Azerbaijan UN climate summit: island states expect billions in aid

At the World Climate Conference, dozens of developing countries and island states threatened by the climate crisis have turned to the industrialized countries with demands for billions of euros.

The Alliance of Small Island States alone - some of whose very existence is threatened by rising sea levels and more frequent storms - is insisting on annual climate aid of at least 39 billion US dollars, as its chairman Cedric Schuster, Samoa's environment minister, said at the UN summit in Azerbaijan. He appealed to the representatives of the 200 countries there to continue fighting for ambitious climate protection: "Protect life, not profits from fossil fuels!"

The group of 45 least developed countries, mainly from Africa and Latin America, also expects new, additional and easily accessible climate aid, as its chairman Evans Njewa, the environment minister of Malawi, emphasized. This would involve grants from state funds and not loans, which would only increase the high debt burden of many developing countries. His group of states alone expects to receive at least one trillion US dollars by 2030.

At the UN conference in Baku, which is scheduled to end on 22 November, all developing countries together demanded that the industrialized nations mobilize at least 1,300 billion US dollars per year in climate financing in future - 13 times more than at present. The EU states recognize in principle that more money needs to flow. However, they also want countries such as China and the Gulf States to contribute. However, according to 30-year-old UN logic, they have so far been regarded as developing countries - and therefore as recipient countries.

SDA