Deal on climate aid hangs in balance at UN COP29 summit

Nations remain in deadlock over a crucial pact on climate aid, with divisions over who pays, and how much, threatening chances of a deal being landed at next month's COP29 summit.

The UN conference starts just six days after the US election and the possible return of Donald Trump -- who pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement -- looms over the negotiations.

World leaders will attend a two-day gathering at the opening of the summit in Azerbaijan, which faces scrutiny as the latest petrostate with limited tolerance for dissent to host the preeminent annual climate talks.

Organisers say over 50,000 attendees are expected between November 11-22 in the capital Baku.

COP29 has been dubbed a "finance COP" because rich countries most responsible for global warming are supposed to commit to substantially increasing their assistance to poorer countries for climate action.

The current amount of $100 billion a year expires in 2025 and is considered well below what developing nations need.

But major donors, including the European Union and United States, have still not said how much they are willing to pay, resisting pressure to put even a ballpark figure on the table.

They are being urged to turn billions into trillions at COP29, but the appeal for vast new sums of government money comes at a time of political and economic uncertainty for many donors.

Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic between Russia and Iran with little experience in international diplomacy, has urged parties to make the most of the "critical final stage" before COP29.

On Wednesday, government ministers will gather in Baku to try and make headway.

"These are complex negotiations -- if they were easy, they would have been resolved already -- and ministers will succeed or fail together," said COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, a former oil executive and Azerbaijan's ecology minister, in September.

"The eyes of the world are now upon them."

Observers say climate leadership has been missing in action this year, with attention elsewhere even as fires, floods, heatwaves and drought have hit every corner of the globe.

As they stand, international efforts to reduce planet-heating greenhouse gases are insufficient to cap global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the safer limit of the Paris agreement.

"We are potentially headed towards 3C of global warming by 2100 if we carry on with the policies we have at the moment," Jim Skea, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told The Telegraph in October.

Developing nations suffer disproportionately from climate change and are seeking a deal at COP29 that ensures upwards of $1 trillion annually in "climate finance" -- 10 times current amounts.

They want the new agreement to cover not just money for low-carbon technology and adaptation measures like sea walls but for disaster recovery as well, something developed countries do not want to include.

Countries obligated to pay -- a list of industrialised nations drawn up in 1992, and reaffirmed in the 2015 Paris agreement -- intend to keep doing so, but want wealthy emerging economies to help out.