UN climate talks in Egypt failed to deliver, except on one significant issue
The only solace is the start of a fund to pay poor nations for the loss and damage they are suffering due to climate change.
‘Code red’
The disappointing finale came in a year that started with warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that greenhouse gas emissions must halve by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 if humanity is to avert a level of warming it will be unable to cope with.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s ‘code red’ warning was strengthened by a series of reports in October. The World Meteorological Organisation reported record levels of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – in the atmosphere.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reported that nations’ current pledges to control greenhouse gas emissions (called Nationally Determined Contributions) would, even if fully achieved, still fail to keep average global temperature rise within two degrees Celsius as vowed by all countries in the Paris Agreement, let alone the aspirational goal of keeping warming within 1.5˚degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial age levels. Instead, it estimated a rise of 2.4 degrees Celsius-2.6 degrees Celsius by 2100. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change calculated that developing countries would need $5.6 trillion up to 2030 to fulfil even current Nationally Determined Contributions.
The negotiators’ bubble
All the experts came to COP27, repeated their warnings and recommended solutions. In various parts of the sprawling seaside complex where the conference was held, victims of climate change-induced disasters related their experiences and turned their audiences teary-eyed. In other places, activists chanted slogans. But there was no representative of any government listening to any of this.
There were also over 600 lobbyists from oil and gas companies, a 25% increase from the 2021 summit. This may have contributed to the fizzling out of a move started by India to phase down all fossil fuels.
Sanjay Vashist, the director of Climate Action Network South Asia, said, “It is indeed unfortunate that COP27 failed to deliver on any of the three key outcomes that could have accelerated climate action to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. In a year when Pakistan floods reminded the world of the need for urgency, COP27 had nothing new to offer on ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At a time when island nations like Sri Lanka are teetering under economic and climate crises, it has failed to find ways to expedite the delivery of promised billion dollars per annum, forget any new or additional financial assistance. At a time when Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal are battered by multiple climate disasters, rich countries, especially US, did not heed India’s call and failed to agree to phase out all fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas for a sustainable and equitable clean energy transition.”
The negotiators from 197 governments bickered behind closed doors, with rich nations asking poor nations to increase ambition to control emissions, while poor nations asked how they would do it without the rich nations – the principal polluters since the start of the Industrial Age – not promising any money and not even paying the money they had promised earlier.
Appeals for compromise
Sameh Shoukry, foreign minister of host nation Egypt and president of COP27, made repeated appeals for compromise, including a public appeal the morning after the summit was scheduled to close.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “We need to drastically reduce emissions now – and this is an issue this COP did not address.” Despite his urging to countries to “cooperate or perish”, in the end the cooperation was just not there. In his closing statement, referring to the loss and damage fund, he said, “Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.”
The European Union, too, criticised the lack of mitigation ambition during the closing session.
The desperation showed in the summit declaration, where one paragraph read: “The increasingly complex and challenging global geopolitical situation and its impact on the energy, food and economic situations, as well as the additional challenges associated with the socioeconomic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, should not be used as a pretext for backtracking, backsliding or de-prioritising climate action.”
Despite this and other proclamations, the compromises in the operative portions made it a declaration far too weak to combat climate change. The only new activity in the mitigation work programme next year will be two “global dialogues”.
This despite the same declaration pointing out that “about $4 trillion per year needs to be invested in renewable energy up until 2030 to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and that, furthermore, a global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investment of at least $4-6 trillion per year.”
Hailing the establishment of the fund, Secretary General Guterres said, “This COP has taken an important step towards justice…Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust…Justice should also mean several other things: Finally making good on the long-delayed promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries; clarity and a credible roadmap to double adaptation finance; changing the business models of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions. They must accept more risk and systematically leverage private finance for developing countries at reasonable costs.”
Welcoming the establishment of the fund, Farah Naureen, Pakistan director of Mercy Corps, said, “Anything less than this would have jeopardised trust in the climate negotiations and would have left countries like mine, Pakistan, paying the price…The effectiveness of the fund remains to be seen, and the real work will only begin after COP27.”
This article first appeared on The Third Pole.
The only solace is the start of a fund to pay poor nations for the loss and damage they are suffering due to climate change.
Kouji Tsuru/Unsplash
The disconnect between the reality of climate change and the artificial bubble in which global climate negotiations take place became significantly wider as the extended 2022 summit drew to a close 40 hours behind schedule in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The only success the summit (COP27) could show was the establishment of a fund to pay poor nations for the loss and damage they are suffering due to climate change. That is an admission that three decades of negotiations have failed to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the atmosphere or to enable people adapt to the impacts of climate change. That is why the negotiators have been forced to launch a fund to deal with loss and damage, though all its modalities are supposed to be worked out in future.
At the closing plenary session, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, acknowledged that the negotiations were “not easy at all”, but pointed out that the establishment of the fund “helps the most vulnerable”.
The disconnect between the reality of climate change and the artificial bubble in which global climate negotiations take place became significantly wider as the extended 2022 summit drew to a close 40 hours behind schedule in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
The only success the summit (COP27) could show was the establishment of a fund to pay poor nations for the loss and damage they are suffering due to climate change. That is an admission that three decades of negotiations have failed to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the atmosphere or to enable people adapt to the impacts of climate change. That is why the negotiators have been forced to launch a fund to deal with loss and damage, though all its modalities are supposed to be worked out in future.
At the closing plenary session, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, acknowledged that the negotiations were “not easy at all”, but pointed out that the establishment of the fund “helps the most vulnerable”.
Participants snoozing during the closing session of the COP27 climate conference. Credit: Joseph Eid/AFP
‘Code red’
The disappointing finale came in a year that started with warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that greenhouse gas emissions must halve by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 if humanity is to avert a level of warming it will be unable to cope with.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s ‘code red’ warning was strengthened by a series of reports in October. The World Meteorological Organisation reported record levels of the three main greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – in the atmosphere.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change reported that nations’ current pledges to control greenhouse gas emissions (called Nationally Determined Contributions) would, even if fully achieved, still fail to keep average global temperature rise within two degrees Celsius as vowed by all countries in the Paris Agreement, let alone the aspirational goal of keeping warming within 1.5˚degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial age levels. Instead, it estimated a rise of 2.4 degrees Celsius-2.6 degrees Celsius by 2100. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change calculated that developing countries would need $5.6 trillion up to 2030 to fulfil even current Nationally Determined Contributions.
The negotiators’ bubble
All the experts came to COP27, repeated their warnings and recommended solutions. In various parts of the sprawling seaside complex where the conference was held, victims of climate change-induced disasters related their experiences and turned their audiences teary-eyed. In other places, activists chanted slogans. But there was no representative of any government listening to any of this.
There were also over 600 lobbyists from oil and gas companies, a 25% increase from the 2021 summit. This may have contributed to the fizzling out of a move started by India to phase down all fossil fuels.
Sanjay Vashist, the director of Climate Action Network South Asia, said, “It is indeed unfortunate that COP27 failed to deliver on any of the three key outcomes that could have accelerated climate action to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis. In a year when Pakistan floods reminded the world of the need for urgency, COP27 had nothing new to offer on ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At a time when island nations like Sri Lanka are teetering under economic and climate crises, it has failed to find ways to expedite the delivery of promised billion dollars per annum, forget any new or additional financial assistance. At a time when Bangladesh, Maldives and Nepal are battered by multiple climate disasters, rich countries, especially US, did not heed India’s call and failed to agree to phase out all fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas for a sustainable and equitable clean energy transition.”
The negotiators from 197 governments bickered behind closed doors, with rich nations asking poor nations to increase ambition to control emissions, while poor nations asked how they would do it without the rich nations – the principal polluters since the start of the Industrial Age – not promising any money and not even paying the money they had promised earlier.
