G20 leaders turn focus to climate change on Rio summit’s last day

By Jake Spring and Anthony Boadle

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Leaders of the Group of 20 major economies meet on Tuesday to discuss sustainable development and the transition to cleaner energy, as they aim to increase the odds of a successful deal to address global warming at U.N. climate talks in Azerbaijan.

The host of the COP29 climate summit a day earlier had made a plea for G20 countries to send a positive signal on the need to tackle climate change and provide clear mandates to help save talks that had bogged down in Baku, Azerbaijan.

With the world on track for its warmest year on record, leaders are seeking to shore up efforts to address climate change before Donald Trump retakes the U.S. presidency in January. He is reportedly preparing to exit the Paris Agreement on climate change and roll back U.S. policy on global warming.

In a joint statement issued late Monday, the G20 leaders called for “rapidly and substantially increasing climate finance from billions to trillions from all sources” to pay for the response to climate change.

G20 leaders agreed that COP29 negotiators need to reach a deal on a new financial goal for how much money rich nations must provide to poorer developing nations in climate finance.

But while the G20 statement said nations need to resolve the issue, they did not indicate what the solution should be at the U.N. summit slated to end on Friday.

Economists suggest that goal should be at least $1 trillion annually.

Developed countries, including in Europe, argue that the contributor base needs to be expanded to include richer developing countries like China and richer Middle Eastern countries in order to agree an ambitious goal.

Developing countries, such as G20 host Brazil, have pushed back on expanding beyond developed countries, the main culprits for causing climate change.

On Sunday, sources close to the G20 negotiations said a text had been floated that suggested that developing countries could contribute on a voluntary basis, but such language did not make it into the final agreement.

Opening their annual summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the impact of climate change was evident all over the world and needed to be addressed urgently.

G20 nations are seen as vital to shaping the response to global warming, as they control 85% of the world economy and are also responsible for more than three-quarters of climate-warming emissions.

The G20 also committed to agreeing on a legally binding treaty to limit plastic pollution by the end of 2024, with talks on the subject set to resume next week aiming to end over two years of negotiations to hammer out a deal.

(Reporting by Jake Spring, Lisandra Paraguassu and Eduardo Baptista in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Stephen Coates)