Nations still divided over COP29 climate finance goal ahead of summit

COP29: With less than three months until the COP29 UN climate summit, countries are still far from reaching a consensus on the critical issue of climate finance, still considered the summit's most contentious task: setting a new funding target to back developing nations in their fight against climate change. In fact, a UN climate body document released on Thursday shows large divisions between countries less than a month from the critical meeting in Baku, where negotiators will try to bridge the gaps.

The document outlines seven possible options for a COP29 agreement, reflecting the differing positions of the participating nations. It may well replace the current commitment by wealthy nations to provide $100 billion annually in climate finance to developing countries.

The vulnerable and developing countries are pressing for a target much higher, while the donor countries, including Canada and the European Union, counter that national budgets are already stretched and an ambitious increase of public funding is unrealistic.

"We have come a long way, but there are still clearly different positions we need to bridge," said Mukhtar Babayev, the incoming COP29 summit president and Azerbaijan's minister of ecology and natural resources. Babayev announced the COP29 presidency would organize intensive negotiations on the finance goal ahead of the November summit in Baku.

One of the options embedded in the text is a proposal that represents the position of the Arab countries, calling for developed countries to provide $441 billion per year in grants, as well as a broader target for the mobilization of $1.1 trillion per year from all sources, including private finance, from 2025 through 2029.

The negotiating position of the European Union calls for a global climate funding target of more than $1 trillion every year, which brings together domestic investments and private funding, part of which should be contributed by countries with high greenhouse gas emissions and with substantial economic capacities. It has also, therefore, insisted that China, as the world's biggest polluter and the second-largest economy globally, should contribute to the new climate finance goal. China, however, is still classified as a developing country under a UN system established in the 1990s and continues to bristle at suggestions that it should be expected to contribute climate finance-a burden that has always fallen to richer nations.

One of the biggest battles facing negotiators in the run-up to a finance deal at COP29 will be the question of who should pay into the new funding goal. Another option in the document, representing the view of Canada, says contributions should be pegged to per-capita emissions and income-a measure that would bring countries like the United Arab Emirates and Qatar into the fold.