By Pacific Island Times News Staff
Baku, Azerbaijan— Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti P. Teo is seeking climate funding reforms including a new pledge, which he said must be significantly higher than the 2009 goal of $100 billion a year.
“A situation globally caused must also have a globally just and equitable solution, with the special needs and circumstances of small island states and least developed countries that are suffering the worst impacts of climate change fully recognized,” Teo said.
Teo is joined by Maina Talia, Tuvalu’s minister of Home Affairs, Climate Change and the Environment, at the 29th UN Climate Change Conference, or COP 29, to advocate for a more just climate finance system for small island developing states.
The 29th “Finance COP” in Baku aims to set the future direction of international climate finance and to facilitate the negotiations of a new financial pledge by rich countries to support climate initiatives in poorer ones.
Tuvalu's team said new climate finance arrangements must also address loss and damage and include the costs of mitigation and adaption.
Teo team will push for supplemental assistance on top of the existing development finance, and demand that the program must be "quick and easy to access, with a simplified application and disbursement process."
Teo spoke at a Green Climate Fund side event where he outlined the urgency of climate funding reform.
He has also co-hosted two high-level events. The first highlighted climate mobility and how positive adaptation journeys are only possible when governments can plan for mobility, and when people have ownership in decisions about their future.
The second covered sea-level rise impacts and will progress efforts to shape an ambitious UN General Assembly Declaration on sea-level rise in September 2026.
All these events provide Tuvalu with the opportunity to raise awareness of the specific challenges SIDS like Tuvalu are forced to face as global temperatures increase and rising sea levels threaten their existence.
COP 29 opened on Nov. 11 and continues through Nov. 22. Taking place every year, the climate conferences are the world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change that brings together almost every country on Earth.
The COP is where the world comes together to agree on the actions to address the climate crisis, such as limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
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