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BAKU: A fresh draft of a UN climate deal released Wednesday proposes concrete options to raise funding for poorer countries, but leaves unresolved sticking points that have long delayed an agreement.
Landing a new accord to boost money for climate action in developing countries is the top priority of negotiators at the UN COP29 summit in Azerbaijan.
But it is deeply contentious, and consensus has eluded negotiators from nearly 200 nations for the better part of a year.
Most developing countries favor an annual commitment from wealthy countries of at least $1.3 trillion, according to the latest draft of the long-sought climate finance pact.
This figure is more than 10 times the $100 billion annually that a small pool of developed countries — among them the United States, the European Union and Japan — currently pay.
Some donors are reluctant to promise large new amounts of public money from their budgets at a time when they face economic and political pressure at home.
An earlier version of the draft was rejected outright by developing countries, which considered the proposed terms weighted too heavily toward wealthy nations.


Fresh submissions were called, and the new document summarises three broad positions.
The first argues that rich, industrialized nations most responsible for climate change to date pay from their budgets.
The second option calls for other countries to share the burden, a key demand of developed countries, while the third puts forward a mix of the two.
A bloc of least-developed nations, mostly from Africa, are asking for $220 billion while small-island states at threat from rising seas want $39 billion.
“The new text proposes more concrete options for reaching an agreement on the total amount, as well as specific objectives for the least developed or most vulnerable countries,” said Friederike Roder from Global Citizen, a non-government organization.
“Unfortunately, this search for precision stops there. The proposals aimed at clearly defining what constitutes climate finance, and ensuring close and transparent monitoring, remain insufficient,” she told AFP.
The latest 34-page draft reflects all the options on the table, said David Waskow, director at the World Resources Institute, a think tank.
“Negotiators now need to work to boil it down to some key decisions for the ministers to wrestle with next week,” he said.
COP29 runs until November 22 but climate talks often run into overtime.

Seoul: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is taking up golf after years away from the game to prepare for future encounters with US President-elect Donald Trump, his office said Wednesday.
Yoon, 63, has not played in nearly a decade, an official told AFP, but in anticipation of the second Trump administration will dust off his clubs.
“In order for smooth conversations” President Yoon “needs to hit the ball properly,” a president’s office official said in a background briefing earlier this week.
Yoon previously regularly scored in the 90s, the daily Kyeongin Ilbo reported, citing a playing partner.
Trump, who owns several courses in the United States and abroad, is a self-confessed golf addict who frequently boasts about his ability on social media and claims a single-digit handicap.
At a press conference last week Yoon said people had told him he would have “good chemistry” with Trump, noting both had first been elected to top office as political novices.
Yoon was a former prosecutor before taking office in 2022.
World leaders have tried — with mixed results — to cultivate personal bonds with Trump through golf.
Late former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe played with Trump on multiple occasions and is reported to have gifted him a set of gold-plated clubs.
Video footage of Abe tumbling into a bunker during a round with Trump in 2017 went viral at the time.
Despite the golf diplomacy, Trump’s repeated vows to make Asian security allies pay a larger share of the financial burden for their protection, and his threats of tariffs to fix the US trade deficit, have sparked consternation in Seoul.
Seoul’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a pamphlet on X on Tuesday titled: “Korea Matters to the US,” which featured detailed statistics on South Korea’s economic contributions to its ally.
In one section, it boasts that South Korea has created 470,000 jobs in the US, providing “the highest annual salary” among Asian foreign direct investors in the country.
South Korea is also a “key importer of US weapons,” it said, and spends “2.8 of GDP” on defense.