The question bringing COP29 to a halt: Who’s rich enough to pay for climate change?

The U.N. climate summit in Baku , Azerbaijan , is deadlocked on a key question: which countries are rich.

The world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries need trillions of dollars to transition to clean energy and cope with climate-fueled disasters.

As financial needs balloon, longtime wealthy nations in North America and Europe are clashing with newer global power players like China and Saudi Arabia .

The Canadian and Swiss governments have proposed a hard numerical standard that would determine which countries have to donate funds.

Among the top 10 annual greenhouse gas emitters, six are not already considered “developed” Saudi Arabia , South Korea , China , Iran , Indonesia , and India .

The other big point of controversy is China , whose per capita income sits just on the threshold of the Swiss and Canadian proposals.

The Swiss-Canadian proposal is still there, lurking at the bottom of the draft.

“It’s going to be very, very challenging, because there has not been a lot of movement,” a former climate negotiator says.

The goal text of COP29 was released by U.N. supervisors on Wednesday .