BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — A new draft text released early Thursday that would form the basis of any agreement reached at United Nations climate talks on money for developing countries to transition to clean energy and adapt to climate change left out a key sticking point: the rich How much will nations pay?

Negotiators at talks known as COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, are trying to narrow the gap between the $1.3 trillion the developing world says is needed for climate finance and the several hundred billion dollars richer countries are prepared to pay.

But Li Shuo, director of the Asia Community Policy Institute, said the draft text “presents two extreme ends of the corridor without much in between.” “This text doesn’t do much other than capture the situation of both parties.”

Rob Moore, Deputy Director of European think tank E3G, said negotiators “must make a significant amount of progress over the next few days and the road to agreement needs to see rapid and genuine engagement with numbers on the table”.

Linda Kalcher, of the think tank Strategic Perspectives, said the absence of figures in the draft text could be a “bluff”. The COP29 presidency, which prepares the texts, “must know more than what it puts on the table”. He said that the draft reveals that developed countries still keep their cards close to their chests.

There are three big parts of the issue that negotiators need to agree on: How big are the numbers, how much are the grants or loans, and who is contributing.

Official observers of the talks from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, which was allowed to attend closed meetings, reported that negotiators have now agreed not to expand the list of countries that will contribute to global climate funds, at least in these talks. On the subject of grants or loans, the draft text suggests “there is a need for better access to grants and financing,” Kalcher said.

Earlier Wednesday, chief negotiator Yelchin Rafiyev said the latest version of the climate finance text released would be far from final but would be a clear step forward. But experts said on Thursday that a deal was still a long way off and that the summit was headed for the same dramatic, overtime conclusion as seen in previous years.

Some developed countries are “slowly waking up” to keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, said Iskender Erzini Vernoit, director of the Manufacturing Initiative for Climate and Development, a Moroccan climate think tank. It will require more than a trillion dollars in financing. “But most of them are still asleep at the wheel,” he said.

___

The Associated Press’s climate and environment coverage receives funding from many private organizations. AP is solely responsible for all content. find APs standards for working with philanthropists, a list of supporters and areas of funded coverage AP.org.