(Reuters) - Countries at the COP29 climate summit were warned on Wednesday that the “hardest part” was about to start in talks over how much money should be provided to developing countries to help them cope with climate change.
Figuring out what form that funding takes, who pays and how much is the main task of this year’s annual UN climate talks. With a notional Friday deadline looming, frustration over the lack of progress was starting to seep out of the negotiating rooms.
Yalchin Rafiyev, the chief negotiator of the summit’s host Azerbaijan said, “Now the hardest part begins,” ahead of a fresh text which is due to be released at midnight in the capital Baku.
Progress at the annual summit is typically marked through regular draft documents that get whittled down to a final deal.
Wealthy and developing countries are sharply divided over the size of the new goal. It will replace a 2020 pledge by developed countries — delivered two years late — to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance.
Uganda’s Adonia Ayebare, who chairs the G77 and China group of more than 130 developing countries, said its demand was for wealthy nations to provide $1.3 trillion in public climate finance per year.
“The frustration is that the other side has not given us a counteroffer,” Ayebare told Reuters. “We are hearing $300bn. But if that is true, that’s really not acceptable. It’s embarrassing,” he said.
Another developing country negotiator told Reuters that the European Union had floated $200bn or $300bn in informal talks. But on Wednesday, the EU maintained it did not have an official position on the number.
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the bloc was not willing to talk about the figure until it had more structural details, adding: “Otherwise you will have a shopping basket with a price, but you don’t know exactly what is in there.”
Countries are still at odds over whether large, still-developing economies, including the world’s second-biggest economy China, will contribute towards the goal.
Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad said countries had agreed better off developing nations would not be legally obliged to pay in.
Azerbaijan’s Rafiyev said the COP29 presidency would produce a tighter text overnight. In simple terms, a 25-page document stuffed with multiple options for almost every paragraph needs to become a two-page document that can be refined in the final days and then adopted.
“We will have shorter, more concise, straight to the point, texts,” Rafiyev said.