Almost 120 countries came together in Dubai last year at the Cop28 climate talks to pledge one of the most ambitious green energy targets in the history of the UN climate talks.

The plan put forward was to triple the world’s renewable energy and double its energy efficiency by the end of the decade in an attempt to cut the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

It was an “ambitious yet achievable goal”, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which could play a pivotal role in cutting the world’s emissions to keep global heating in check.

But in a year, the world’s progress has struggled to keep up with the pace required to meet these goals.

Government renewable energy targets ‘unchanged’

The world’s renewable energy capacity was about 3.4 terawatts in 2022 – or 45 times the size of Great Britain’s total power system – but to meet the Cop28 targets countries would need to reach just over 11TW by 2030.

The global energy thinktank Ember said in a January report that a tripling of renewables was “entirely achievable”. But in its most recent report it found that national targets by governments were “almost unchanged” and still added up to just over a doubling of the global renewables capacity by 2030.

Of the more than 130 countries that signed up to the pledge, only eight had updated their renewable targets by October, according to Ember, resulting in only a modest increase in overall renewable energy targets globally.

To date, the global industry is on track to reach 7.2TW by the end of the decade, according to Ember’s analysis of targets for 96 countries and the EU as a bloc. This is a 2.1-times increase from 2023, which would still leave a shortfall of 3.7TW.

The analysis has been confirmed by the International Renewable Energy Association (Irena), which is responsible for providing the official progress report of the UAE Consensus energy goals set at Cop28.

Francesco La Camera, Irena’s director general, said the organisation was raising the alarm on the “significant gaps” that stand in the way of reaching the Cop28 goals. The new goals set by countries at Cop29 “must mark a turning point and bring the world back on track”, he said.

The good news is that although government targets fall short of the Cop28 goals, the growth of the renewable energy industry may be ready to surpass the limited ambition of global governments.

The IEA believes the world’s renewable energy capacity is on course to outpace the 2030 goals set by governments to roughly equal the power systems in China, the EU, India and the US combined.

The global energy watchdog’s influential annual renewables report identified solar power as central to the world’s looming renewables surge, and it could account for 80% of all new renewable power added globally by the end of this decade. This is due to declining costs and support from global governments, and China in particular. The rate of growth in the global wind power industry is expected to double between 2024 and 2030 compared with the previous six years, it said.

This boom in renewable energy beyond the targets set by governments puts the Cop28 goal within reach – but still not on track to be achieved. The IEA has said global leaders need to recognise the “critical importance of building power grids” to speed up the connection of at least 1.6TW of renewable capacity which is in advanced stages of development and waiting for a grid connection.

Under the IEA’s more optimistic view of global energy, renewables will grow 2.7-times greater by 2030, narrowly short of the commitment made by world leaders to triple renewables by the end of the decade to cut the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Energy efficiency at half the rate of the last decade

While the world’s renewable energy target is almost within reach, its energy efficiency target appears to be slipping away despite its crucial role in cutting the reliance on fossil fuels.

Under the goal of doubling energy efficiency, the annual energy intensity improvement rate must increase from 2% in 2022 to 4% between 2023 and 2030. This will require faster progress in making homes, businesses and factories more energy efficient and the electrification of multiple sectors, including transport, building and industry.

But in the year since countries agreed to double energy efficiency there has been only a weak improvement of about 1% in 2024, according to an IEA report published before Cop29. This is the same rate recorded for 2023, and about half of the average rate over the 2010-19 period, it noted.

Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, earlier this month described energy efficiency as “a key pillar of secure, affordable and inclusive energy transitions”.

Being more efficient in how homes and businesses use energy could deliver over 70% of the projected decline in oil demand and 50% of the reduction in gas demand by 2030 in the IEA’s forecasts.

“The IEA is working closer than ever with governments around the world to ensure that it remains a top policy priority. Fortunately, the policies and technologies to accelerate efficiency progress are readily available today, and many governments are taking important steps forward,” Birol said.