Appeals for compromise
Sameh Shoukry, foreign minister of host nation Egypt and president of COP27, made repeated appeals for compromise, including a public appeal the morning after the summit was scheduled to close.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, “We need to drastically reduce emissions now – and this is an issue this COP did not address.” Despite his urging to countries to “cooperate or perish”, in the end the cooperation was just not there. In his closing statement, referring to the loss and damage fund, he said, “Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.”
The European Union, too, criticised the lack of mitigation ambition during the closing session.
The desperation showed in the summit declaration, where one paragraph read: “The increasingly complex and challenging global geopolitical situation and its impact on the energy, food and economic situations, as well as the additional challenges associated with the socioeconomic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, should not be used as a pretext for backtracking, backsliding or de-prioritising climate action.”
Despite this and other proclamations, the compromises in the operative portions made it a declaration far too weak to combat climate change. The only new activity in the mitigation work programme next year will be two “global dialogues”.
This despite the same declaration pointing out that “about $4 trillion per year needs to be invested in renewable energy up until 2030 to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and that, furthermore, a global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investment of at least $4-6 trillion per year.”
Many of the civil society activists at COP27 in Egypt emphasised the need for climate finance. Credit: Joydeep Gupta
The declaration also highlighted that “delivering such funding will require a transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes, engaging governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors.” It noted “with concern the growing gap between the needs of developing country Parties, in particular those due to the increasing impacts of climate change and their increased indebtedness, and the support provided and mobilised for their efforts to implement their nationally determined contributions, highlighting that such needs are currently estimated at $5.8-5.9 trillion for the pre-2030 period.”
Against such needs, rich nations have failed to keep their 2009 promise to provide $100 billion by 2020.
The declaration noted that “global climate finance flows are small relative to the overall needs of developing countries, with such flows in 2019-2020 estimated to be $803 billion, which is 31%-32% of the annual investment needed to keep the global temperature rise” with 1.5 degrees Celsius.
COP27 saw declarations from some rich nations that they would put more money into the Adaptation Fund. Apart from that, the only plan is to prepare a report on the doubling of adaptation finance, which had been agreed at the 2021 summit in Glasgow.
The lone success
Many developing countries came to Sharm El-Sheikh with a one-point agenda – start a fund to pay for loss and damage. It was launched after tortuous negotiations. Saleemul Huq, head of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate and Development, told The Third Pole, “The establishment of the new fund for addressing loss and damage from human-induced climate change at COP27 is a major achievement for all the developing countries, and we congratulate the developed countries for agreeing to set it up.”
The declaration also highlighted that “delivering such funding will require a transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes, engaging governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors.” It noted “with concern the growing gap between the needs of developing country Parties, in particular those due to the increasing impacts of climate change and their increased indebtedness, and the support provided and mobilised for their efforts to implement their nationally determined contributions, highlighting that such needs are currently estimated at $5.8-5.9 trillion for the pre-2030 period.”
Against such needs, rich nations have failed to keep their 2009 promise to provide $100 billion by 2020.
The declaration noted that “global climate finance flows are small relative to the overall needs of developing countries, with such flows in 2019-2020 estimated to be $803 billion, which is 31%-32% of the annual investment needed to keep the global temperature rise” with 1.5 degrees Celsius.
COP27 saw declarations from some rich nations that they would put more money into the Adaptation Fund. Apart from that, the only plan is to prepare a report on the doubling of adaptation finance, which had been agreed at the 2021 summit in Glasgow.
The lone success
Many developing countries came to Sharm El-Sheikh with a one-point agenda – start a fund to pay for loss and damage. It was launched after tortuous negotiations. Saleemul Huq, head of the Dhaka-based International Centre for Climate and Development, told The Third Pole, “The establishment of the new fund for addressing loss and damage from human-induced climate change at COP27 is a major achievement for all the developing countries, and we congratulate the developed countries for agreeing to set it up.”
Harjeet Singh (left) and Saleemul Huq were two of the campaigners for a loss and damage fund, one of the few successes of COP27. Credit: Joydeep Gupta
Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, said the fund “offers hope to the vulnerable people that they will get help to recover from climate disasters and rebuild their lives.” Huq and Singh have spearheaded for decades the move to bring the issue of loss and damage to the fore at climate negotiations.
Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, said the fund “offers hope to the vulnerable people that they will get help to recover from climate disasters and rebuild their lives.” Huq and Singh have spearheaded for decades the move to bring the issue of loss and damage to the fore at climate negotiations.
Hailing the establishment of the fund, Secretary General Guterres said, “This COP has taken an important step towards justice…Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust…Justice should also mean several other things: Finally making good on the long-delayed promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries; clarity and a credible roadmap to double adaptation finance; changing the business models of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions. They must accept more risk and systematically leverage private finance for developing countries at reasonable costs.”
Welcoming the establishment of the fund, Farah Naureen, Pakistan director of Mercy Corps, said, “Anything less than this would have jeopardised trust in the climate negotiations and would have left countries like mine, Pakistan, paying the price…The effectiveness of the fund remains to be seen, and the real work will only begin after COP27.”
This article first appeared on The Third Pole.
Delegates at COP27 do nothing to phase out the use of fossil fuels
By Karen Graham
Published November 20, 2022
Wind turbines in front of a lignite-fired power plant near Niederaussem
By Karen Graham
Published November 20, 2022
Wind turbines in front of a lignite-fired power plant near Niederaussem
in western Germany. — © AFP
While agreeing to set up a “loss and damage” fund, delegates have left the world reeling into a climate disaster.
After a marathon session over two weeks, negotiators from 200 countries finally agreed to a “loss and Damage” fund for developing countries vulnerable to climate change made worse by polluting developed nations at a plenary session early Sunday.
COP27 President Sameh Shoukry gaveled the decision a little after 4 a.m. on Sunday to a round of applause. However, key issues, such as phasing out all fossil fuels and keeping the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit agreed to during last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, were again put on the back burner.
According to CNN News, negotiations over keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels turned into a fiasco after a number of nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, blocked a key proposal to phase out all fossil fuels, not just coal.
“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement.
Addressing the summit early on Sunday morning, the European Union’s Climate Chief Frans Timmermans said the EU was “disappointed” with the final outcome of the summit, reports the Washington Post.
“Too many parties are not ready to make more progress today in the fight against the climate crisis. What we have in front of us is not enough of a step forward for people and the planet,” Timmermans said.
After a year of devastating climate disasters around the globe, it is frustrating and underscores the challenge of getting the whole world to agree on rapid climate action when many powerful countries and organizations remain invested in the current energy system.
Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University and chair of the Global Carbon Project said it’s inevitable the world will surpass what scientists consider a safe warming threshold.
“It isn’t just COP27, it’s the lack of action at all the other COPs since the Paris accord,” Jackson said. “We’ve been bleeding for years now.”
Jackson blames entrenched interests, as well as political leaders and general human apathy for us not getting any further on attempts to limit global warming.
And to add insult to injury, COP27 had a huge fossil fuel industry lobby from oil-producing nations that kept stonewalling any attempts to move forward on agreeing to cut emissions.
Bottom line? Even though summit delegates affirmed the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, climate experts expressed dismay about a lack of mention of fossil fuels, or the need to phase them out to keep global temperatures from rising.
While agreeing to set up a “loss and damage” fund, delegates have left the world reeling into a climate disaster.
After a marathon session over two weeks, negotiators from 200 countries finally agreed to a “loss and Damage” fund for developing countries vulnerable to climate change made worse by polluting developed nations at a plenary session early Sunday.
COP27 President Sameh Shoukry gaveled the decision a little after 4 a.m. on Sunday to a round of applause. However, key issues, such as phasing out all fossil fuels and keeping the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit agreed to during last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, were again put on the back burner.
According to CNN News, negotiations over keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels turned into a fiasco after a number of nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, blocked a key proposal to phase out all fossil fuels, not just coal.
“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement.
Addressing the summit early on Sunday morning, the European Union’s Climate Chief Frans Timmermans said the EU was “disappointed” with the final outcome of the summit, reports the Washington Post.
