The COP29 climate summit presidency released a draft finance deal on Friday that would have developed nations take the lead in providing $250 billion per year by 2035 to help poorer nations — a proposal that drew criticism from all sides.
World governments represented at the summit in the Azerbaijan capital Baku are tasked with agreeing a sweeping funding plan to tackle climate change, but the talks have been marked by division between wealthy governments resisting a costly outcome and developing nations pushing for more.
Negotiators now have just hours to bridge their differences before the two-week conference, scheduled to end on Friday, spills into overtime, with expectations the $250 billion target could yet rise.
"I'm so mad. It's ridiculous. Just ridiculous," said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, the Special Representative for Climate Change for Panama, who called the proposed amount too low. "It feels that the developed world wants the planet to burn."
A European negotiator, meanwhile, said that the new draft deal was uncomfortably high and did not do enough to expand the number of countries contributing to the funding.
"No one is comfortable with the number, because it's high and (there is) next to nothing on increasing contributor base," the negotiator said.
Governments that would be expected to lead the financing include the European Union, Australia, the United States, Britain, Japan, Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland.
The draft invited developing countries to contribute voluntarily, but emphasised that paying in climate finance would not affect their status as "developing" nations at the UN — a red line for countries including China and Brazil.
"This is not at a landing ground yet, but at least we’re not up in the air without a map,” said Germany’s special climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.
Negotiations have been clouded by uncertainty over the role of the United States in the deal after climate sceptic Donald Trump won the presidential election on November 5, promising to withdraw the world's top historic greenhouse gas emitter from international climate efforts when he retakes office in January.
The Azerbaijani COP29 presidency described Friday's text as a "first reflection" of what countries had said in consultations, and expressed hope negotiators would find agreement soon.
Azerbaijan's lead negotiator, Yalchin Rafiyev, told reporters the draft deal had room for improvement.
"It doesn't correspond to our fair and ambitious goal, but we will continue to engage with the parties," he said.
The draft also set a broader goal to raise $1.3 trillion in climate finance annually by 2035, which would include funding from all public and private sources.
That is in line with a recommendation from economists that developing countries have access to at least $1 trillion annually by the end of the decade.
But filling the gap between government pledges and private ones could be tricky, negotiators have warned.
"This goal will need to be supported by ambitious bilateral action, MDB contributions and efforts to better mobilise private finance, among other critical factors," a senior US official said, referring to multilateral development banks.
The current climate finance commitment, $100 billion per year, ends in 2025. Without a new collective target agreed through the UN process, some of those poorer countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change would have little assurance of the money they need.
That means such countries have an incentive to negotiate hard, but even those most unhappy have a reason not to walk away or block a deal.
"We are far away from the $1.3 trillion," said M Riaz Hamidullah, a Bangladesh foreign office official. "It's a bit like haggling in the fish market, which we do often in our part of the world," he said. — Reuters
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