The IEA points to the EU’s revised regulations to achieve a zero-emission building stock by 2050 as one key example of the progress required. China’s overhauled appliance standards and tougher national targets for efficiency are another. In the US, tighter fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles will play a role too, it said.

Nevertheless, to align with global targets, new policies need to arrive more quickly around the world, and many existing ones need to be tightened, according to the report. “What we hope to see now is faster and stronger policy responses across the globe,” Birol said.

There is just one local authority inspector for every 878 farms in England, Scotland and Wales, according to a report, which says that the current welfare system is continuing to fail animals.

Researchers for the Animal Law Foundation found that only 2.5% of the more than 300,000 UK farms were inspected at least once in 2022 and 2023, a marginal decrease from 2018-21 when Covid-19 might be expected to have affected inspection rates.

When inspections did take place, 22% of farms were found not to meet animal welfare law standards but only 1% of non-compliances were prosecuted, a slight increase from 2018-21.

Edie Bowles, solicitor and executive director of the Animal Law Foundation, said: “Our data shows that the current system is failing animals. Animals continue to be mistreated by those who have a legal responsibility to take care of them and rather than be held accountable for their actions, apparent complacency and disregard for those legal protections stops this from happening on a system-wide basis.

“It is vital that the protections available to animals mean something in practice. Asking for laws to matter is not a big ask, it is simply the fulfilment of promises already made to the public when parliament enacted those laws in the first place.”

Local authorities are the main enforcement bodies for farmed animal welfare in England, Scotland, and Wales, while in Northern Ireland enforcement falls on the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera). As of 29 March 2024, there was a ratio of one inspector for every 62 farms a year in Northern Ireland, according to the report.

In 2022, local authorities received 4,982 complaints relating to farmed animal welfare and launched 25 prosecutions, the researchers found. Last year, they received 4,778 complaints and began 36 prosecutions.

The Animal Law Foundation attributes the low rates of inspections and enforcement to several factors, including “the fragmented and opaque regulatory framework”, which it says makes it difficult to identify the public body responsible for monitoring and enforcement, and in turn to hold them to account.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Welsh and Scottish governments, and Daera have overall responsibility for farm animal welfare law and policy in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, respectively.

With the exception of Daera, they delegate day-to-day enforcement of the relevant laws to local authorities and executive agencies, such as the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), the Food Standards Agency, and Food Standards Scotland.

Cllr Heather Kidd, the chair of the Local Government Association’s safer and stronger communities board, said: “Councils that carry out welfare related activities on farms do not receive funding from central government for this work, but carefully juggle priorities and resources to ensure the welfare of farmed animal can be protected.”

The APHA and Daera both said they take their responsibilities in relation to animal welfare very seriously and took appropriate enforcement action, which does not always involve prosecution.

The Cosla, for Scotland’s local authorities, was also approached for comment.

Earth’s surface temperature is heating up

“The era of global boiling has arrived” is what the UN chief, António Guterres, presciently declared last year. In 2024, he has continued to be proven right; a report by the EU’s space programme has found it is “virtually certain” that 2024 will be the hottest year on record. The scientists found global temperatures for the past 12 months were 1.62C greater than the 1850-1900 average, when humanity started to burn vast volumes of coal, oil and gas. The chart below shows just how quickly global surface temperatures have climbed, and this year is on track to be the first to hit 1.5C above preindustrial temperatures.

… which we experienced as extreme heat

And for some, it felt even hotter. Southern Europe is facing more and more heat stress days, defined as days that feel hotter than 32C, as the chart below shows. This data is from a report by Copernicus, which found that large parts of the area had two full months with “strong heat stress”, reaching 60 days in total over the season. A few areas in Greece and western Turkey experienced “strong heat stress” on every day of the summer, and about two months of “very strong heat stress”. Though some have the luxury of air conditioning to escape the rocketing temperatures, our reporting this year found groups including migrant workers and prisoners faced stifling, dangerous heat with no respite.