“Too many parties are not ready to make more progress today in the fight against the climate crisis. What we have in front of us is not enough of a step forward for people and the planet,” Timmermans said.
After a year of devastating climate disasters around the globe, it is frustrating and underscores the challenge of getting the whole world to agree on rapid climate action when many powerful countries and organizations remain invested in the current energy system.
Rob Jackson, a climate scientist at Stanford University and chair of the Global Carbon Project said it’s inevitable the world will surpass what scientists consider a safe warming threshold.
“It isn’t just COP27, it’s the lack of action at all the other COPs since the Paris accord,” Jackson said. “We’ve been bleeding for years now.”
Jackson blames entrenched interests, as well as political leaders and general human apathy for us not getting any further on attempts to limit global warming.
And to add insult to injury, COP27 had a huge fossil fuel industry lobby from oil-producing nations that kept stonewalling any attempts to move forward on agreeing to cut emissions.
Bottom line? Even though summit delegates affirmed the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, climate experts expressed dismay about a lack of mention of fossil fuels, or the need to phase them out to keep global temperatures from rising.
Countries agree to create climate damage fund in historic COP27 deal
Despite a landmark deal on finance for "loss and damage", the package agreed in Sharm El Sheikh falls short on plans to cut emissions and leaves room for the expansion of gas
Despite a landmark deal on finance for "loss and damage", the package agreed in Sharm El Sheikh falls short on plans to cut emissions and leaves room for the expansion of gas
20 November 2022
By Madeleine Cuff
Indigenous women embrace at the COP27 summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Delegates at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, have agreed to create a global “loss and damage” fund to provide cash for vulnerable nations hit by the impacts of climate change.
After more than 20 years of campaigning by low-income countries battered by increasingly severe droughts, storms and other extreme weather, high-income nations finally relented in the early hours of 20 November and backed plans for a compensation fund.
Details of how the fund will operate, including the crucial question of which nations will contribute, are still to be worked out, but activists and delegates from vulnerable nations said the agreement was a historic victory for climate justice
Saleemul Huq at the Independent University in Bangladesh has spent decades pushing for a global loss and damage agreement. “This has been a demand from the most vulnerable countries for a long time and has always been blocked by the developed countries,” he says. “This time, all the developing countries were united under the leadership of Pakistan and managed to get the developed countries to finally agree to establish the fund for addressing loss and damage from human-induced climate change.”
However, the European Union, the UK and other high-income nations walked away from the talks deeply unhappy with the final outcome. They argue the deal does little to advance progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this decade – and therefore weakens any chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, a target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
On 18 November, the EU’s climate policy chief, Frans Timmermans, told reporters the bloc was willing to reverse its position and support the creation of a loss and damage fund. Observers said the move marked a breakthrough that ultimately paved the way for the final deal.
But the EU’s compromise offer came with conditions. In return for backing a loss and damage fund, the EU demanded tougher global commitments on cutting emissions this decade and phasing out coal, oil and gas use.
“We need to move forward, not backwards, and all [EU] ministers… are prepared to walk away if we do not have a result that does justice to what the world is waiting for – namely that we do something about this climate crisis,” he told reporters at the summit.
Yet few of those “mitigation” demands made it into the final pact, despite hours of tortuous negotiations that ran late into the night. Attempts to push for tougher carbon cuts faced strong opposition from large polluting countries and fossil fuel-rich states including Russia and Saudi Arabia.
No progress on cutting emissions
COP26 president Alok Sharma said the UK and others “had to fight relentlessly to hold the line” on what was agreed at last year’s summit in Glasgow, UK, which saw countries urged to deliver more ambitious climate plans with faster emissions cuts this decade.
He expressed disappointment that the final agreement lacked any reference to ensuring that global emissions peak before 2025 and to further action on phasing down the use of coal and the phasing out of fossil fuels.
In fact, the final text inserted a call for an increase in “low-emission and renewable energy”, which some countries fear could be interpreted as allowing for an expansion in natural gas use.
“Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5°C was weak,” Sharma said. “Unfortunately, it remains on life support. And all of us need to look ourselves in the mirror and consider if we have fully risen to that challenge over the past two weeks.”
Read more: Six climate tipping points are likely to occur if we breach 1.5°C goal
Without accelerating cuts to greenhouse gas emissions this decade, climate scientists warn it will be impossible to avoid a global temperature rise of more than 1.5°C.
Timmermans said the deal “does not address the yawning gap between climate science and climate policy” and that “it does not bring a high degree of confidence”.
Despite the discontent, the Egyptian presidency claimed victory. “We rose to the occasion,” Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, told delegates. “We worked around the clock, day and night, but united in working for one gain, one higher purpose, one common goal. In the end, we delivered. We listened to the calls of anguish and despair.”
By Madeleine Cuff
Indigenous women embrace at the COP27 summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Delegates at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, have agreed to create a global “loss and damage” fund to provide cash for vulnerable nations hit by the impacts of climate change.
After more than 20 years of campaigning by low-income countries battered by increasingly severe droughts, storms and other extreme weather, high-income nations finally relented in the early hours of 20 November and backed plans for a compensation fund.
Details of how the fund will operate, including the crucial question of which nations will contribute, are still to be worked out, but activists and delegates from vulnerable nations said the agreement was a historic victory for climate justice
Saleemul Huq at the Independent University in Bangladesh has spent decades pushing for a global loss and damage agreement. “This has been a demand from the most vulnerable countries for a long time and has always been blocked by the developed countries,” he says. “This time, all the developing countries were united under the leadership of Pakistan and managed to get the developed countries to finally agree to establish the fund for addressing loss and damage from human-induced climate change.”
However, the European Union, the UK and other high-income nations walked away from the talks deeply unhappy with the final outcome. They argue the deal does little to advance progress on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this decade – and therefore weakens any chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures, a target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
On 18 November, the EU’s climate policy chief, Frans Timmermans, told reporters the bloc was willing to reverse its position and support the creation of a loss and damage fund. Observers said the move marked a breakthrough that ultimately paved the way for the final deal.
But the EU’s compromise offer came with conditions. In return for backing a loss and damage fund, the EU demanded tougher global commitments on cutting emissions this decade and phasing out coal, oil and gas use.
“We need to move forward, not backwards, and all [EU] ministers… are prepared to walk away if we do not have a result that does justice to what the world is waiting for – namely that we do something about this climate crisis,” he told reporters at the summit.
Yet few of those “mitigation” demands made it into the final pact, despite hours of tortuous negotiations that ran late into the night. Attempts to push for tougher carbon cuts faced strong opposition from large polluting countries and fossil fuel-rich states including Russia and Saudi Arabia.
No progress on cutting emissions
COP26 president Alok Sharma said the UK and others “had to fight relentlessly to hold the line” on what was agreed at last year’s summit in Glasgow, UK, which saw countries urged to deliver more ambitious climate plans with faster emissions cuts this decade.
He expressed disappointment that the final agreement lacked any reference to ensuring that global emissions peak before 2025 and to further action on phasing down the use of coal and the phasing out of fossil fuels.
In fact, the final text inserted a call for an increase in “low-emission and renewable energy”, which some countries fear could be interpreted as allowing for an expansion in natural gas use.
“Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5°C was weak,” Sharma said. “Unfortunately, it remains on life support. And all of us need to look ourselves in the mirror and consider if we have fully risen to that challenge over the past two weeks.”
Read more: Six climate tipping points are likely to occur if we breach 1.5°C goal
Without accelerating cuts to greenhouse gas emissions this decade, climate scientists warn it will be impossible to avoid a global temperature rise of more than 1.5°C.
Timmermans said the deal “does not address the yawning gap between climate science and climate policy” and that “it does not bring a high degree of confidence”.
Despite the discontent, the Egyptian presidency claimed victory. “We rose to the occasion,” Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, told delegates. “We worked around the clock, day and night, but united in working for one gain, one higher purpose, one common goal. In the end, we delivered. We listened to the calls of anguish and despair.”
