“At COP29 in Baku all governments must agree a new goal for international climate finance that truly responds to the needs of developing countries,” said Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as he addressed an online event of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary then added: “COP29 must be the stand-and-deliver COP, recognising that climate finance is core business to save the global economy and billions of lives and livelihoods from rampaging climate impacts.

It’s not my job to prejudge what the new goal will look like. But it’s clear public finance must be at the core.”

He then noted: “As much of this finance as possible needs to be grant or concessional, and must be made more accessible to those who need it most.

And we must make climate cash count, wherever possible leveraging more private finance and sending signals to financial markets that green is where the gains are.”

“The vital business of who pays and how much can be agreed in Baku, but we are not going there to renegotiate the Paris Agreement,” Stiell concluded.