Attendees walk past the COP29 logo during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, on November 21, 2024. (Photo by STRINGER / AFP)
Baku: A new draft deal at UN climate talks on Friday proposes rich nations commit $250 billion a year to help poorer nations combat global warming in a bid to break the deadlocked negotiations.
With the gathering scheduled to end Friday, delegates from nearly 200 nations had eagerly awaited COP29 hosts Azerbaijan's new proposal after two weeks of fraught bargaining.
The text sets an ambitious overall target to raise a total of $1.3 trillion per year by 2035, with the money from rich governments at the core of funding that would be coupled with private-sector investments.
It is the first time concrete numbers were formally proposed at talks dominated by divisions over how to boost assistance for developing nations to cut emissions and adapt to climate change.
The existing pledge committed wealthy nations most responsible historically for global warming to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance.
An influential negotiation bloc of 134 developing nations including China has demanded at least five times that figure from developed countries.
Major contributors such as the European Union had said such demands were politically unrealistic and that private-sector money must play a large part.
The EU has resisted pressure to put its own figure on the table and wants newly wealthy emerging economies like China, the world's largest emitter, to contribute to the overall goal.
"Inadequate, divorced from the reality of climate impacts and outrageously below the needs of developing countries, we've at least got a number now," Jasper Inventor, head of Greenpeace's COP29 delegation, said in one of the first reactions from activists.
The renewed discussion on fossil fuels comes after the US election victory of Donald Trump, who is again expected to withdraw the world's largest economy from climate diplomacy and ramp up oil and gas extraction.
Other Western nations have also seen a shift in political mood with a backlash against foreign aid and the green agenda.
The annual UN-led climate talks come on what is already poised to be the hottest year in history and as disasters rise around the world.
Just since the start of COP29 on November 11, deadly storms have battered the Philippines and Honduras, Ecuador has declared a national emergency due to drought and forest fires and Spain has been reeling after historic floods.
