Eamon Ryan says politicians face public anger and alarm if Cop29 climate talks fail

He said while climate change had dropped down the order of political priorities, it would “shoot right back to the top” if the summit failed.

“Our populations would rightly say, what are you going to do? Are you going to allow the world burn? Are our children going to live in an unstable, unsafe world?,” he said.

Mr Ryan, who arrived at the summit in Baku overnight, was speaking as 25 countries came together under a High Ambition Coalition to inject new energy into the talks.

They restated their commitment to the goals of rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, moving away from fossil fuels and keeping global temperature rise to no more than 1.5C as enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

The coalition, led by small island developing states, includes countries from Africa, the EU, South America and Eastern Europe as well as Canada.

Mr Ryan said that while Cop29 worked on a consensus basis, meaning no agreement can be finalised unless every country backs it, in reality no country could stop others stepping up their efforts.

He also said countries that opted out of the formal climate agreements as the United States is expected to do under a Trump presidency, would come back to the fold when they realised they were losing out.

“When you have a coalition of north, south, east and west, it’s very hard to stop that,” he said.

“I don’t believe any country, be it the United States or others, can put a veto or block on what we need to do to make progress.

“The Paris Agreement still lives, it’s still strong. Any country that might want to opt out I think will come back because they realise that they’re falling behind.”

Mr Ryan urged countries to keep their eye on the prize as talks at the summit broach the divisive issue of raising money to pay for climate action.

Rich nations currently provide $100 billion a year to help protect poor countries from the ravages of climate change and support their building of renewable energy projects but the figure is far below the $1 trillion a year needed.

“It’s going to be very difficult. Discussing money always is but the Higher Ambition Coalition sets the path and we need to follow that in the next ten days,” he said

He would not put a figure on the amount of money that would be acceptable as a new annual goal, saying that would come at the end of the talks.

He said reform of the global financial system was just as important as poor countries were paying multiples of the interest rates charged to richer countries when for loans for climate related projects.

“It needs to significantly increase, there’s no two ways about it,” he said of the new financial goal.

“But that’s the capstone, the last bit that goes in when you get all the other stones in place.”