UN climate cash deal proposes $250B aid for poorer nations annually

A new draft deal at United Nations climate talks 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 on 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 the climate crisis.

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 European Union 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.

Many countries have also pushed at COP29 for a redoubling of efforts to cut planet-heating emissions, something opposed by the Arab Group of nations which does not want fossil fuels singled out.