The oceans are heating, too

Last year’s marine heatwaves shocked scientists, as waters warmed to previously unthinkable levels. And it appears this was not an anomaly: in the first half of 2024, ocean surface heat levels soared above the heights they reached the previous year.

… which we experienced as extreme rainfall

Warmer waters have a higher rate of evaporation, which supercharges rain clouds and intensifies rainfall. It makes the devastating hurricanes such as those seen in the US this year far more likely. The chart below, based on Lancet data, shows that 61% of all global land during the period of 1994-2023 had an increase in extreme rainfall compared with the period between 1961 and 1990.

… and drought

While some parts of the world faced extremely heavy rain, others that rely on thriving rivers had their waterways dry up. The Amazon in particular suffered this year, with drought putting inhabitants at risk. The chart below shows almost half of global land area was affected by drought for at least one month this year, and it also displays how drought is increasing as the planet heats.

We continue to emit planet-heating greenhouse gases

We’ve known about the problems coming our way for decades, yet humanity continues to burn fossil fuels, causing gases such as carbon dioxide and methane to build up in the atmosphere and boil the planet. This chart shows how the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is building; the concentration of CO2 reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, which is 51% greater than before the industrial revolution. Methane concentrations hit 1,934 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 165% from preindustrial levels, and nitrous oxide hit 336.9 ppb, a rise of 25%.

There is no sign of us stopping

Despite countries having signed up to the Paris Agreement – pledging to reach “net zero” in coming decades, which would mean not emitting more carbon than is absorbed into the land and sea – there is no sign of this happening. This year is on track to set another new record for global carbon emissions. Data indicates planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024. Emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature rise target.

Sea levels are rising as ice shrinks

The heating planet is causing ice to melt, and in turn this water goes into the sea, causing levels to rise. Not only that, but it causes a vicious circle. As heating melts the sea ice, it reveals darker water that absorbs more of the sun’s heat, causing more heating. Scientists think the changes in the Arctic may be responsible for worsened heatwaves and floods in Eurasia and North America. Sea levels are inexorably rising as ice on land melts and hotter oceans expand. Sea levels are slow to respond to global heating, so even if the temperature rise is restricted to 2C above preindustrial levels, one in five people in the world will eventually experience their cities being submerged, from New York to London to Shanghai.

But we are building more renewables

A glimmer of hope is that the green economy is finally taking off, with record renewables being built around the world. The Renewable Capacity Statistics 2024 report released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) shows that 2023 set a new record in renewables deployment in the power sector by reaching a total capacity of 3,870GW globally. Countries such as China are driving this trend, producing dizzying amounts of renewable energy, but developing nations are lagging behind despite massive economic and development needs. While China’s capacity increased by 63%,and Asia’s as a whole by 69%, Africa’s increased by only 4.6%.

… and driving more electric cars

These charts show how electric cars are taking off across the globe, though their popularity is not evenly distributed. In 2023, just under 60% of new electric car registrations were in China, just under 25% in Europe, and 10% in the US – together making up nearly 95% of global electric car sales combined.

Linda McMahon, co-chair of Donald Trump’s transition team, has been named as the president-elect’s pick for education secretary in his upcoming administration.

In a statement, Trump extolled the “incredible” job McMahon has been doing as transition team co-chair and said: “As Secretary of Education, Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families. … We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

The nomination comes after McMahon’s co-chair on the transition team and billionaire founder of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, was named as Trump’s pick for commerce secretary.

McMahon was made transition team chair in August, after having donated a whopping $814,600 to Trump’s campaign as of July. She previously served in Trump’s cabinet in his first administration as the administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019.

Since 2021, McMahon has served as Washington DC-based thinktank America First Policy Institute’s board chairperson and chair of its Center for the American Worker.

A former Senate candidate in Connecticut, McMahon is also the chair and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald and a former executive of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which she co-founded with her husband, Vince McMahon.

In October, McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE. The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr. The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it.