COP27 conference approves historic climate damage fund for developing nations
Mohamed Abd El Ghany / reuters
Igor Bonifacic
·Weekend Editor
Sun, November 20, 2022
Following two weeks of negotiations that felt doomed to go nowhere, the COP27 climate conference delivered a breakthrough deal to help developing nations cope with the often catastrophic effects of climate change. The Washington Post reports dignitaries agreed to create a “loss and damage fund” in the early hours of Sunday morning after two extra days of negotiations. The Alliance of Small Island States, an organization that includes countries whose very existence is threatened by climate change, called the agreement “historic.” However, as with the Glasgow Climate Pact that came out of last year’s COP26 conference, the consensus is that COP27 failed to deliver the action that is desperately needed to meet the demands of the current moment.
For one, the conference failed to see nations agree to new and stronger commitments to reduce their carbon emissions. According to The Post, China and Saudi Arabia were strongly against language calling for a phaseout of all fossil fuels, as were many African nations. Alok Sharma, the chair of COP26, said (via Phys.org) a clause on energy was "weakened, in the final minutes.”
The conference also left many of the most important details related to the loss and damage fund to be sorted out by a committee that will need to answer some difficult questions in the coming months. Among the issues that need to be decided on is how much the United States, historically the greatest emitter of greenhouse emissions globally, should pay out to vulnerable countries. The conference also ended without a clear commitment from China to pay into the fund.
The committee now has a year to draft recommendations for next year’s climate meeting in Dubai. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said governments took “an important step towards justice,” but fell short in pushing for the commitments that would ultimately protect the world’s most vulnerable people from the worst effects of climate change. "Our planet is still in the emergency room," Guterres said. "We need to drastically reduce emissions now and this is an issue this COP did not address."
Mohamed Abd El Ghany / reuters
Igor Bonifacic
·Weekend Editor
Sun, November 20, 2022
Following two weeks of negotiations that felt doomed to go nowhere, the COP27 climate conference delivered a breakthrough deal to help developing nations cope with the often catastrophic effects of climate change. The Washington Post reports dignitaries agreed to create a “loss and damage fund” in the early hours of Sunday morning after two extra days of negotiations. The Alliance of Small Island States, an organization that includes countries whose very existence is threatened by climate change, called the agreement “historic.” However, as with the Glasgow Climate Pact that came out of last year’s COP26 conference, the consensus is that COP27 failed to deliver the action that is desperately needed to meet the demands of the current moment.
For one, the conference failed to see nations agree to new and stronger commitments to reduce their carbon emissions. According to The Post, China and Saudi Arabia were strongly against language calling for a phaseout of all fossil fuels, as were many African nations. Alok Sharma, the chair of COP26, said (via Phys.org) a clause on energy was "weakened, in the final minutes.”
The conference also left many of the most important details related to the loss and damage fund to be sorted out by a committee that will need to answer some difficult questions in the coming months. Among the issues that need to be decided on is how much the United States, historically the greatest emitter of greenhouse emissions globally, should pay out to vulnerable countries. The conference also ended without a clear commitment from China to pay into the fund.
The committee now has a year to draft recommendations for next year’s climate meeting in Dubai. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said governments took “an important step towards justice,” but fell short in pushing for the commitments that would ultimately protect the world’s most vulnerable people from the worst effects of climate change. "Our planet is still in the emergency room," Guterres said. "We need to drastically reduce emissions now and this is an issue this COP did not address."
Explainer-Who will pay for climate 'loss and damage'?
COP27 climate summit, in Egypt
Sun, November 20, 2022
By Kate Abnett and Dominic Evans
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The COP27 summit of nearly 200 countries agreed on Sunday to set up a "loss and damage" fund to support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, overcoming decades of resistance from wealthy nations whose historic emissions have fuelled climate change.
Pakistan's climate minister Sherry Rehman, who was part of the campaign by developing nations to win the commitment at the two-week U.N. summit in Egypt, hailed the landmark decision as "downpayment on climate justice".
But the text of the agreement leaves open a number of crucial details to be worked out next year and beyond, including who would contribute to the fund and who would benefit.
Here's what you need to know about the agreement:
WHAT IS 'LOSS AND DAMAGE'?
In U.N. climate talks, "loss and damage" refers to costs being incurred from climate-fuelled weather extremes or impacts, like rising sea levels.
Climate funding so far has focused mostly on cutting carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to curb global warming, while about a third of it has gone toward projects to help communities adapt to future impacts.
Loss and damage funding is different, specifically covering the cost of damage that countries cannot avoid or adapt to.
But there is no agreement yet over what should count as "loss and damage" caused by climate change - which could include damaged infrastructure and property, as well as harder-to-value natural ecosystems or cultural assets.
A report by 55 vulnerable countries estimated their combined climate-linked losses over the last two decades totalled $525 billion, or 20% of their collective GDP. Some research suggests that by 2030 such losses could reach $580 billion per year.
WHO PAYS WHOM?
Vulnerable countries and campaigners in the past argued that rich countries that caused the bulk of climate change with their historical greenhouse gas emissions should pay.
The United States and European Union had resisted the argument, fearing spiralling liabilities, but changed their position during the COP27 summit. The EU has argued that China - the world's second-biggest economy, but classified by the U.N. as a developing country - should also pay into it.
A few governments have made relatively small but symbolic funding commitments for loss and damage: Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Scotland, plus the EU. China has not committed any payment.
Some existing U.N. and development bank funding does help states facing loss and damage, though it is not officially earmarked for that goal.
Also remaining to be worked out are the details on which countries or disasters qualify for compensation.
WHAT DOES THE COP27 AGREEMENT SAY?
The fund agreed at the U.N. summit in Egypt will be aimed at helping developing countries that are "particularly vulnerable" to climate change, language wanted by wealthy nations to ensure the money goes to the most urgent cases while also limiting the pool of potential recipients.
The deal lays out a roadmap for future decision-making, with recommendations to be made at next year's U.N. climate summit for decisions including who would oversee the fund, how the money would be dispersed – and to whom.
The agreement calls for the funds to come from a variety of existing sources, including financial institutions, rather than relying on rich nations to pay in.
Some countries have suggested other existing funds could also be a source of cash, although some experts say issues like long delays make those funds unsuitable for addressing loss and damage.
Other ideas include U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's call for a windfall profit tax on fossil fuel companies to raise funding.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett and Dominic Evans; Editing by Katy Daigle and Jane Merriman)
COP27 climate summit, in Egypt
Sun, November 20, 2022
By Kate Abnett and Dominic Evans
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The COP27 summit of nearly 200 countries agreed on Sunday to set up a "loss and damage" fund to support poorer countries being ravaged by climate impacts, overcoming decades of resistance from wealthy nations whose historic emissions have fuelled climate change.
Pakistan's climate minister Sherry Rehman, who was part of the campaign by developing nations to win the commitment at the two-week U.N. summit in Egypt, hailed the landmark decision as "downpayment on climate justice".
But the text of the agreement leaves open a number of crucial details to be worked out next year and beyond, including who would contribute to the fund and who would benefit.
Here's what you need to know about the agreement:
WHAT IS 'LOSS AND DAMAGE'?
In U.N. climate talks, "loss and damage" refers to costs being incurred from climate-fuelled weather extremes or impacts, like rising sea levels.
Climate funding so far has focused mostly on cutting carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to curb global warming, while about a third of it has gone toward projects to help communities adapt to future impacts.
Loss and damage funding is different, specifically covering the cost of damage that countries cannot avoid or adapt to.
But there is no agreement yet over what should count as "loss and damage" caused by climate change - which could include damaged infrastructure and property, as well as harder-to-value natural ecosystems or cultural assets.
A report by 55 vulnerable countries estimated their combined climate-linked losses over the last two decades totalled $525 billion, or 20% of their collective GDP. Some research suggests that by 2030 such losses could reach $580 billion per year.
