Climate pact needs 'hundreds of billions' in state money: COP29 hosts

The hosts of the coming UN climate summit said Monday that a hard-fought finance pact for poorer countries must include "hundreds of billions" of dollars from wealthy governments.

Nearly 200 countries are supposed to agree at COP29 how much money should flow every year from rich nations to poorer ones to help them prepare for climate change.

But little progress has been achieved so far in the negotiations, with disagreements over who should pay, how much, and the scope and structure of the pact.

COP29 hosts Azerbaijan held a series of meetings last week with diplomats to try to make headway ahead of the main summit starting on November 11.

Yalchin Rafiyev, Azerbaijan's lead climate negotiator, said "common messages" had started to emerge from the parties, including in terms of the overall size of the finance target.

"It needs to be ambitious, and that needs are in the space of trillions, with a realistic provision and mobilisation needing to be in the hundreds of billions," he told reporters during a conference call.

The call for hundreds of billions of dollars was "a realistic goal for what the public sector could directly provide and mobilise", the COP29 presidency added in a statement.

That annual commitment should cover the decade until 2035.

The existing pledge of $100 billion a year, which expires in 2025, is paid by rich, industrialised countries including the United States, the European Union, Japan and others.