An attorney for the McMahons told USA Today Sports that the allegations are “false claims” stemming from reporting that the couple deems “absurd, defamatory and utterly meritless”.

A Ukrainian strike using American-made missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia using American-made weaponry, has prompted renewed fears of reprisal through “hybrid warfare” – a chaotic tool of conflict that muddies borders and broadens the scope of a frontline.

Over recent years, European nations have witnessed a spate of incidents – cyber-attacks, arson, incendiary devices, sabotage and even murder plots. The aim of such episodes, security officials believe, is to sow chaos, exacerbate social tensions among Ukraine’s allies and disrupt military supplies to Kyiv.

Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, has warned that Russia’s “intensifying campaign of hybrid attacks” highlights the way in which Moscow is quickly shifting the frontline from Ukraine “to the Baltic region, to western Europe and even to the high north”.

Such efforts to spread mayhem have taken many forms: even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow was linked to broad disinformation campaigns during the 2016 US election and the Brexit referendum, meant to sow discord and confusion among the electorate through social media.

But the strategy can also narrow to a tighter focus: Estonia fended off a hacking campaign by Russia in 2022, the same year Norwegian police arrested several Russian nationals equipped with drones and cameras who were located near oil and gas infrastructure.

“What is new about attacks seen in recent years is their speed, scale and intensity, facilitated by rapid technological change and global interconnectivity,” Nato said in June. “Counter-hybrid support teams” would provide assistance, but it was primarily up to individual countries to protect themselves.

On Tuesday, Matthew Miller, US state department spokesperson, said Washington was “incredibly concerned” about the threat of hybrid warfare and that American diplomats were in close contact with European allies.

Recent incidents have included several conspiracies that could apparently have led to murder or even mass casualties. Over the summer, US and German intelligence reportedly foiled a Russian plot to assassinate European defense industry executives, including the CEO of the leading German arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall.

Last month, British counter-terror police revealed that they had been investigating a suspected Russian sabotage plot involving incendiary devices hidden on a plane to the UK that may also have been a dry run for a similar attack on the US and Canada.

But some of the plots appear to have been crude and amateurish: French intelligence officials believe that a group of Moldovans were recruited to carry out a low-budget antisemitic graffiti campaign using star of David stencils across Paris, in an attempt to amplify societal divisions against the backdrop of the Israel-Gaza war.

And the challenge in fending off hybrid attacks lies in the vast array of possible targets – which could include military bases, transport and telecoms infrastructure – and the plausible deniability of the attacks.

In January, a group called the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn infiltrated a water tower in Texas, releasing tens of thousands of litres of water before state officials halted the attack.

“Disabling cyber-attacks are striking water and waste-water systems throughout the United States,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Michael Regan, the EPA administrator, wrote in a letter to state governors earlier this year. “These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water, as well as impose significant costs on affected communities.”

In many cases, the most vulnerable infrastructure is also poorly protected. A recent cyber-attack on a Canadian facility that treats the wastewater of 1.2 million people avoided catastrophe because the hackers were only able to breach “a limited component of the digital systems”. But the incident exposed the deep weakness of water-treatment facilities across the country.

Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, warned in October that Russian GRU military intelligence was engaged in a campaign to “generate mayhem on British and European streets” using proxies that “further reduces the professionalism of their operations”.

Donald Trump has nominated Mehmet Oz, best known globally as Dr Oz, to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator.

“Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget,” wrote Trump in his announcement of Oz’s nomination.

“Dr Oz will be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country. He will also cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.”

Trump emphasized that he plans to have Oz work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health and human services secretary, “to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake”.

Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist who ran as an independent in the 2024 presidential race and adopted a slogan of “make America healthy again”, an offshoot of Trump’s “make America great again”.

The combination of Kennedy and Oz in leading health policy roles will receive significant pushback from health organizations. Oz’s role does not require Senate confirmation, while Kennedy’s does.

Oz previously praised Kennedy’s appointment, saying: “Americans need better research on healthy lifestyle choices from unbiased scientists, and @RobertKennedyJr can help as HHS secretary.” Oz’s most recent post on X promotes a multivitamin and supplement store.

