‘Dreams reduced to memories’: COP29 world leaders lay out first-hand experiences of climate change

More than two dozen world leaders delivered remarks at the United Nations’ annual climate conference Wednesday. Many hard-hit nations used the oppertunity to detail their nations’ firsthand experience with the catastrophic weather that has come with climate change.

Leader after leader recounted climate disasters, with each one seeming to top the other. Grenada’s prime minister Dickon Mitchell detailed a 15-month drought at the beginning of the year giving way to a Category 5 Hurricane Beryl.

“At this very moment, as I stand here yet again, my island has been devastated by flash flooding, landslides and the deluge of excessive rainfall, all in the space of a matter of a couple hours,” Mitchell said.

“It may be small island developing states today. It will be Spain tomorrow. It will be Florida the day after. It’s one planet.”

Small island nations call for stronger climate action

Grenada’s premier wasn’t the only small island nation leader who came with fighting words.

Prime minister Philip Edward Davis warned that “it will be our children and grandchildren who bear the burden, their dreams reduced to memories of what could have been.”

“We do not – cannot – accept that our survival is merely an option,” Davis said.

Davis said too often progress in the fight against climate change gets hurt when governments change, as is happening in the United States and Germany.

“If we leave climate action to the whims of political cycles, our planet’s future becomes precarious, very precarious,” Davis said.

“The climate crisis does not pause for elections or to accommodate the way of changing political ideas or ties. It demands continuity, commitment and most of all, solidarity.”

Leaders on a panel with members of the High Ambition Coalition, a group of nations that want to see strong climate action, highlighted the “inverted morality” of big emitters who aren’t taking responsibility for their impacts on countries who have the most to lose.

Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said high-polluting nations are “deliberately burning the planet.”

Past promises of financial aid went unfulfilled for too long, so small island nations will have to seek justice and compensation in international courts, he said.

Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine called the climate crisis “the most pressing security threat” her country faces, but said she thinks the Paris Agreement process -where countries agreed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees since pre-industrial times – is resilient.

Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev took the opportunity to align his country with the predicament of small island developing states in a speech where he called out developed countries, in particular France and the Netherlands, for their colonial histories.

He described the harms of colonialism that continue today. Biodiversity loss, rising seas and extreme weather hit communities that are often “ruthlessly suppressed,” he said.

The United States also tried to show sympathy to hard-hit places.

“Do we secure prosperity for our countries or do we condemn our most vulnerable to unimaginable climate disasters?” United States chief climate envoy John Podesta said. “Vulnerable communities do not just need ambition. They need action.”

European leaders recount a year of extreme weather

European nations also warned of climate catastrophe on their continent.

“Over the past year, catastrophic floods in Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as in southern Croatia have shown the devastating impact of rising temperatures,” said Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic.

“The Mediterranean, one of the most vulnerable regions, calls for urgent action.”

Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama said he was dismayed by the lack of political action and political will and leaders of many nations not showing up at climate talks as extreme weather strikes harder and more frequently.

“Since yesterday I was watching the silent TV screens in the leaders’ lounge,” he said. “People there eat, drink, meet and take photos together while images of voiceless speeches from leaders play on and on and on in the background.”

“To me, this seems exactly like what happens in the real world. Every day life goes on with its old habits and our speeches, full of good words about fighting climate change, change nothing.”

“What is happening in Europe and around the world today doesn’t leave much room for optimism, though optimism is the only way of survival,” Rama added.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Europe and the world needs to be “more honest” about the trade-offs needed to keep global temperatures down.

“We need to ask hard questions about a path that goes very fast, at the expense of our competitiveness, and a path that goes some much slower, but allows our industry to adapt and to thrive,” he said.

His nation this summer was hammered by successive heat waves after three years of below-average rainfall. The misery included water shortages, dried-up lakes and the death of wild horses.

Ireland environment minister Eamon Ryan channeled some hope, saying that the 2015 Paris climate treaty “still lives” and that countries who drop out will realize they are falling behind as other countries move forward and see benefits to their economies.

Negotiators labor on for elusive deal on money

Negotiators at the summit are looking to hammer out a deal on how much money, and in what form, developed countries will pledge for adapting to climate change and transitioning to clean energy for developing nations.

On Wednesday morning, an early draft of what that final deal will look like was released, but it still contained multiple options that negotiators will wrestle over to reach a consensus by the end of the climate talks.

David Waskow, director of international climate action at the World Resources Institute said the latest 34-page draft reflects “all of the options on the table.”

“Negotiators now need to work to boil it down to some key decisions” that can be worked on at the second half of the summit.

The latest draft “does incorporate some new demands” including an ask for one of the largest negotiating blocs – the G77 plus China – for $1.3 trillion (€1.3 trillion) in climate finance, said Avantika Goswami, a climate policy analyst with the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

“Developing countries have been clear that a provisional goal must be carved out to hold developed country governments to account,” she said.