WHO PAYS WHOM?
Vulnerable countries and campaigners in the past argued that rich countries that caused the bulk of climate change with their historical greenhouse gas emissions should pay.
The United States and European Union had resisted the argument, fearing spiralling liabilities, but changed their position during the COP27 summit. The EU has argued that China - the world's second-biggest economy, but classified by the U.N. as a developing country - should also pay into it.
A few governments have made relatively small but symbolic funding commitments for loss and damage: Denmark, Belgium, Germany and Scotland, plus the EU. China has not committed any payment.
Some existing U.N. and development bank funding does help states facing loss and damage, though it is not officially earmarked for that goal.
Also remaining to be worked out are the details on which countries or disasters qualify for compensation.
WHAT DOES THE COP27 AGREEMENT SAY?
The fund agreed at the U.N. summit in Egypt will be aimed at helping developing countries that are "particularly vulnerable" to climate change, language wanted by wealthy nations to ensure the money goes to the most urgent cases while also limiting the pool of potential recipients.
The deal lays out a roadmap for future decision-making, with recommendations to be made at next year's U.N. climate summit for decisions including who would oversee the fund, how the money would be dispersed – and to whom.
The agreement calls for the funds to come from a variety of existing sources, including financial institutions, rather than relying on rich nations to pay in.
Some countries have suggested other existing funds could also be a source of cash, although some experts say issues like long delays make those funds unsuitable for addressing loss and damage.
Other ideas include U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's call for a windfall profit tax on fossil fuel companies to raise funding.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett and Dominic Evans; Editing by Katy Daigle and Jane Merriman)
Cop27 deal leaves 1.5C global heating pledge ‘on life support’, says Alok Sharma
Cop27 deal leaves 1.5C global heating pledge ‘on life support’, says Alok Sharma
Saphora Smith
Sun, November 20, 2022
Alok Sharma has said the ambition to limit global heating to 1.5C is “on life support” after a deal was struck in the early hours of Sunday morning at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.
“Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 degrees was weak,” he said in a speech at the closing plenary session of the UN climate summit. “Unfortunately, it remains on life support.”
The Cop26 president, who shepherded through the Glasgow Climate Pact last year, welcomed what he described as “historic” progress on the contentious issue of loss and damage, with an agreement on a fund to compensate vulnerable countries for irrevocable climate damage reached at the summit.
The agreement was a major breakthrough after developing countries on the frontline of the climate crisis have called for loss and damage to be addressed for decades.
But Mr Sharma also ticked off the lack of progress on an agreement for the ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global heating.
“Emissions peaking before 2025, as the science tells us is necessary. Not in this text.
“Clear follow-through on the phase-down of coal. Not in this text.
“A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels. Not in this text,” he said in his speech.
“And all of us need to look ourselves in the mirror and consider if we have fully risen to that challenge over the past two weeks,” he added.
Adding to the chorus of disappointment on ambition to limit global heating on Sunday, shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband accused countries of “kicking the can down the road”.
“Cop27 has delivered an important step forward in recognising the consequences of the climate crisis for the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries,” Mr Miliband said, referring to the agreement struck on loss and damage.
"But yet again we hear the unmistakable sound of the can being kicked down the road on the necessary actions to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees – and, as a result, it is now at grave risk.”
The Press Association contributed to this report
Cop27 deal leaves 1.5C global heating pledge ‘on life support’, says Alok Sharma
Saphora Smith
Sun, November 20, 2022
Alok Sharma has said the ambition to limit global heating to 1.5C is “on life support” after a deal was struck in the early hours of Sunday morning at the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.
“Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 degrees was weak,” he said in a speech at the closing plenary session of the UN climate summit. “Unfortunately, it remains on life support.”
The Cop26 president, who shepherded through the Glasgow Climate Pact last year, welcomed what he described as “historic” progress on the contentious issue of loss and damage, with an agreement on a fund to compensate vulnerable countries for irrevocable climate damage reached at the summit.
The agreement was a major breakthrough after developing countries on the frontline of the climate crisis have called for loss and damage to be addressed for decades.
But Mr Sharma also ticked off the lack of progress on an agreement for the ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global heating.
“Emissions peaking before 2025, as the science tells us is necessary. Not in this text.
“Clear follow-through on the phase-down of coal. Not in this text.
“A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels. Not in this text,” he said in his speech.
“And all of us need to look ourselves in the mirror and consider if we have fully risen to that challenge over the past two weeks,” he added.
Adding to the chorus of disappointment on ambition to limit global heating on Sunday, shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband accused countries of “kicking the can down the road”.
“Cop27 has delivered an important step forward in recognising the consequences of the climate crisis for the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries,” Mr Miliband said, referring to the agreement struck on loss and damage.
"But yet again we hear the unmistakable sound of the can being kicked down the road on the necessary actions to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees – and, as a result, it is now at grave risk.”
The Press Association contributed to this report
COP27 delivers climate fund breakthrough at cost of progress on emissions
Sat, November 19, 2022
By Valerie Volcovici, Dominic Evans and William James
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - Countries closed this year's U.N. climate summit on Sunday with a hard-fought deal to create a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters, even as many lamented its lack of ambition in tackling the emissions causing them.
The deal was widely lauded as a triumph for responding to the devastating impact that global warming is already having on vulnerable countries. But many countries said they felt pressured to give up on tougher commitments for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in order for the landmark deal on the loss and damage fund to go through.
Delegates - worn out after intense, overnight negotiations - made no objections as Egypt’s COP27 President Sameh Shoukry rattled through the final agenda items and gavelled the deal through.
Despite having no agreement for a stronger commitment to the 1.5 C goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, "we went with what the agreement was here because we want to stand with the most vulnerable," Germany's climate secretary Jennifer Morgan, visibly shaken, told Reuters.
When asked by Reuters whether the goal of stronger climate-fighting ambition had been compromised for the deal, Mexico's chief climate negotiator Camila Zepeda summed up the mood among exhausted negotiators.
"Probably. You take a win when you can."
LOSS AND DAMAGE
The deal for a loss and damage fund marked a diplomatic coup for small islands and other vulnerable nations in winning over the 27-nation European Union and the United States, which had long resisted the idea for fear that such a fund could open them to legal liability for historic emissions.
Those concerns were assuaged with language in the agreement calling for the funds to come from a variety of existing sources, including financial institutions, rather than relying on rich nations to pay in.
The climate envoy from the Marshall Islands said she was "worn out" but happy with the fund's approval. "So many people all this week told us we wouldn't get it," Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner said. "So glad they were wrong."
But it likely will be several years before the fund exists, with the agreement setting out only a roadmap for resolving lingering questions including who would oversee the fund, how the money would be dispersed – and to whom.
U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry, who was not at the weekend negotiations in person after testing positive for COVID-19, on Sunday welcomed the deal to "establish arrangements to respond to the devastating impact of climate change on vulnerable communities around the world."
In a statement, he said he would continue to press major emitters like China to "significantly enhance their ambition" in keeping the 1.5 C goal alive.
FOSSIL FUEL FIZZLE
The price paid for a deal on the loss and damage fund was most evident in the language around emission reductions and reducing the use of polluting fossil fuels – known in the parlance of U.N. climate negotiations as "mitigation."
Last year's COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, had focused on a theme of keeping the 1.5C goal alive – as scientists warn that warming beyond that threshold would see climate change spiral to extremes.
Countries were asked then to update their national climate targets before this year’s Egypt summit. Only a fraction of the nearly 200 parties did so.
While praising the loss and damage deal, many countries decried COP27’s failure to push mitigation further and said some countries were trying to roll back commitments made in the Glasgow Climate Pact.
"We had to fight relentlessly to hold the line of Glasgow," a visibly frustrated Alok Sharma, architect of the Glasgow deal, told the summit.
