Azerbaijan, the host of this year's UN climate conference, called on all countries on Monday to urgently resolve outstanding issues to agree on a new climate finance goal to help developing nations combat and adapt to climate change. Delivering his remarks at the opening ceremony of the UN summit, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev said current policies are leading the world towards 3 degrees Celsius of warming, which would be catastrophic for billions of people. He said that the COP29 Presidency's top priority is to find consensus on a fair and ambitious New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), or new climate finance goal, to replace the previous goal of USD 100 billion per year agreed in 2009. Babayev emphasized that the NCQG must be effective and adequate to address the scale and urgency of the problem. Negotiations have seen some progress but a lot of work is left, with just 12 days to land the deal. Countries now urgently need to finalise the elements, resolve differences on ...