Trump worries and leader absences cloud COP29 climate summit in Baku | U.S. & World [Video]

By Valerie Volcovici and Nailia Bagirova

BAKU (Reuters) -The annual U.N. climate summit began on Monday with some prominent leaders planning to skip the event ahead of tough talks on finance and trade, after a year of weather disasters that have emboldened developing countries’ demands for cash.

Delegates gathering in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, hope to resolve the COP29 summit’s top agenda item – a deal for up to $1 trillion in annual climate finance for developing countries, replacing a target of $100 billion.

“Let’s dispense with the idea that climate finance is charity,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said at the Baku Stadium venue. “An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest.”

But the financing goal is competing for attention with economic concerns, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the election of Donald Trump, a climate-change denier, for a second term as president of the …