Developing countries publicly doubled down Tuesday on their call for trillions in climate aid from richer nations — but privately, some acknowledged that a significantly smaller proposal European Union governments are discussing might be the best they will get for now.

The EU has explored offering $200 billion to $300 billion per year in climate assistance, as POLITICO revealed in a report published late Monday, an amount that could eventually be buttressed by much more private-sector financing. The U.S., meanwhile, has yet to show its hand, just two months before the dawn of a second Trump administration that will complicate any agreements President Joe Biden’s negotiators approve at the COP29 conference.

The money question is the biggest item on the agenda at the U.N. climate talks, which are due to conclude Friday, as developing countries clamor for the dollars they will need to switch to clean energy and build resilience to the devastating impacts of a warming world. During the formal negotiations, the EU, U.S. and other wealthy governments have so far refused to put forward a total they’re willing to offer, even in private.

On Tuesday, several African countries outlined to reporters the far-reaching costs their societies and economies are suffering from climate-driven heat waves, drought and other extreme weather as an argument for why they’re aiming higher.

Responding to the EU’s potential dollar figures, Sierra Leone’s minister of environment and climate change Jiwoh Abdulai said: “It's a good start, but that's why we have negotiations. … Our position is clear what the needs are, and I'm pretty sure they know what the needs are also.”

He concluded: “We're talking now about how this affects the lives of our people.”

Climate needs

A U.N.-backed expert group estimates that developing countries — apart from China — need around $1 trillion annually in external climate financing. About $300 billion of that would need to be tied to the public purse of wealthy industrialized nations, it notes.

“The global community has already identified how much the world needs to address the challenges of climate change. It is in the trillions of dollars,” Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate envoy and chair of the Africa Group of negotiators, told POLITICO. “This is not in any contention, that is agreeable, whether it's European, African, American, whatever. So that is the reality. 

“We need to get that money, and get it somehow,” he added.

The $200 billion to $300 billion figure that the EU is discussing is “underwhelming” considering the needs of island states, said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a coalition of island countries, many of whose shorelines are succumbing to sea-level rise, stronger cyclones and soaring temperatures driven by climate change. He said that mark would likely imperil nations’ chances of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius since the mid-19th century, the most ambitious goal nations agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“What $200 billion will take us to is actually extremely worrying for us,” he told reporters.

The EU and U.S. agree that trillions are needed and view the new target as a “core” of public money that could be supplemented with other sources, including private capital that could bring total investment past a trillion annually. Private money is needed, Western governments argue, because countries can only stretch their budgets so far. 

The U.S. faces an especially tough challenge. Even Democratic administrations have struggled to get large amounts of global climate aid through Congress. Biden’s administration has tried other avenues instead, including calling on the World Bank to free up more capital for climate efforts. 

Donald Trump’s return to power darkens the picture even further. The president-elect scoffs at climate change and has called the money that rich countries pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement a rip-off.  

Some developing countries suggested that if the EU is considering $200 billion to $300 billion in public money, that could be a landing ground. 

“If this regards provision of finance from developed to developing countries, it seems realistic,” said one negotiator from a developing country, who, like others quoted in this article, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.

“If it is only mobilization” — referring to a broader funding total with private money — “it’s far from what will be needed," the negotiator added.

Another negotiator from a G20 developing country said the EU figures seem “feasible but clearly will not satisfy the appetite.” 

One other negotiator from a large developing economy called the figure of $200 billion to $300 billion a “possible” endpoint for the talks but said the number had not yet come up in formal negotiations. Kenya’s Mohamed confirmed that nobody had put that range of numbers forward in meetings. 

A group of the poorest countries on Earth is calling for $220 billion a year in assistance just for the 45 countries and 1.1 billion people that make up that negotiating bloc. 

“We just hope that, together with the EU, we will reach at some level [a] figure that could serve on this,” said Evans Njewa of Malawi, chair of the Least Developed Countries group, adding that the discussion would proceed in the negotiating rooms.

Abdulai, from Sierra Leone, called it critical to get a financial target that meets the developing world’s needs.

“If we continue to do this delay, eventually this becomes a food insecurity issue,” Abdulai said. “It becomes a water insecurity issue. And it will end up being a security issue in Europe.”

Dwindling days

Whatever deal emerges from this week’s talks will have ramifications for decades. Some countries argue that without the money needed to build cleaner energy systems, they’ll end up relying on the available resources, which may well be more of the fossil fuels creating the crisis. 

Referencing a major pipeline and extraction program in Uganda, Minister of Energy and Mineral Development Ruth Nankabirwa said oil and natural gas are “a natural resource, which other countries used to develop. And if you want Uganda to abandon it, you find an alternative. … So where is this climate money? Where is it?”

Half a world away, Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders in Rio de Janeiro for the Group of 20 summit endorsed several initiatives to enhance the money available for climate and clean energy investments. They said in their communiqué that they looked forward to a “successful outcome” at COP29. 

“We recognize the need to catalyze and scale up investment from all financial sources and channels for bridging the funding gap for energy transitions globally, especially in developing countries,” the statement says, acknowledging that developing countries “need to be supported in their transitions to low carbon emissions” and that climate finance needs to scale up “from billions to trillions from all sources.”

Some observers and finance experts hope that will send a political signal to officials in Baku.

“There is no backing down here,” Avinash Persaud, a climate adviser to the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, said in a message.