He listed off a number of ambition-boosting measures that were stymied in the negotiations for the final COP27 deal in Egypt: "Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary? Not in this text. Clear follow-through on the phase down of coal? Not in this text. A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in this text."
On fossil fuels, the COP27 deal text largely repeats wording from Glasgow, calling up parties to accelerate "efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies."
Efforts to include a commitment to phase out, or at least phase down, all fossil fuels were thwarted.
A separate "mitigation work programme" agreement, also approved on Sunday, contained several clauses that some parties, including the European Union, felt weakened commitment to ever more ambitious emissions-cutting targets.
Critics pointed to a section which they said undermined the Glasgow commitment to regularly renew emissions targets – with language saying the work programme would "not impose new targets or goals". Another section of the COP27 deal dropped the idea of annual target renewal in favour of returning to a longer five-year cycle set out in the Paris pact.
"It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
The deal also included a reference to "low-emissions energy," raising concern among some that it opened the door to the growing use of natural gas - a fossil fuel that leads to both carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
"It does not break with Glasgow completely, but it doesn't raise ambition at all," Norway's Climate Minister Espen Barth Eide told reporters.
The climate minister of the Maldives, which faces future inundation from climate-driven sea level rise, lamented the lack of ambition on curbing emissions.
"I recognise the progress we made in COP27" with the loss and damage fund, Aminath Shauna told the plenary. But "we have failed on mitigation ... We have to ensure that we increase ambition to peak emissions by 2025. We have to phase out fossil fuel."
Summit yields ‘historic win’ for climate payments
Thomas Hartwell/AP Photo
Zack Colman and Karl Mathiesen
Sat, November 19, 2022
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – Countries meeting in Egypt clinched a deal early Sunday that could send billions of dollars from wealthy countries to help developing nations treat the symptoms of climate change.
But the agreement’s final text also offered its tacit blessing to natural gas, a fossil fuel that’s worsening the underlying disease.
That surprise last-minute addition dulled the sense of triumph for activists who had hailed the major achievement of this two-week U.N. climate summit — the first-ever global agreement calling for creation of a new global fund to pay for climate damage afflicting less-wealthy countries. The U.S. and European Union will face pressure to contribute to the fund, but also want China to pay as well.
Details about the fund will need to be filled out at next year’s climate summit in the United Arab Emirates.
People in the summit meeting hall broke into loud applause and hugged when organizers announced the deal on climate payments, after an arduous final day and night of negotiating. It was a long-fought win for the countries that are burning, drowning and sweltering under the already-rampant impacts of global warming, and swept away decades of American and European opposition.
“It is a small victory for humankind,” said Avinash Persaud, special climate envoy to the prime minister of Barbados.
Only later did people read the complete final text, which had been prepared by the summit’s Egyptian hosts. That text included a message that “low-emission” energy should be part of the world’s response to rising seas and searing heat waves.
The term was vague enough to cover multiple interpretations – it certainly includes nuclear power, or some forms of hydrogen. But defenders of natural gas consistently note that it produces less carbon dioxide pollution than either coal or oil — though it still contributes to baking the planet.
The mention was slipped into the final version of the deal at the very last minute. Moments before delegates accepted the text, several negotiators POLITICO spoke to had not noticed the change.
“Absolutely it’s gas,” Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, said of the new language.
Others weren’t so sure. An EU official said they would absolutely not define low emissions to include natural gas.
New Zealand Climate Change Minister James Shaw called it “a mystery” how the language slipped into the final text, and he downplayed the idea that it would give countries license to use gas. Still, he said the language could be read as including natural gas.
“The option of interpreting that way always existed, and countries have interpreted it that way,” he told reporters. “I don't agree with it. But, you know, that's kind of their interpretation.”
Asked by reporters whether “low-emission” energy excluded gas, Egyptian diplomat Wael Aboulmagd said: “Not necessarily, no.”
“It depends because every country is gonna have to utilize whatever sources of energy it has until it makes the transition” to cleaner sources, said Aboulmagd, who is the special representative to the climate summit’s Egyptian president.
The U.S. delegation declined to answer questions about what “low-emission” means. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
'It does not address the yawning gap'
More broadly, the agreement includes few provisions that would hasten countries’ efforts to cut greenhouse gas pollution or shift away from fossil fuels. That’s another disappointment for climate advocates, who say the deal may consign even more communities to rising seas and worsening droughts and storms — which will then require more rounds of aid..
“You need substantially more funds and it will be immensely more expensive to adapt than to mitigate,” Norwegian Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide told reporters.
A senior Egyptian official said the lack of will to move faster stemmed from the absence of money to finance clean energy projects and adapt to rising seas and temperatures. Rich governments like the U.S. and EU have consistently underdelivered on that front.
Attempts during the talks to push for steeper carbon reductions fell flat in the face of resistance from large polluters and producers of fossil fuels, including Saudi Arabia and China. Oil- and gas-rich nations also squashed a push to widen a promised phasedown of coal burning to include all fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, scientific evidence is mounting that the world is falling far short of the kinds of carbon cuts needed to avert catastrophe.
“It does not bring a high degree of confidence,” European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans said of the final decision. “It does not address the yawning gap between climate science and climate policy.”
The U.S. bends to demands for a climate fund
The summit’s headlining deal — for the creation of a climate damage fund — came together after weeks of grumbling by developing nations about U.S. stinginess, a slight melting of frosty relations between Washington and Beijing, and a last-minute threat by European negotiators to abandon the talks.
Appearances by President Joe Biden and incoming Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva punctuated the summit, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry came down with Covid-19 at the critical moment, and delegates complained about food shortages and a river of sewage that ran through the negotiation compound.
In swallowing the climate damage fund, the U.S. and the European Union were forced to break with decades of entrenched resistance to paying out for damage caused by their own greenhouse gas pollution — unwilling to be pinned for any form of liability. Transatlantic unity was tested and split by an organized bloc of 134 developing countries, mustered by flood-struck Pakistan.
The EU made a midweek switch to back the creation of a fund, further isolating the U.S., which eventually relented in a move that POLITICO reported early Saturday.
Later in the day, the European Commission’s Timmermans was claiming credit for a move “to bridge the gap between the different positions.” The Europeans’ maneuver, he said, “led to an opening.”
Filling the new fund with cash will be the next fight. The U.S. and other developed countries will be under pressure to pledge direct funding under the deal, which does not require congressional approval.
An EU official said the bloc will work next year to ensure that the agreement’s reference to "identifying and expanding sources of funding" is used to widen the donor base to include countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. The United Nations has traditionally categorized those countries as developing, despite their wealth and their status as major sources of carbon pollution.
China’s role has been a point of contention for the United States in these talks, even as Biden has tried to use the negotiations to try to reassert American leadership in the fight against catastrophic climate change. The deal is already facing criticism back home from Republicans, who have uniformly opposed Biden’s climate agenda and are due to take control of the House in January.
“Sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to a U.N. sponsored green slush fund is completely misguided,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. “The Biden administration should focus on lowering spending at home, not shipping money to the U.N. for new climate deals.
“Innovation, not reparations, is key to fighting climate change,” he added.
But it's not yet clear how the U.S. would fund any contribution, which may come from sources other than public government dollars.
In a statement after the summit, Kerry said the U.S. “welcomes” the creation of a fund, which he called a “voluntary funding” stream.
“The fund, which will be one among many available avenues for voluntary funding, should be designed to be effective and to attract an expanded donor base,” he said.
Floods, droughts and heatwaves helped fuel demands
The annual negotiations came against an inauspicious backdrop of war in Europe, food crises, spiking energy prices, spiraling debt in developing countries and icy relations between the world’s top two climate polluters, China and the United States. It had all the ingredients for failure and geopolitical score-settling.
All this global pain rode on the back of floods that displaced millions in Pakistan, Australia and Nigeria, heatwaves that left thousands dead in Europe and smashed records in China and climate-driven droughts that exacerbated food shortages.
