Baku (AFP) - Negotiators raced Saturday to salvage UN climate talks after the poorest countries pushed back angrily for more than $300 billion a year in help from historic wealthy emitters.

More than a day past the scheduled conclusion of COP29 talks in Azerbaijan, exhausted diplomats worked late into the night again in a bid to reach a compromise after two weeks of bargaining.

“This package is an affront to us. We are the countries that have the most at stake,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy of the Marshall Islands, an atoll nation threatened by rising seas.

Top German negotiator Jennifer Morgan told AFP countries were “very close” to an agreement that would be a “take it or leave it” deal.

As the clock neared midnight, delegates huddled in small groups on the floor of the main conference room inside Baku’s sports stadium to pore over copies of the latest draft deal line by line.

“I know that none of us want to leave Baku without a good outcome,” COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev told a late-night session, urging all nations to “bridge the remaining divide”.

A number of countries have accused Azerbaijan, an authoritarian oil and gas exporter, of lacking the experience and will to meet the moment, as the planet again sets record temperatures and faces rising deadly disasters.

Small island nations and impoverished African states on Saturday angrily stormed out of a meeting with Azerbaijan, saying their concerns had been ignored.

“I think it caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Brazil’s climate envoy, Ana Toni. “It all happened very quickly.”

The walkout triggered an emergency meeting between those nations and top negotiators from the European Union, United States and Britain with the COP29 presidency in which new proposals were made.

Wealthy countries and small island nations have also been concerned by efforts led by Saudi Arabia to water down calls from last year’s summit to phase out fossil fuels.

A draft of the final text seen by AFP proposes that rich nations raise to $300 billion a year by 2035 their commitment to poorer countries to fight climate change.

It is up from $100 billion now provided by wealthy nations under a commitment set to expire – and from $250 billion proposed in a draft Friday.

That offer was slammed as offensively low by developing countries, which have demanded at least $500 billion to build resilience against climate change and cut emissions.

Sierra Leone’s climate minister Jiwoh Abdulai, whose country is among the world’s poorest, called the draft “effectively a suicide pact for the rest of the world”.

Developing power Brazil pleaded for at least some progress and said it would seek to build on it when it leads COP30 next year in the Amazon gateway of Belem.

“After the difficult experience that we’re having here in Baku, we need to reach some outcome that is minimally acceptable in line with the emergency we’re facing,” Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva told delegates.

- Tired and ‘disheartened’ -

As staff at the cavernous and windowless stadium began packing up, diplomats rushed between meetings, some armed with food and water in anticipation of another late night.

Panama’s outspoken negotiator, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, warned not to repeat the failure of COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009.

“I’m sad, I’m tired, I’m disheartened, I’m hungry, I’m sleep-deprived, but there is a tiny ray of optimism within me because this cannot become a new Copenhagen,” he told reporters.

Climate activists shouted “shame” as US climate envoy John Podesta walked the halls. “Hopefully this is the storm before the calm,” he said.

Wealthy nations say it is politically unrealistic to expect more in direct government funding.

Donald Trump, a sceptic of both climate change and foreign assistance, returns to the White House in January and a number of other Western countries have seen right-wing backlashes against the green agenda.

The draft deal posits a larger overall target of $1.3 trillion per year to cope with rising temperatures and disasters, but most would come from private sources.

- ‘Not going backwards’ -

South African environment minister Dion George, however, said: “I think being ambitious at this point is not going to be very useful.”

“What we are not up for is going backwards or standing still,” he said. “We might as well just have stayed at home then.”

The US and EU have wanted newly wealthy emerging economies like China – the world’s largest emitter – to chip in.

China, which remains classified as a developing nation under the UN framework, provides climate assistance but wants to keep doing so on its own voluntary terms.

The EU and other countries have also tussled with Saudi Arabia over including strong language on moving away from fossil fuels, which negotiators say the oil-producing country has resisted.

“We will not allow the most vulnerable, especially the small island states, to be ripped off by the new, few rich fossil fuel emitters,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

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