The move comes after Oz ran for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022, losing to John Fetterman but securing Trump’s endorsement.

Fetterman said of Oz’s nomination: “Well, I’ve been very, very clear if Dr Oz agrees to protect and preserve Medicaid and Medicare, I’m absolutely going to vote for the dude,” according to news outlet Notus.

Before his Senate run, Oz was the eponymous host of the Dr Oz Show and a frequent guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show, where he often provided medical advice. He is a cardiothoracic surgeon who co-founded a cardiac care center earlier in his career and taught at Columbia University. Like Trump, he gained national attention through reality television.

His advice has proven so controversial that a 2014 British Medical Journal study declared half of it “baseless or wrong”. A year later, in 2015, a sizable group of doctors wrote to Columbia’s dean of medicine, criticizing the school’s partnership with him and calling it “unacceptable”.

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Oz promoted malaria drugs including hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus in an appearance on Fox News, calling the discredited treatments a “gamechanger”. His comments on the drug captured Trump’s attention, CNN reported at the time.

Is Elon Musk the dinner party guest from hell? It sure seems that way. Not only is the man desperate for people to laugh at his crass jokes, he reportedly has a weird habit of trying to donate his sperm at every opportunity – including, according to an October New York Times report, an incident where he offered some spermatozoa, as casually as you might pass the salt, to a married couple “he had met socially only a handful of times” during a Silicon Valley dinner party.

Musk has denied offering sperm to strangers over supper. But it would be in keeping with his creepy breeding fetish: Musk is desperate for people in developed countries to have more children and has himself fathered at least 12 children with three women. (One of the children has since sadly died.) He’s become one of the most famous faces of a growing pro-natalist movement – one with an unsettling overlap with eugenics and deeply misogynistic ideas.

Musk is obviously entitled to his obsessions. The problem is, now that he’s Donald Trump’s BFF, he actually has the opportunity to embed his obsessions into policy. While much has been said about Musk’s role in the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, it seems likely that the billionaire wants influence over more than just budgets. He seems to want a say in Americans’ sex lives as well. On Sunday, Musk replied to a tweet about declining birthrates by tweeting: “Instead of teaching fear of pregnancy, we should teach fear of childlessness.”

What sort of lessons would that entail? Teaching people that while a woman dies every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth – and maternal mortality rates are increasing in the US – it’s childlessness you should be afraid of? It’s easy for Musk, who will never have to carry any of the children he’s so keen on having, to be blase about pregnancy risks: he can outsource them all. Still, you’d think he might be more sensitive to the issue considering the musician Grimes, with whom he shares three children, almost died during her pregnancy with son X Æ A-12. That led Grimes and Musk to use a surrogate for their next child.

What else would Musk tell young people to instil a fear of childlessness? That, should they choose not to procreate, they’ll be saddled with more disposable income than they might otherwise have? And they won’t have to fret about the fact the US is the only industrialised country without a national paid parental leave policy? Or should he really put the fear of God in them and explain that they’ll miss out on being woken up at 5am and having to listen to the Frozen soundtrack for the millionth time? Look, I love my child (I’ve even grown to love the Frozen soundtrack), but parenthood can be difficult and it’s not for everyone. There are plenty of ways to live a fulfilling life that don’t involve raising a mini-me.

I’ll tell you one lesson that I wish Musk would learn: being a sperm donor is very different from being a parent. While Musk has been parading various children of his through Mar-a-Lago for photo opportunities recently, he seems to leave most of the hard work of parenting to others. I mean, come on, he has six children under the age of six, runs a bunch of major companies and spends all his time hobnobbing with politicians: it’s logistically impossible for him to be an involved father to all his children. He’s also estranged from his transgender daughter Vivian Wilson, and has publicly declared – on at least two occasions – that she is “dead – killed by the woke mind virus”.

