NewsCOP29 Bulletin Day 3: Finance text balloons and Brazil presents new NDC

COP29 Bulletin Day 3: Finance text balloons and Brazil presents new NDC

Co-chairs asked to streamline all-options text on finance goal and Brazil bets on forests and biofuels to reach 2035 emissions goal

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Negotiators ask for streamlined finance text

Government negotiators have asked the co-chairs of the talks on a new climate finance goal to streamline the text by Thursday morning, removing repetitions and redundancies – but not adding anything new or taking away anything substantial.

These instructions come one day after negotiators asked the co-chairs to make the nine-page text they had prepared before COP29 longer, by adding back in all the options, leading to a 34-page text released at 8.30am this morning.

Alejandra Lopez, head of climate diplomacy at Colombian NGO Transforma, said streamlining the document was a good idea, because the text was now “really long” with “lots of repetitions, lots of duplications”. She said the “options weren’t clear”, and it didn’t offer “a workable text to negotiate”.

Natural Resources Defence Council finance expert Joe Thwaites said this kind of lengthening and chopping is common in the UN climate process, as countries want the comfort of knowing their ideas have been included in the text but then need to start whittling it down so they can move forward..

But, he warned, “it’s Wednesday already – we have three more days until ministers arrive next week”. The  delay on the first day in adopting the agenda for COP29 has put negotiations behind schedule, he said, “so I think that’s why everyone is a bit anxious and stressed”.

The new finance text is likely to have the same options for the structure of the goal as the previous two. The first option is a goal for a certain dollar amount, consisting of finance provided by governments and private finance mobilised by their money. 

The second is a provision and mobilisation goal, plus a wider investment goal that includes private and domestic finance. As this goal is “multi-layered”, it has been compared to an onion – and it’s what developed countries want.

The latest text has several different proposals for the size of the government finance goal: $100bn+, $1tn+, $1.1tn, $1.3tn+ or $2tn. Developed countries want less and developing countries want more, with the G77 and China umbrella group jointly pushing for $1.3tn+. 

On who pays, both texts include the same options – either just developed countries or various criteria to identify a larger set of contributors based on countries’ wealth and emissions. 

Wednesday’s morning text had new specific proposals for minimum amounts that should go to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The latest text has options for $220bn for LDCs and $39bn for SIDS in grant-equivalent terms each year. 

It also introduces options specifying that countries should stop using climate finance to support fossil fuels or “emissions intensive investments”.

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