BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — A new draft text released early Thursday that will form the basis for any agreement reached at United Nations climate talks on money for developing countries to transition to clean energy and adapt climate change, has left out a crucial sticking point: how much rich countries will pay.
Negotiators at the talks – known as COP29 – in Baku, Azerbaijan, are trying to close the gap between the $1.3 trillion that developing countries say is needed for climate finance and the few hundred billion dollars that richer countries are willing to pay.
But the draft text “presents two extreme sides of the aisle without much in between,” said Li Shuo, director of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Apart from establishing the basic position of both parties, this text does little more.”
Rob Moore, Associate Director at European think tank E3G, said that “negotiators need to make huge progress in the coming days and the path to agreement will require rapid and frank engagement, with numbers on the table.”
The lack of figures in the draft text could be a ‘bluff’, says Linda Kalcher of the think tank Strategic Perspectives. The COP29 presidency, which prepares the texts, ‘should know more… than what they put on the table’. She added that the draft shows that developed countries are still keeping their cards close to their chests.
There are three major parts of the issue where negotiators must reach agreement: how big the numbers are, how much grants or loans are, and who contributes.
Official observers of the talks from the International Institute of Sustainable Development, who are allowed to participate in the closed meetings, reported that negotiators have now agreed not to expand the list of countries that will contribute to the global climate funds – at least not during this conversations. On the issue of grants or loans, Kalcher said the draft text suggests “the need for grants and better access to financing.”
Earlier on Wednesday, chief negotiator Yelchin Rafiyev said the latest version of the climate finance text would be far from final but would be a clear step forward. But experts said Thursday that a deal is still a long way off, and the summit appeared headed for the same drama and extensions as in previous years.
Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of Moroccan climate think tank Imal Initiative for Climate and Development, said some developed countries are “slowly waking up” to the fact that limiting warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial era will require well over a trillion dollars in financing. “But many are still asleep at the wheel,” he said.