But Musk’s parenting skills aren’t the real issue here. The real issue is that the billionaire, and his breeding obsession, are part of an incoming administration that wants to roll back reproductive rights and usher in a world where women are forced to give birth. It would be nice to be able to ignore every stupid thing that Musk tweets, but we don’t have that luxury any more. He seems intent on worming his way into our wombs.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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Honking tractors carrying young farmers and a sea of people clad in tweed and wellies signalled the countryside had come to the capital on Tuesday to demand the scrapping of Labour’s budget changes to inheritance tax on agricultural businesses.

It would have taken more than plummeting temperatures and sleet to put off the thousands of food producers, many used to working in all conditions, from travelling from across the UK to Westminster.

Many had jumped on buses which forced their way through snow, while others had travelled the previous night and were quietly gossiping about Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter turned farming celebrity, joining them for dinner.

The volume of attenders was unexpected, given the rarity of farmers taking a day off, let alone in such numbers. The Metropolitan police estimated there were 13,000 participants at the peak of the rally, leading them to prevent the crowd from marching down Whitehall for safety reasons.

Many farmers came with donations for the City Harvest food bank. Farmer Andrew Ward, one of the organisers of the rally, said it amounted to “tonnes and tonnes of food”.

Limited to a procession around Parliament Square, many protesters clutched signs criticising “Farmer harmer Starmer” as they waited to hear from politicians and Clarkson.

Despite the mainly good-spirited nature of the rally, there was gloom in the air as farmers discussed their deaths or those of their parents. Many feared that could be followed by the demise of their family farm.

“It’s a way of life,” said Penny Fortescue, 69, a sheep and arable farmer in Cambridgeshire. “We put up with the hassle every day because it’s our way of life, because we care about providing food. We wouldn’t do it otherwise, there isn’t any money in it really.”

Deluged by recent heavy rain, Fortescue now fears her way of life cannot be passed down to her daughter and son-in-law, if an inheritance tax bill eats up all their profits.

“I have cancer, my partner has cancer. I don’t know how long we are going to live. And if we try to hand the farm over within seven years, we can’t afford to live because it’s our pension,” she said. “We aren’t allowed to take money out of the business once it’s been handed over – so what are we supposed to do?”

Matt Swales, her son-in-law, said: “We are going to have to sell a portion of our land to pay the inheritance tax. That’s the reality of it.”

The message from the speakers was one of unity, amid a disagreement over whether the Treasury’s figures were accurate and worries that even medium-sized farms are at risk.

Spotting a political opportunity, the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, brought her shadow environment, food and rural affairs team on stage to say they were the people who would “fight” for farmers. She called on those assembled to vote for her at the next election to reverse the tax changes. “Farming is not just a business,” she said. “It’s a way of life.”

The vast bulk of those in attendance were farmers, their families and supporters, but conspiracy theorists and far-right activists were present on the fringes. A contingent of activists from the Homeland party, a far-right group, appeared with a banner saying “Our Homeland needs Farmers” and posed for photos at the Cenotaph.

Many farmers attending the rally had spent some of their morning at the mass lobby event arranged by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), and had booked meetings with their local MPs, many of whom are newly elected Labour parliamentarians.

Gary Yeomans, who farms goats near Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, met Catherine Fookes, the MP for Monmouthshire, along with eight other local farmers.

“She was sympathetic. Everyone had their say and kept their cool,” Yeomans said. “She said she wasn’t prepared to vote against the government, but said a group of 40 rural Labour MPs had got together.”

Others were left disappointed after they missed meeting with their MPs, either due to a large queue to get into the building where they have offices, or because their representative was not available.

Chris Robinson, a beef and sheep farmer from the Derbyshire dales, waited in vain for over an hour and a half to get into Portcullis House to meet his MP.

Meanwhile, Tom Rees from the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, was frustrated to have been told in advance that his MP, Labour’s Kanishka Narayan, was away from Westminster on the day.

“I’m angry,” Rees said, adding that the newly elected Narayan is the parliamentary private secretary to the environment secretary, Steve Reed. “He needed to front up to this.”

