Close to 200 countries are scheduled to negotiate a new climate finance target for the Global South at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November.
Dubbed the “Finance COP,” next month’s conference is expected to see focused discussions on a New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, or NCQG. It defines a new target for monetary support from historic emitters – mostly countries in the Global North – to address climate needs in poorer countries.
Surging climate needs
In 2009, countries including the United States and the European Union agreed to contribute $100 billion collectively each year by 2020, but an OECD report showed that they struggled to meet that goal over the years. Worse still, much of the climate finance came in the form of loans, which critics say have piled more pressure on developing countries already drowning in debt.
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The new negotiations come after a spate of extreme weather conditions intensified by human-caused climate change. July, for instance, witnessed the three hottest days ever recorded. Scientists said in an article on BioScience that as fossil fuel emissions reached an all-time high, the Earth is on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius warming by 2100, far above the 1.5 degrees Celsius target established in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
FILE – A municipal worker cools off next to a city fountain in Bucharest, Romania, July 11, 2024, as temperatures soared.
To combat the burgeoning crisis, developing countries will now need more than $100 billion a year, with estimates ranging up to $6 trillion by 2030. Even that does not sufficiently cover measures to adapt to already inevitable climate change, according to a 2021 U.N. report.
Conference host Azerbaijan in July launched the Climate Finance Action Fund with an initial goal of raising $1 billion from fossil-fuel producing countries and companies.
Nations are likely to reach a compromise at the lower end of a NCQG goal, according to Irene Monasterolo, professor of climate finance at the Utrecht University.
“These results of the negotiations may not be able to address the current need for climate finance in low-income countries, which are massively affected already now by climate risk,” Monasterolo told VOA. “The focus so far has been mostly on mitigation [reducing emissions] projects and measures, while adaptation investments are lagging behind.”
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Adaptation finance
While adaptation finance has gone up over the years, mitigation still accounts for the majority of current climate finance, the OECD report revealed. Monasterolo said the scale of adaptation finance ultimately depends on mitigation efforts.
“We don’t see bold plans for mitigation that would be needed to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, including the Global North. We have instead some issues of policy reversal and some major economies and polluting countries like the U.S. stepping back and in Europe,” she added.
“The science is clear. To limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, we need to drop production, extraction, use of fossil fuels and related carbon activities and focus on renewables, and low-carbon activities should go up. But that’s not happening. In the latest geopolitical crisis, we increased our dependency on fossil fuels.”
The wars in the Middle East and Russia have put energy security at risk, according to the International Energy Agency. While a record high level of clean energy came online last year, emissions from the energy sector also broke records.
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Another reason for low adaptation finance, Monasterolo said, is the complexity of assessing climate risks. “We need to work on how to integrate forward-looking climate risk into investors and financial authorities’ models. Market-based approaches based on past data are a poor proxy of what could happen in the near future with ongoing climate change.”
Loss and damage fund
At COP28 in Dubai last year, countries agreed to set up a voluntary fund for historic emitters to pay for the damage caused by climate disasters in vulnerable developing countries. Western countries also called for large emitters like China to contribute. Negotiators are expected to continue the discussion at COP29.
FILE – In a display, water flows onto a sign for Energy Transition Changemakers at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 5, 2023.
For now, it remains unclear whether the loss and damage fund will be included in the new NCQG, according to Karoliina Hurri, researcher at the Center on Climate Politics and Security at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The fund “is defined as voluntary, so it’s not based on the same categorization of developed and developing countries. … Some developed countries argue that the loss and damage fund is not part of the mandate and should be negotiated separately from this.”
Looming NDCs
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As countries are slated to declare new and more ambitious national green goals by February 2025, COP29 is expected to be a big push.
“I am afraid we won’t see ambitious enough NDCs [national determined contributions], but I think this is really important at this COP, especially the discussion of how to ensure the [recommended] outcomes of last year’s Global Stocktake, and the discussion about transitioning away from fossil fuels,” Hurri explained.
Hurri said many countries said they would lead by example to announce goals aligned with the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming goal. “But at the same time, nations can decide for themselves what the alignment means. This clarifies how difficult it is to reach the NDC.”
At COP28, countries signed a historic deal to start transitioning away from polluting fossil fuels. Hurri said, however, it remains to be seen how the phases translate into actions. “Do we see, for example, schedules of roadmaps on how this process is planned on the national level?”
Pivotal US election
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The U.S. election results could have a large impact on the implementation of potential negotiation results, including cooperation measures with the world’s biggest emitting nation, China, according to Hurri.
