Monday briefing: Where Cop29 failed – and the limited reasons for hope

In today’s newsletter: The view from Azerbaijan is of disappointingly low direct finance guarantees to the developing world, although it is ‘less bad than nothing’• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. Cop29 in Baku finally finished at 5.31am local time yesterday, more than 35 hours after it was due to conclude – and the extra time did not lead to a triumphant outcome.On the biggest issue under discussion, the transfer of climate finance from the developed to the developing world, the headline figure in the agreement was $1.3tn (£1tn) by 2035. But that masked much smaller commitments in direct finance in the form of grants and low-interest loans, which amounted to only $300bn. Nor is the outcome an injustice whose impact is limited to the global South, of course: if the money isn’t there to support a green energy transition in developing economies, temperatures will rise all over the world.UK weather | Storm Bert is expected to cause further disruption on Monday after torrential downpours caused “devastating” flooding over the weekend and a major incident in Wales. At least five people have died in England and Wales since the storm hit.Economy | A defiant Rachel Reeves will rebuke critics of her tax-raising budget on Monday, telling disgruntled business leaders at the Confederation of British Industry that they have offered “no alternatives”. CBI director-general Rain Newton-Smith will meanwhile accuse Reeves of jeopardising economic growth, saying: “Tax rises like this must never again be simply done to business.”Britons detained abroad | Families of prominent British prisoners detained abroad have urged the foreign secretary to deliver on pledges to help secure their release with signs of growing resistance from diplomats. There are fears that they are resisting a plan to appoint a special envoy on those detained abroad without a fair trial lest it affect trade deals.Middle East | A Guardian investigation has found that Israel used a US munition to target and kill three journalists and wound three more in a 25 October attack in south Lebanon which legal experts have called a potential war crime.Europe | A little-known, far-right populist took the lead in Romania’s presidential election on Sunday, and will probably face leftist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu in a runoff in two weeks, an outcome that has rocked the country’s political landscape. Calin Georgescu led the polls with about 22% of the vote after nearly 93% of votes were counted.The money could come not just in the form of the grants and very low-interest loans that developing countries need, but ... from a “wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral and alternative sources”. Money will be “mobilised” rather than provided – a nice distinction that allows for the inclusion of private sector co-investing to be counted alongside public money from government budgets and development banks. Continue reading...