Delegations representing several small and impoverished nations severely threatened by climate change walked out of consultations on Saturday as UN climate talks in Azerbaijan went far into overtime without clinching a deal to help the nations most at risk.
"We're here as a group of AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and LDCs (Least Developed Countries). We've just walked out," said Cedric Schuster, the Samoan chairman of the group.
"We came here to this COP for a fair deal. We feel that we haven't been heard, and there's a deal to be made, and we have not been consulted ... We've walked out because at the moment, we don't feel that we are being heard," Schuster said.
'Still committed' to reach a deal for climate cash
Negotiators in Baku are discussing draft texts, with several countries urging industrialized nations to increase funding for climate change actions.
DW's Giulia Saudelli, who is in Baku, reports, "there's a feeling that time is starting to run out, and could play against the most vulnerable countries."
"Some developing countries feel like they are not being listened to, and that they have not been included enough in the negotiations so far, with the richer countries talking mostly among themselves, they say," Saudelli reports.
AOSIS issued a statement after the walkout saying it remained "committed to this process."
"We have presently removed ourselves from the stalled NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal) discussions, which were not offering a progressive way forward," it said.
Source: DW
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