“I have not seen very detailed climate policy arguments from either of the candidates, although we know that they have very different views on climate change. … We know what happened last time during President [Donald] Trump’s term that the U.S. decreased financial contribution for climate,” she said.
COP29 will also mark the first cooperation talks between the new envoys from the United States and China — John Podesta and Liu Zhenmin. They had a working group meeting in Beijing in early September, in which they agreed to host a summit on methane and non-carbon greenhouse gases during the climate conference.
“While the U.S. election might not influence the cooperation at this year’s COP, the election outcome can have an influence on the credibility of their cooperation in the long term on a high level,” Hurri said.
While you certainly do not have to wait for the beginning of the new year to overhaul your financial habits, the calendar’s fresh start can offer a natural opportunity to reassess. But all too often, when we identify an area of our life that is not quite going as planned, there is a temptation to tear it all down and start from scratch, in the form of a broad-ranging — and overwhelming — resolution.
Sometimes, though, making small tweaks to existing habits, or introducing some fresh ones, is all it takes to course correct, allowing one good financial decision to snowball into the next. Sounds more manageable, right? Read on for some ideas to get started.
1. Dial up your retirement contributions
Increasing the amount you are diverting to retirement savings is easy enough to do, and it can make a sizable impact over time. As an illustration, a “worker who raises contributions by just 1% in their mid-20s — starting at a 5% rate and bumping up to 8% over three years — could accumulate about $84,000 more by retirement than someone who never increases their rate,” said Investopedia, citing analysis by J.P. Morgan.
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While on first glance, diverting more of your funds may seem like a stretch for your budget, “often, you can increase your retirement contributions without making a meaningful difference to your current lifestyle,” especially if the increments are smaller, such as an increase of 1%, said Yahoo Finance.
2. Start tracking your spending
This is another small adjustment that can result in major shifts to your financial life, both in terms of your understanding of where your money is going and in how much you spend. Once you start paying closer attention to your expenditures, you might realize that “some impulse purchases that you shrug off on a regular basis might be having a bigger impact on your bottom line than you think,” said Citizen’s Bank. This can also provide an opportunity to evaluate whether your spending is actually aligned with your larger goals (more on that next).
There are a variety of apps you can use to make this tracking super simple, or you can always make a simple spreadsheet to update regularly.
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3. Set goals and intentionally work toward them
When it comes to saving, budgeting or investing, it can be hard to get motivated if you do not know what you are getting motivated for. Defining your financial goals, both for the short- and long-term, can provide you with some much-needed clarity, and also ensure you start taking the actions necessary to actually achieve those goals.
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What shape these goals take is entirely up to you. For instance, “one person’s goals might be to pay off their student loans and save for a down payment on a house,” while “another might want to sock away enough cash in an online bank account to start their own business down the road,” said SoFi. It is really all about making your money work for you, instead of the other way around.
Former Ghana Finance Minister Kenneth Ofori-Atta was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on January 6 in Washington, DC, where he remains in custody at the Caroline Detention Facility in the state of Virginia. His detention follows Ghana’s December 10 formal extradition request to the US Department of Justice for Ofori-Atta, who faces 78 counts of corruption and corruption-related offenses.
ICE agents arrested Ofori-Atta around 11:00 AM at a luxury apartment complex in Washington, DC. According to the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, Ofori-Atta remains “in ICE custody” as of January 11, 2026. Ghana’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice Dr. Dominic Ayine confirmed that Ofori-Atta is represented by private legal counsel. His lawyer, Frank Davies, stated that Ofori-Atta traveled to the United States for medical treatment and that a legal challenge to his custody has been filed in court. According to a January 10, 2026 press release signed by Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States Victor Emmanuel Smith, Ofori-Atta has declined consular assistance from the Ghana Embassy.
The US State Department revoked Ofori-Atta’s visa in 2025, according to Ghana’s Attorney General Dominic Ayine. The Attorney General further emphasized that it was the visa revocation—rather than a visa overstay or expiration—that triggered US federal enforcement action. The US Department of Justice is currently reviewing Ghana’s extradition request under the “dual criminality” doctrine, which requires confirmation that the alleged financial crimes in Ghana would also be prosecutable in the United States.
