Concern as climate talks stalls on fossil fuels pledge

PARIS, France — The failure of UN climate negotiations to double down on a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels on Sunday was decried by experts as a "worrying" setback to global progress on curbing warming.

Nearly 200 nations spent much of COP29 in Azerbaijan locking horns over a tough-fought finance pact that was finally approved in the early hours of Sunday.

But countries also clashed bitterly over how to build on a landmark pledge at last year's climate talks to "transition away" from fossil fuels.

A text that was supposed to push for ways to put that promise into practice was ultimately not adopted at the close of COP29, with countries lamenting that it had been emptied of substance.

Observers said this meant the meeting in Baku, held in what is expected to be the world's hottest year on record, made virtually no progress on tackling the source of global warming.

Laurence Tubiana, the architect of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord said the Baku deal was "not as ambitious as the moment demands".

"The impacts of the climate crisis are becoming ever more visible, ever more devastating in both human and economic terms, all over the world, with no region spared," she told AFP.

"The culprits are well known, yet once again fossil fuels have been defended by an ill-prepared COP presidency."

Azerbaijan, an authoritarian state that relies on oil and gas exports, has been accused of lacking the experience and bandwidth to steer such complex negotiations.

Its leader Ilham Aliyev opened the conference by hailing fossil fuels as a "gift of God".

The European Union and other countries tussled with Saudi Arabia over including strong language on the energy transition during the UN talks.

Countries had also discussed ways to measure action, such as tracking progress on the move away from oil, gas and coal.

But a Saudi official told delegates on Thursday that the 22-nation Arab Group would reject any UN climate deal that targeted fossil fuels.

As negotiations wrapped up in the early hours of Sunday, countries and negotiating blocs including vulnerable small island states and Latin American and Caribbean nations said the text had been watered down