the document sets out a target for developed countries to provide $441 billion each year in grants, combined with an aim to mobilize a total $1.1 trillion in funding from all sources, including private finance, annually from 2025 to 2029.
That option reflects Arab countries’ position.
Another option, reflecting the EU’s negotiating stance, sets a global climate-funding target of more than $1 trillion each year — including countries’ domestic investments and private funding — inside which would be a smaller amount provided by countries “with high greenhouse-gas emissions and economic capabilities.”
The EU has demanded that China — the world’s biggest polluter and second-biggest economy — contribute to the new climate-funding goal.
China is classed as a developing country by the UN under a system developed in the 1990s that is still used today. Beijing rejects the idea that it should be on the hook to pay for climate finance, the money mostly paid by rich countries to poor ones.
Negotiators expect the issue of who should pay to be one of the biggest hurdles to agreeing a finance deal at COP29.
Another option in the document, reflecting Canada’s position, suggests contributors to the target should be determined on per-capita emissions and income — a measure that could also add the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others.
Countries still far apart on COP29 finance goal
Countries still far apart on COP29 finance goal
US Justice Department official eyes cases against Cuba leaders as Trump floats ‘friendly takeover’
- “Working group” formed to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government
- Trump’s has increasingly displayed aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership
MIAMI: The top Justice Department prosecutor in Miami is considering criminal investigations of Cuban government officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry comes as President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has created a “working group” that includes federal prosecutors and officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to try to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government and its Communist Party, according to one of the people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the effort.
It was not immediately clear which Cuban officials the office is targeting or what criminal charges prosecutors may be looking to bring.
The Justice Department said in a statement Friday that “federal prosecutors from across the country work every day to pursue justice, which includes efforts to combat transnational crime.”
The effort is taking place against the backdrop of Trump’s increasingly aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership.
Emboldened by the US capture of Cuba’s close ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump last month said his administration was in high-level talks with officials in Havana to pursue “a friendly takeover” of the country. He repeated those claims this week, saying his attention would turn back to Cuba once the war with Iran winds down.
“They want to make a deal so bad,” Trump said of Cuba’s leadership.
While Cuba has faded from Washington’s radar as a major national security threat in recent decades, it remains a priority in the US Attorney’s office in Miami, whose political, economic and cultural life is dominated by Cuban-American exiles.
The FBI field office has a dedicated Cuba group that in 2024 was instrumental in the arrest of former US Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha on charges of serving as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.
In recent weeks, several Miami Republicans, in addition to Florida Sen. Rick Scott, have called on the Trump administration to reopen its criminal investigation into the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by anti-communist exiles.
In a letter to Trump on Feb. 13, lawmakers including Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez highlighted decades-old news reports indicating that former President Raúl Castro — the head of Cuba’s military at the time — gave the order to shoot down the unarmed Cessna aircraft.
“We believe unequivocally that Raúl Castro is responsible for this heinous crime,” lawmakers wrote. “It is time for him to be brought to justice.”
While no indictment against Castro has been announced, Florida’s attorney general said this week that he would open a state-level investigation into the crime.
The Trump administration has also accused Cuba of not cooperating with American counterterrorism efforts, adding it alongside North Korea and Iran to a select few nations the US considers state sponsors of terrorism.
The designation stems from Cuba’s harboring of US fugitives and its refusal to extradite several Colombian rebel leaders while they were engaged in peace talks with the South American nation.