Kenneth Ofori-Atta served as Ghana’s Finance Minister under former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. He faces charges related to alleged corruption in multiple government contracts, including a GHS 125 million contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML), the $400 million National Cathedral Project, ambulance procurement for the Ministry of Health, and electricity company contracts. Ghana’s Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) formally charged Ofori-Atta on November 18, 2025. The OSP seeks to recover misappropriated public funds through the government’s Operation Recover All Loots (ORAL) initiative launched after the National Democratic Congress won the 2024 presidential election.
The extradition request follows a months-long effort by Ghanaian authorities to secure Ofori-Atta’s return. The OSP requested Ofori-Atta appear for questioning on February 10, 2025 via a letter dated January 24, 2025. His solicitors responded January 31, stating he had left Ghana in early January for medical treatment in the United States and was “out of the jurisdiction indefinitely for medical examinations.” The solicitors requested rescheduling and offered to provide information to aid investigations.
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On February 10, the OSP directed Ofori-Atta to provide a reasonable return date, warning that failure to comply would compel the OSP to “take all legal steps to secure his return to the jurisdiction.” His solicitors responded the same day, stating a doctor recommended he remain in the US for possible surgical intervention. The following day, February 11, his solicitors inquired whether the OSP conducted a search of Ofori-Atta’s premises, which the OSP denied.
During a February 2025 press conference, the OSP declared Ofori-Atta a fugitive, stating it was unconvinced by the medical report and disagreed that returning to Ghana would endanger his life. The OSP characterized his extended stay as “an attempt to avoid return to the jurisdiction.” By June 2025, Ghana secured a judicial arrest warrant and successfully placed Ofori-Atta on Interpol’s Red Notice database, though the notice was temporarily removed from public visibility following a challenge by the accused. The OSP transmitted a letter to the Attorney General on December 9 requesting formal extradition proceedings.
The charges against Ofori-Atta and seven other individuals include conspiracy to commit the criminal offense of directly or indirectly influencing the procurement process to obtain unfair advantage in contract awards, contrary to section 23(1) of the Criminal and Other Offenses Act, 1960 (Act 29) and section 92(2)(b) of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663) as amended by Act 914. The charges stem from investigations into alleged corruption and financial irregularities in the GHS 125 million contract between the Ghana Revenue Authority and Strategic Mobilisation Limited. The Special Prosecutor is seeking to recover the amount, describing it as unjust enrichment obtained through unlawful means.
Among the most prominent allegations against Ofori-Atta involves the National Cathedral Project. In November 2024, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice concluded an investigation into the project, which was initiated by former President Akufo-Addo with an estimated cost of $100 million from private funds. The cost surged to $400 million, with the investigation revealing that the contract awarded to Ribade Company Ltd was void ab initio for violating mandatory provisions of the Procurement Act. The investigation recommended that the Board of Public Procurement Authority cancel the contract and investigate the Board of Trustees. Ofori-Atta allegedly authorized the release of $58 million in state funds toward construction costs. The project remains an incomplete excavation site in central Accra, on land formerly occupied by government buildings and judges’ residences. Additional charges relate to alleged corruption in ambulance procurement for the Ministry of Health and the termination of a contract between the Electricity Company of Ghana and Beijing Xiao Cheng Technology.
The extradition proceedings will be governed by Ghana’s Extradition Act, 1960 (Act 22), which applies where an extradition agreement exists with the requesting state. Section 2 of the Act mandates declining extradition requests if the offense is of a political character, with a Magistrate responsible for determining whether charges meet this standard.
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Article 40 of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution requires Ghana to observe treaty obligations and settle international disputes peacefully. This aligns with Article 1 of the UN Charter, which requires states to maintain friendly relations based on principles of equality and respect for human rights. The principle of pacta sunt servanda, enshrined in Article 26 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), requires states to observe treaty obligations in good faith. Both Ghana and the United States are bound by their extradition agreement and are barred from invoking municipal law to avoid treaty obligations under Article 27 of the Vienna Convention, except in circumstances permitted under Article 46, which addresses capacity to conclude treaties and inconsistencies with normal practice and good faith.
The extradition request comes as Ghana and the United States maintain reciprocal cooperation on extradition matters. Ghana previously cooperated with US extradition requests, including the extradition of Ghanaian citizens to the United States for alleged crimes against US citizens. In one case, Abu Trica and other Ghanaian citizens were extradited to face charges related to an alleged $8 million romance scam targeting US citizens, demonstrating the mutual nature of bilateral treaty obligations.