Many of the poorest countries in the world came to Sharm El-Sheikh trapped in the hammer-and-anvil effects of these overlapping crises, and they proved unwilling to compromise on their demand for a new global fund. This fund will be part of a larger package of pots of money that countries including the U.S. had already agreed to finance, such as those aimed at providing humanitarian aid or a recently launched disaster insurance program called the Global Shield.
In addition, the deal asked the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund to investigate how they can contribute to the relief effort. The potential for really meaningful sums of capital to flow comes from these international lenders.
In fact, multilateral development banks could deliver billions of dollars to those in need if they pursued "aggressive" reforms and "took more risk, said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former World Bank vice president.
Persaud, the adviser to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, said other sources of funding could include methane taxes, cross-border carbon taxes, and fossil fuel export levies.
On Saturday evening, Bangladeshi scientist and director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development Saleemul Huq was savoring the moment. He has waged a 30-year crusade to demand that the world recognize the harm that countries like his are sustaining, and that some of the responsibility of big polluters be returned in the form of financial support.
“It's a historic win to get the fund. Now we need to build on it and make it actually deliver something to the people who are suffering,” he said.
Drama near the finale
The talks hit a final burst of turbulence Saturday morning when Timmermans, flanked by 13 stern-looking European ministers, threatened to storm out of the conference if negotiators didn’t meet the EU’s demands for stronger commitments to cut carbon pollution. Those demands included a schedule for countries to ramp up their national plans for countering climate change.
"I think our press conference this morning didn't do any harm,” Irish Environment Minister Eamon Ryan told POLITICO. “And it was honest — the text we saw in the middle of last night wasn't good text. It was just an honest assessment of it. So I think that did help."
But the political theater turned out to be only so much shouting early when the summit’s Egyptian presidency presented a final decision document that made no advance on greenhouse-gas cuts beyond what came from last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Plus it added the hat tip to gas.
Holding onto the gains achieved in Glasgow “was like a battle,” said British Member of Parliament Alok Sharma, who had presided over those talks.
While this week's negotiations went into overtime, the air conditioning did not. That left diplomats ironing out crucial details in sticky heat in their makeshift offices, where the canvas roofs and walls operated as virtual greenhouses.
Yet developing nations that have endured some of the worst of the converging global crises held firm against wealthy nations who demanded more aggressive pledges to curb emissions.
As the hot day gave way to night, negotiators for Saudi Arabia, China, India and other major developing countries huddled with Egyptian summit President Sameh Shoukry to discuss text for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, which remained fractious even hours after delegates cemented a deal on loss and damage payments.
The U.K. also joined.
The developing nations had been driving a hard line against future climate commitments across an array of economic sectors, which developed countries had sought. Sharma emerged from the Egyptian presidency’s offices stone-faced, walking stridently into a meeting where Shoukry was due to present what negotiators called his vision of a compromise.
That meeting turned into a three-hour airing of grievances. Fossil fuel heavyweights like Russia attempted to block language to phase out fossil fuels with unchecked emissions. The U.S. backed that phase-out language, said David Waskow, director of the World Resource Institute’s international climate initiative.
‘Would you like to join us?’
Talks grew tense. Sue Biniaz, the de facto U.S. lead with Kerry stuck in a hotel room, bolted after Shoukry when he briefly departed. The two chatted amidst a throng of security shadowing Shoukry, who turned away, leaving Biniaz standing expectantly. Shoukry then turned back: “Would you like to join us, Sue?” he said, then asked Biniaz to explain her objections to part of the deal as they ascended the ramp to his office.
During anonymous briefings throughout the summit’s second week, European officials had accused Shoukry of acting in the interests of a small group of countries heavily reliant on fossil fuels, including China and Saudi Arabia. An Egyptian official rejected that charge.
Friends and foes alike kept bringing up the United States’ failure to deliver its fair share of finance, undermining Biden’s tilt at leadership.
Then, after the EU changed its position and offered to support the creation of a new fund, the U.S. was left standing alone.
Late Friday, a revised payment proposal circulating at the conference site showed that U.S. resistance to creating a climate-damage fund appeared to be weakening. Just eight days after Biden boasted of his administration’s climate actions during a brief appearance on the summit’s stage, the U.S. had dropped its opposition to the talks’ most high-profile and vexing topic.
The U.S.-backed proposal didn’t go as far as an earlier one by the EU that aimed to meet calls from developing countries for a fund to help them recover from climate-fueled disasters.
But the U.S. had gone further than it planned or expected. Biden administration officials for weeks had expressed preference for an outcome that would first assess whether a new funding stream was even necessary, worrying that setting it up would be too cumbersome.
“The U.S. has had such anxiety about this for such a long time. They blocked even a conversation about it – they couldn't even talk about it,” Shaw said. “And then it was like, ‘OK, let's talk about it.’ Boom, two weeks later we've got a deal. I mean, that's unprecedented.”
Sara Schonhardt contributed to this report.
Sat, November 19, 2022
By Valerie Volcovici, Dominic Evans and William James
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - Countries closed this year's U.N. climate summit on Sunday with a hard-fought deal to create a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters, even as many lamented its lack of ambition in tackling the emissions causing them.
The deal was widely lauded as a triumph for responding to the devastating impact that global warming is already having on vulnerable countries. But many countries said they felt pressured to give up on tougher commitments for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in order for the landmark deal on the loss and damage fund to go through.
Delegates - worn out after intense, overnight negotiations - made no objections as Egypt’s COP27 President Sameh Shoukry rattled through the final agenda items and gavelled the deal through.
Despite having no agreement for a stronger commitment to the 1.5 C goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, "we went with what the agreement was here because we want to stand with the most vulnerable," Germany's climate secretary Jennifer Morgan, visibly shaken, told Reuters.
When asked by Reuters whether the goal of stronger climate-fighting ambition had been compromised for the deal, Mexico's chief climate negotiator Camila Zepeda summed up the mood among exhausted negotiators.
"Probably. You take a win when you can."
LOSS AND DAMAGE
The deal for a loss and damage fund marked a diplomatic coup for small islands and other vulnerable nations in winning over the 27-nation European Union and the United States, which had long resisted the idea for fear that such a fund could open them to legal liability for historic emissions.
Those concerns were assuaged with language in the agreement calling for the funds to come from a variety of existing sources, including financial institutions, rather than relying on rich nations to pay in.
The climate envoy from the Marshall Islands said she was "worn out" but happy with the fund's approval. "So many people all this week told us we wouldn't get it," Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner said. "So glad they were wrong."
But it likely will be several years before the fund exists, with the agreement setting out only a roadmap for resolving lingering questions including who would oversee the fund, how the money would be dispersed – and to whom.
U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry, who was not at the weekend negotiations in person after testing positive for COVID-19, on Sunday welcomed the deal to "establish arrangements to respond to the devastating impact of climate change on vulnerable communities around the world."
In a statement, he said he would continue to press major emitters like China to "significantly enhance their ambition" in keeping the 1.5 C goal alive.
FOSSIL FUEL FIZZLE
The price paid for a deal on the loss and damage fund was most evident in the language around emission reductions and reducing the use of polluting fossil fuels – known in the parlance of U.N. climate negotiations as "mitigation."
Last year's COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, had focused on a theme of keeping the 1.5C goal alive – as scientists warn that warming beyond that threshold would see climate change spiral to extremes.
Countries were asked then to update their national climate targets before this year’s Egypt summit. Only a fraction of the nearly 200 parties did so.
While praising the loss and damage deal, many countries decried COP27’s failure to push mitigation further and said some countries were trying to roll back commitments made in the Glasgow Climate Pact.
"We had to fight relentlessly to hold the line of Glasgow," a visibly frustrated Alok Sharma, architect of the Glasgow deal, told the summit.
He listed off a number of ambition-boosting measures that were stymied in the negotiations for the final COP27 deal in Egypt: "Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary? Not in this text. Clear follow-through on the phase down of coal? Not in this text. A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in this text."
