The United Nations on Monday published a draft text setting out what the COP27 climate summit could agree on "loss and damage" financing for countries ravaged by climate impacts.
The negotiating text will be debated and reworked by diplomats and ministers from nearly 200 countries before its hoped-for adoption at the end of the summit, negotiatiors said.
For some countries, progress on loss and damage funding will be their measure of whether the talks in Egypt succeed.
Nations are split over whether to agree to a new fund, even after they agreed for the first time to hold formal U.N. talks on loss and damage - U.N. jargon for irreparable destruction caused by climate change-fuelled disasters.
Previous U.N. talks did not do so given resistance from rich countries nervous about spiralling liability for emissions historically linked the developed world.
The draft text says COP27 will launch a two-year process in which countries would work on how to provide funding to developing countries suffering "loss and damage" and gave two options for what that process could deliver.
Option one would see the process lead to "funding arrangements" for loss and damage by November 2024. The draft said this could include a U.N. funding facility.
Option two would delay until 2023 a decision on what the U.N. climate body's role will be in a broader "mosaic" of options to fund loss and damage.
More than 130 developing countries, among them small island states and large emerging economies, have demanded that COP27 ends with a firm decision to launch a loss and damage fund - even if it will still take years to get it running.
"The language is still too ambiguous, there needs to be a clear decision on what COP27 will deliver," Carolina Cecilio, a policy expert at climate think-tank E3G, said, adding this should include the establishment of loss and damage funding arrangements.
"It will be key for restoring trust and solidarity," she said.
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(Reporting by William James, Kate Abnett; editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Barbara Lewis)