The case against Ofori-Atta represents part of broader anti-corruption efforts in Ghana. Corruption has been a persistent challenge in the country since independence, with state officials diverting public resources to personal ventures. Ghana has implemented multiple measures to combat corruption, including Article 8(2) of the 1992 Constitution and Section 16 of the Citizenship Act, 2000 (Act 591), which restrict dual citizens from occupying certain key offices. The country has also created specialized institutions including the Office of the Special Prosecutor and the Economic and Organised Crimes Office. The 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections saw a change in political power, with the National Democratic Congress defeating the New Patriotic Party by approximately one million votes. The worst recorded corruption cases under Ghana’s fourth republic occurred during Ofori-Atta’s tenure as Finance Minister, prompting public demands for accountability that influenced the election outcome. The current NDC administration immediately established Operation Recover All Loots to recover misappropriated public funds.
Opinions expressed in JURIST Dispatches are solely those of our correspondents in the field and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST’s editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.
Saks Global to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy imminently, sources say
$1.75 billion financing led by Pentwater and Bracebridge
Financing allows Saks to repay vendors, restock inventory during reorganization
NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Beleaguered luxury retailer Saks Global is close to finalizing $1.75 billion in financing with creditors that would allow its iconic Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus stores to remain open, two people familiar with the negotiations said.
The department store conglomerate wants to reorganize its debt and operations in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which it could file “imminently”, the people said.
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The financing would provide an immediate cash infusion of $1 billion through a debtor-in-possession loan from an investor group led by Pentwater Capital Management in Naples, Florida, and Boston-based Bracebridge Capital, the people said.
The company’s banks would also provide an additional $250 million in financing through an asset-backed loan, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.
A DIP loan helps companies pay salaries, vendors and other ongoing expenses while a company goes through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, allowing it to continue operating while reorganizing its business. DIP financing gives investors priority repayment if the company isn’t successful and has to liquidate, so a bankruptcy judge will have to sign off on it.
Saks Global, which controls stores and brands that have helped shape America’s taste for high fashion over the last century, would have access to another $500 million of financing from the investor group once it successfully exits bankruptcy protection, the sources added.
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The negotiations are still fluid and the exact terms of the lending package could change, they cautioned. The financing plan would also need approval from a bankruptcy judge before it is finalized. The filing could come as soon as Tuesday, the people said.
The DIP finance package would allow Saks Global to repay its vendors and restock depleted inventory, one of the people said, while a Chapter 11 reorganization allows it to continue operating as it restructures its finances and renegotiates lease agreements and other contracts.
The so-called DIP loan could eventually be converted into equity or another type of asset, instead of repaid, if Saks successfully emerges from bankruptcy, one of the people said.
PJT Partners, which is advising Saks on its restructuring, declined to comment. Saks did not immediately return a request for comment.
A LUXURY DREAM THAT FAILED
Driven by the vision of real estate investor Richard Baker, Canada-based conglomerate Hudson’s Bay Co, which had owned Saks since 2013, bought rival Neiman Marcus in 2024 for $2.65 billion and spun off its U.S. luxury assets to create Saks Global. The plan was to more easily take on competitors like Bloomingdale’s (M.N), opens new tab and Nordstrom by bringing together two of America’s best-known department store chains.
Big names such as Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Salesforce (CRM.N), opens new tab backed the Saks Global deal by becoming equity investors.
While the marriage gave the newly formed luxury conglomerate more leverage to negotiate discounts with vendors, it also left it saddled with debt. Saks Global took on about $2.2 billion in fresh debt as part of the deal, targeting $600 million in annual cost savings, according to media reports citing the company’s investor call in October.
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But demand for luxury goods didn’t rebound as hoped for in 2025 and the servicing costs on that debt significantly ate into its cash flow, making it late in paying vendors and investors, according to interviews with former vendors, investors and analysts. Saks Global had to tap investors for another $600 million in June and missed a crucial bond payment last month.
Some of Saks’ bonds are trading at as little as a penny on the dollar. Its first lien bonds, which have the most protection in bankruptcy, are trading at 25 cents to 30 cents, one bond investor told Reuters.
The new cash injection should give Saks enough breathing room, and liquidity, to eventually recover, one investor said.
It wasn’t clear whether the restructuring plan will include additional changes to the company’s management team or its storied real estate holdings, which include its flagship Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City. The company abruptly replaced its chief executive – veteran retail executive Marc Metrick – earlier this month, elevating Baker to CEO.
Reporting by Dawn Kopecki in New York and Matt Tracy in Washington; Editing by Lisa Jucca, Deepa Babington and Lisa Shumaker
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