Giving Compass' Take:

• Pacific Standard talks with veteran climate finance expert Harjeet Singh about funding questions that could make or break the Paris rulebook at COP24 in Poland.

• With the US mainly standing on the sidelines when it comes to the original Paris agreement, how might other countries pick up the slack? What are the roles for private entities and funders?

• Here are four critical steps to climate leadership.

The 2018 United Nations climate negotiations are well underway in Katowice, Poland, this week, billed as the most important meeting since COP21 in Paris in 2015. Delegates are rushing now to meet a self-imposed deadline at the end of this year to write the rulebook that will turn the Paris Agreement into action. That means setting standards for how countries measure and report carbon emissions, ramp up ambition, and, most critically, deliver climate finance.

Dozens of developing countries' climate commitments are contingent, at least in part, on receiving aid from richer nations — the ones whose rampant greenhouse gas emissions for decades are largely to blame for the current climate crisis.

It's not just civil society that is holding developed nations to account. In his opening remarks on Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, "We also have a collective responsibility to assist the most vulnerable communities and countries—such as small island nations and the least-developed countries — by supporting adaptation and resilience."

Building a new, low-carbon, sustainable economy that's resilient in the face of climate change will cost trillions. New infrastructure alone will add up to some $90 trillion over the next 15 years, according to the World Bank, and two-thirds of that infrastructure needs to be built in developing countries. And it's not at all clear that the world's richest nations are up to the task: Donor countries routinely fail to live up to the existing transparency requirements laid out in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change for climate finance.

Read the full article about why climate negotiations are really about trade by Kate Wheeling at Pacific Standard.