China and India should no longer be treated as developing countries in the same way as some of the poorest African nations are, according to a growing number of poor country delegates at the Cop29 UN climate talks.

China should take on some additional responsibility for providing financial help to the poorest and most vulnerable, several delegates told the Guardian. India should not be eligible for receiving financial help as it has no trouble attracting investment, some said.

Balarabe Abbas Lawal, Nigeria’s environment minister, said: “China and India cannot be classified in the same category as Nigeria and other African countries. I think they are developing but they are in a faster phase than states like Nigeria.

“They should also commit in trying to support us. They should also come and make some contribution [to climate finance for poorer countries].”

China and India are regarded as developing countries at the Cop29 climate talks, using classifications that date back to 1992 when the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) was signed. That means they have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries, and technically are eligible to receive climate aid, though China chooses not to do so.

“Those that actually deserve this support are African countries, poor Asian countries and small island states that are facing devastating climate change issues,” Lawal said.

His views were echoed by two other representatives from developing countries at the talks. An African negotiator said: “China, India, South Africa, Egypt: those countries should not be on the list of developing countries. In the framework, they have conditions to access funds, much more than us. They should be contributing.”

Susana Muhamad, the environment minister of Colombia, said: “The developed and developing country categories are obsolete. These categories should be changed. The problem is that the Paris agreement and the UNFCCC are negotiated on these categories.”

Nearly 200 governments are gathered in Azerbaijan for the second week of fortnight-long climate talks that are focused on how to give poor countries access to the $1tn a year they need to cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather.

Progress has been slow as developed nations have been reluctant to put forward the cash needed, and rows have erupted over the global commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

China is the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter and second biggest economy but is classed alongside some of the poorest countries in the world at the UN talks, and carries no obligation to provide financial help to the developing world.

India is now the world’s fifth largest economy by some measures but is still entitled to receive climate finance.

China and India have long been seen as leaders of the developing world at the annual climate summits, called conferences of the parties (Cops) under the UNFCCC, the parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement.

This year, however, questions over which countries are still developing have been thrown into sharp focus by the goal of this year’s talks, which is to forge a “new collective quantified goal” on climate finance.

Li Shuo, the director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a thinktank, said that for any countries to try to push China into contributing to climate finance on the same basis as developed countries would be counterproductive. “That would risk harming trust, and reinforcing divisions,” he said. “What we need is unity, and unity is starting to emerge at these talks.”

Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a senior fellow at India’s Council on Energy Environment and Water, another thinktank, rejected the suggestion that India could contribute to climate finance. “Our per-capita income is $2,800 a year; in the US, it’s $35,000. No one should be saying India should be paying climate finance – we should be receiving.”

If India did not receive such assistance, he said, speeding up the transition to a green economy would be impossible. “An acceleration without climate finance is unthinkable for India,” he said. “India will also defend the principle of responsibility [for cutting emissions and providing climate finance] based on historic emissions.”

However, China’s historic emissions are now greater than those of the EU, according to research from Carbon Brief.

According to the World Resources Institute, China provided nearly $4.5bn a year in climate finance to poorer countries from 2013 to 2022. But much of this money appears to come with strings attached. Developing countries spent nearly $300bn in 2022 just on servicing their debts to China.

Rich countries are concerned that China releases too little information on its financing activities to allow for a clear view. “It’s a black box,” said Germany’s lead negotiator, Jochen Flasbarth.

Avinash Persaud, a former economic adviser to Barbados’s prime minister, Mia Mottley, and now a special adviser to the president of the Inter American Development Bank, pointed out that China and India were also indirectly contributors to climate finance through their shareholdings in regional multilateral development banks.

He said: “Around half of developed countries’ contributions to the current $100bn target come from their shareholdings in multilateral development banks, which currently spend around $75bn on climate to developing countries. China and, to a smaller extent, India are also significant shareholders and will want their share of that international climate finance to be considered as well.”