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BAKU, Azerbaijan — It was a rough ride at this year’s United Nation’s climate gathering known as COP29.

Climate negotiations are never easy, but throw money commitments into the game and it’s bound to get even more dicey.

The main question on the table has been: how much should rich countries, responsible for much of the world’s legacy fossil fuel emissions, pay poorer and vulnerable countries to fight climate change?

Negotiators from around the world went into overtime, wrapping up talks in the early hours of Sunday, local time, after two tense weeks marred by finger pointing and frustration. At times it seemed there was the chance of no deal.

Of course, a lot more happened on the sidelines during this time, both publicly and behind the scenes.

We bring you six key takeaways from Baku.

1.What’s the final financing deal?

COP29 negotiators agreed on a goal to deliver at least $300 billion per year by 2035 to poorer countries, with developed countries taking the lead and developing countries (read China) encouraged to contribute on a voluntary basis. The money would come from both public and private sources.

It’s three times more than the $100 billion-per-year goal countries first set 15 years ago, but far less than the $1.3 trillion per year that developing countries were asking for. The final text also includes language calling for a roadmap to gradually increase funding to $1.3 trillion per year. Check out Cipher’s primer on COP29 for more details on the financing needs.

Developing countries blasted the final $300 billion deal, with India’s lead negotiator calling it “a paltry sum.” Supporters, meanwhile, said a deal was better than no deal. Climate analysts said that while the money is not enough, it can also be seen as a success of multilateralism amid fraught geopolitical tensions.

2.What’s the status of the historic language from last year’s COP in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where world leaders agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels?”

It made it in—sort of. This year’s agreement nodded to last year’s hard-fought language, but more vaguely. The Baku text references the Dubai deal but does not specifically repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels. It also doesn’t lay out actions to accelerate toward that goal, which the European Union and U.S. negotiators had wanted to see. Saudi Arabia fought to have no mention of fossil fuels in the final text.

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra admitted the Dubai agreement “was attacked,” but in the end negotiators managed to “safeguard it.”

“It is less than what we [would] have liked, but it is better than we feared,” he said.

3.What’s the deal with Article 6?

Despite the tense climate finance negotiations that dominated the summit, countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6 of the Paris climate agreement, which sets up an international carbon trading market.

It took negotiators almost ten years to agree on this crucial segment of the deal, reflecting the challenges of setting up a market overseen by the U.N. to buy and sell carbon credits for companies and countries. A separate voluntary carbon market has developed a questionable reputation, with investigations showing the carbon credits didn’t lead to emissions reductions.

Backers argue trade through this newly-agreed market could yield billions of dollars in additional cash to help poorer countries fight climate change. While the agreement in itself is a milestone, campaigners worry the new system is still insufficient and has lax rules.

4. Azerbaijan brought the drama

It’s not an overstatement to say that this year’s COP saw geopolitical tensions surface at levels most climate negotiators are not habituated to.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, whose country hosted the COP29, immediately stirred things up with a defiant speech at the beginning of the summit. In one of the most controversial comments, he defended the country’s oil and gas reserves, describing them as “a gift of God.” He also argued that it’s “not fair” to call his country a petrostate and accused Western countries of “double standards” and “political hypocrisy” around fossil fuel use.

The next day, he attacked France and the Netherlands for their overseas territories, which he described as “colonies” that don’t have a seat at the climate-change table. France’s top climate envoy boycotted the talks as a result. The Azerbaijani government and its state company SOCAR also clinched several deals at COP29 to boost natural gas exports to Europe, which were met with criticism by climate activists.

The strong comments from the autocratic ruler on fossil fuel use left his top negotiators—presiding over the talks and tasked with finding a compromise on delicate climate topics—in an awkward and unusual situation. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how Aliyev’s remarks impacted the dynamics, but delegates repeatedly suggested the presidency is not doing enough to steer talks and called on the Azerbaijani team to show more leadership during sensitive moments of the negotiations.

5. U.S. comes in as lame duck

The consequences of Donald Trump’s re-election as the next U.S. president were top of mind for delegates in the first few days of the talks. Expectations that Trump will follow through on his promise to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, as he did in 2017 during his first administration, sparked worry this will put the brakes on multilateral climate action.

There was only so much U.S. climate envoy John Podesta and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who arrived at separate moments during the first week, could say to reassure the crowd. Their overarching message was always the same: the energy transition is well under way and this trend cannot be overturned no matter who is in power.

As negotiators dove deeper into the difficult finance negotiations, the topic seemed to gradually fade from people’s minds—not because the worry is not real, but because there was also a growing sense of fait accompli and that the world will have to carry on.

Certainly, the impact of Trump’s presidency over climate negotiations will keep looming large, especially since it could impact other countries’ ambitions.

6. All eyes on Brazil

The next big stop for climate negotiators is a year from now in Brazil, Latin America’s largest oil producer.

Stakes are high for Brazil’s COP30, which will focus on taking stock of countries’ updated climate targets for 2035. Analysts have described it as potentially the most consequential summit since the 2015 Paris COP conference where the main accord was agreed.

All nations are supposed to submit by February updated plans for slashing their emissions of greenhouse gases. The United Kingdom, Brazil and the UAE have already done so.

A group of countries, including all the European Union member countries, Canada, Mexico and Norway, committed at the COP29 in Azerbaijan to submit climate targets that are in line with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, an aspirational target in the Paris deal. The U.S. didn’t join it.

Experts applauded the news, seeing it as an encouraging signal at a time when the speed of the energy transition is under threat and the world is reaching new high temperature records every year.