The new COP29 proposal shows that the big gap remains in the climate finance agreement

BAKU: The United Nations climate body on Thursday published new options for the COP29 summit’s primary goal of agreeing how much money richer countries should provide to poorer ones to help them deal with climate change.

Reaching a deal on the money proved slow at talks in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, and the final draft of the negotiating text arrived several hours later than planned as delegates entered what was in theory a 48-hour deadline.

While the summit is due to conclude on Friday, the new document showed much remains to be decided on key issues such as what counts towards the annual amount, who pays and how much.

“We are a long way from the finish line,” said Li Shuo, a climate diplomacy expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “The new finance text presents two extreme ends of the aisle without much in between.”

Developing countries need at least $1 trillion a year by the end of the decade to tackle climate change, economists told UN talks last week.

Although the 10-page document was reduced to less than half the size of the previous version by removing some options, it summarized the opposing positions of the blocs of developed and developing countries that had been established before the event.

One focused on ensuring that the funds were grants or grant-equivalent, and that contributions from developing countries to each other – a nod to major potential donors such as China – were not officially part of the target.

The other, echoing the position of richer countries, aimed to broaden the types of funding that count towards the final annual target, not just grants from developed countries, and included contributions from others.

Both options avoided specifying the total amount of money countries would aim to invest each year, leaving the space marked with an “X”.

“Most importantly, the text omits a figure setting out the scale of future climate finance, a prerequisite for good faith negotiation,” Lee added.

This was perhaps not surprising as key donor countries, including those of the European Union, have said they want more clarity on the structure and base of contributors before publicly discussing how much they might contribute.