UN climate chief asks G20 leaders for boost

The United Nations climate chief called on leaders of the world's biggest economies on Saturday to send a signal of support for global climate finance efforts when they meet in Rio de Janeiro next week, to help trigger a deal at COP29 talks.

The plea, made in a letter to G20 leaders from top UN climate official Simon Stiell, comes as negotiators at the COP29 conference in Baku struggle for a deal intended to scale up money to address the worsening impacts of global warming. Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the summit should support an increase in grants and loans, along with debt relief, so vulnerable countries "are not hamstrung by debt servicing costs that make bolder climate actions all but impossible".

Success at this year's UN climate summit hinges on whether countries can agree on a new annual finance target for richer countries, development lenders and the private sector.

Developing countries need at least $1 trillion a year by the end of the decade to cope with climate change, economists told the UN talks.

However, negotiators have made slow progress, midway through the two-week conference. A draft text of the deal, which earlier this week was 33-pages long and comprised dozens of wide-ranging options, had been pared down to 25 pages as of Saturday. Sweden's climate envoy Mattias Frumerie told Reuters that the finance negotiations had not yet cracked the toughest issues: how big the target should be, or which countries should pay.

"The divisions we saw coming into the meeting are still there, which leaves quite a lot of work for ministers next week," he told Reuters.

European negotiators have said large oil-producing nations including Saudi Arabia are also blocking discussions on how to take forward last year's COP28 summit deal to transition the world away from fossil fuels.

Uganda's energy minister Ruth Nankabirwa said her country's priority was to leave COP29 with a deal on affordable financing for clean energy projects.