Countries still far apart on COP29 finance goal

By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -With less than three months until this year's COP29 UN climate negotiations, countries remain far from agreement on the summit's biggest task: to agree a new funding target to help developing countries cope with climate change.

A negotiations document published by the U.N. climate body on Thursday set out the splits between nations, ahead of a meeting in Baku next month, where negotiators will attempt to inch forward some of the stickiest issues.

The document suggests seven options, reflecting countries' competing positions, for a possible COP29 deal. The new target will replace wealthy nations' current commitment to provide $100 billion each year in climate finance to developing countries.

Vulnerable and developing countries want a far larger funding goal. Donor countries such as Canada and the 27-nation European Union say stretched national budgets mean a huge jump in public funding is unrealistic.

"We have come a long way but there are still clearly different positions we need to bridge," said incoming COP29 summit president Mukhtar Babayev.

Babayev, who is Azerbaijan's minister of ecology and natural resources, said the COP29 presidency would organise intensive negotiations on the finance goal ahead of the COP29 summit in Baku in November.

One option in the document sets out a target for developed countries to provide $441 billion each year in grants, combined with an aim to mobilise a total $1.1 trillion in funding from all sources, including private finance, annually from 2025 to 2029.

That option reflects Arab countries' position.

Another option, reflecting the EU's negotiating stance, sets a global climate-funding target of more than $1 trillion each year - including countries' domestic investments and private funding - inside which would be a smaller amount provided by countries "with high greenhouse-gas emissions and economic capabilities".

The EU has demanded that China - the world's biggest polluter and second-biggest economy - contribute to the new climate-funding goal.

China is classed as a developing country by the U.N. under a system developed in the 1990s that is still used today. Beijing rejects the idea that it should be on the hook to pay for climate finance, the money mostly paid by rich countries to poor ones.

Negotiators expect the issue of who should pay to be one of the biggest hurdles to agreeing a finance deal at COP29.

Another option in the document, reflecting Canada's position, suggests contributors to the target should be determined on per-capita emissions and income - a measure that could also add the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others.

(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Toby Chopra and Rod Nickel)