New COP29 Proposal Highlights Persistent Wide Gap Over Climate Funding Agreement

The United Nations climate body released updated proposals on Thursday for COP29’s central goal, determining how much funding wealthier nations should provide to support poorer countries in addressing climate change.

Negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan, have been slow, and the latest draft of the negotiating text was delayed by several hours as delegates entered what was meant to be the final 48 hours of the summit.

Although the talks are scheduled to conclude on Friday, the new document revealed that several critical issues remain unresolved, including what qualifies as part of the annual funding, who contributes, and how much.

“We are far 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.”

Economists addressing the UN talks last week stated that developing nations will need at least $1 trillion annually by the decade’s end to manage the impacts of climate change.

The revised 10-page document, significantly reduced from its predecessor, stripped away some earlier proposals but highlighted the entrenched divisions between developed and developing nations.

One bloc, representing developing countries, emphasised that funds should primarily take the form of grants or grant-equivalents, and excluded contributions from developing nations to each other—an implicit reference to large potential donors such as China—from being formally counted toward the target.

Conversely, richer nations proposed expanding what could be considered part of the funding target. This would include broader financial instruments, not just grants, and contributions from additional donor countries.

Both sides avoided specifying a total annual funding amount, leaving the figure marked as an ‘X’ in the document.

“Crucially, the text misses a number that defines the scale of future climate finance, a prerequisite for negotiation in good faith,” Li noted.

This omission reflects the reluctance of key donor nations, including members of the European Union, to discuss specific financial commitments before achieving clarity on the funding structure and who will contribute.

Faridah Abdulkadiri

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