When COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev stepped to the podium at the closing meeting of the Baku climate summit on Sunday morning, hoping to clinch a hard-fought agreement on global climate finance, he carried with him two speeches. Expectations for a deal were depressed by worries of a looming U.S. withdrawal from global climate cooperation, geopolitical turmoil, and a rise of isolationist politics that had shunted climate change off much of the world’s top priorities list. An activist holds a globe balloon during a protest at the COP29 United Nations climate change conference, in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 21. That made getting a bigger climate finance number hard, observers to the talks said. “Even maintaining climate finance at current levels in the current political environment is a huge fight,” said Joe Thwaites, senior advocate on international climate finance at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

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Persons: Mukhtar Babayev, —, Babayev, Maxim Shemetov, ”, Eliot Whittington, Jiwoh Abdulai, Donald Trump, “, Dion George, Trump, Joe Thwaites, ” Tina Stege, Chandni Raina, Oscar Sorria Organizations: Reuters, COP29, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Sierra Leone Environment, Trump, United, African Environment, Natural Resources Defense Council, Marshall, Babayev, COP30, Initiative Locations: Baku, Azerbaijan, U.S, Nations, Brazil, Belem —, Sierra Leone, United States, Paris, Ukraine, Belem