On fossil fuels, the COP27 deal text largely repeats wording from Glasgow, calling up parties to accelerate "efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies."
Efforts to include a commitment to phase out, or at least phase down, all fossil fuels were thwarted.
A separate "mitigation work programme" agreement, also approved on Sunday, contained several clauses that some parties, including the European Union, felt weakened commitment to ever more ambitious emissions-cutting targets.
Critics pointed to a section which they said undermined the Glasgow commitment to regularly renew emissions targets – with language saying the work programme would "not impose new targets or goals". Another section of the COP27 deal dropped the idea of annual target renewal in favour of returning to a longer five-year cycle set out in the Paris pact.
"It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
The deal also included a reference to "low-emissions energy," raising concern among some that it opened the door to the growing use of natural gas - a fossil fuel that leads to both carbon dioxide and methane emissions.
"It does not break with Glasgow completely, but it doesn't raise ambition at all," Norway's Climate Minister Espen Barth Eide told reporters.
The climate minister of the Maldives, which faces future inundation from climate-driven sea level rise, lamented the lack of ambition on curbing emissions.
"I recognise the progress we made in COP27" with the loss and damage fund, Aminath Shauna told the plenary. But "we have failed on mitigation ... We have to ensure that we increase ambition to peak emissions by 2025. We have to phase out fossil fuel."
Summit yields ‘historic win’ for climate payments
Thomas Hartwell/AP Photo
Zack Colman and Karl Mathiesen
Sat, November 19, 2022
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt – Countries meeting in Egypt clinched a deal early Sunday that could send billions of dollars from wealthy countries to help developing nations treat the symptoms of climate change.
But the agreement’s final text also offered its tacit blessing to natural gas, a fossil fuel that’s worsening the underlying disease.
That surprise last-minute addition dulled the sense of triumph for activists who had hailed the major achievement of this two-week U.N. climate summit — the first-ever global agreement calling for creation of a new global fund to pay for climate damage afflicting less-wealthy countries. The U.S. and European Union will face pressure to contribute to the fund, but also want China to pay as well.
Details about the fund will need to be filled out at next year’s climate summit in the United Arab Emirates.
People in the summit meeting hall broke into loud applause and hugged when organizers announced the deal on climate payments, after an arduous final day and night of negotiating. It was a long-fought win for the countries that are burning, drowning and sweltering under the already-rampant impacts of global warming, and swept away decades of American and European opposition.
“It is a small victory for humankind,” said Avinash Persaud, special climate envoy to the prime minister of Barbados.
Only later did people read the complete final text, which had been prepared by the summit’s Egyptian hosts. That text included a message that “low-emission” energy should be part of the world’s response to rising seas and searing heat waves.
The term was vague enough to cover multiple interpretations – it certainly includes nuclear power, or some forms of hydrogen. But defenders of natural gas consistently note that it produces less carbon dioxide pollution than either coal or oil — though it still contributes to baking the planet.
The mention was slipped into the final version of the deal at the very last minute. Moments before delegates accepted the text, several negotiators POLITICO spoke to had not noticed the change.
“Absolutely it’s gas,” Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, said of the new language.
Others weren’t so sure. An EU official said they would absolutely not define low emissions to include natural gas.
New Zealand Climate Change Minister James Shaw called it “a mystery” how the language slipped into the final text, and he downplayed the idea that it would give countries license to use gas. Still, he said the language could be read as including natural gas.
“The option of interpreting that way always existed, and countries have interpreted it that way,” he told reporters. “I don't agree with it. But, you know, that's kind of their interpretation.”
Asked by reporters whether “low-emission” energy excluded gas, Egyptian diplomat Wael Aboulmagd said: “Not necessarily, no.”
“It depends because every country is gonna have to utilize whatever sources of energy it has until it makes the transition” to cleaner sources, said Aboulmagd, who is the special representative to the climate summit’s Egyptian president.
The U.S. delegation declined to answer questions about what “low-emission” means. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
'It does not address the yawning gap'
More broadly, the agreement includes few provisions that would hasten countries’ efforts to cut greenhouse gas pollution or shift away from fossil fuels. That’s another disappointment for climate advocates, who say the deal may consign even more communities to rising seas and worsening droughts and storms — which will then require more rounds of aid..
“You need substantially more funds and it will be immensely more expensive to adapt than to mitigate,” Norwegian Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide told reporters.
A senior Egyptian official said the lack of will to move faster stemmed from the absence of money to finance clean energy projects and adapt to rising seas and temperatures. Rich governments like the U.S. and EU have consistently underdelivered on that front.
Attempts during the talks to push for steeper carbon reductions fell flat in the face of resistance from large polluters and producers of fossil fuels, including Saudi Arabia and China. Oil- and gas-rich nations also squashed a push to widen a promised phasedown of coal burning to include all fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, scientific evidence is mounting that the world is falling far short of the kinds of carbon cuts needed to avert catastrophe.
“It does not bring a high degree of confidence,” European Commission Executive Vice President Frans Timmermans said of the final decision. “It does not address the yawning gap between climate science and climate policy.”
The U.S. bends to demands for a climate fund
The summit’s headlining deal — for the creation of a climate damage fund — came together after weeks of grumbling by developing nations about U.S. stinginess, a slight melting of frosty relations between Washington and Beijing, and a last-minute threat by European negotiators to abandon the talks.
Appearances by President Joe Biden and incoming Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva punctuated the summit, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry came down with Covid-19 at the critical moment, and delegates complained about food shortages and a river of sewage that ran through the negotiation compound.
In swallowing the climate damage fund, the U.S. and the European Union were forced to break with decades of entrenched resistance to paying out for damage caused by their own greenhouse gas pollution — unwilling to be pinned for any form of liability. Transatlantic unity was tested and split by an organized bloc of 134 developing countries, mustered by flood-struck Pakistan.
The EU made a midweek switch to back the creation of a fund, further isolating the U.S., which eventually relented in a move that POLITICO reported early Saturday.
Later in the day, the European Commission’s Timmermans was claiming credit for a move “to bridge the gap between the different positions.” The Europeans’ maneuver, he said, “led to an opening.”
Filling the new fund with cash will be the next fight. The U.S. and other developed countries will be under pressure to pledge direct funding under the deal, which does not require congressional approval.
An EU official said the bloc will work next year to ensure that the agreement’s reference to "identifying and expanding sources of funding" is used to widen the donor base to include countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. The United Nations has traditionally categorized those countries as developing, despite their wealth and their status as major sources of carbon pollution.
China’s role has been a point of contention for the United States in these talks, even as Biden has tried to use the negotiations to try to reassert American leadership in the fight against catastrophic climate change. The deal is already facing criticism back home from Republicans, who have uniformly opposed Biden’s climate agenda and are due to take control of the House in January.
“Sending U.S. taxpayer dollars to a U.N. sponsored green slush fund is completely misguided,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. “The Biden administration should focus on lowering spending at home, not shipping money to the U.N. for new climate deals.
“Innovation, not reparations, is key to fighting climate change,” he added.
But it's not yet clear how the U.S. would fund any contribution, which may come from sources other than public government dollars.
In a statement after the summit, Kerry said the U.S. “welcomes” the creation of a fund, which he called a “voluntary funding” stream.
“The fund, which will be one among many available avenues for voluntary funding, should be designed to be effective and to attract an expanded donor base,” he said.
Floods, droughts and heatwaves helped fuel demands
The annual negotiations came against an inauspicious backdrop of war in Europe, food crises, spiking energy prices, spiraling debt in developing countries and icy relations between the world’s top two climate polluters, China and the United States. It had all the ingredients for failure and geopolitical score-settling.
All this global pain rode on the back of floods that displaced millions in Pakistan, Australia and Nigeria, heatwaves that left thousands dead in Europe and smashed records in China and climate-driven droughts that exacerbated food shortages.
Many of the poorest countries in the world came to Sharm El-Sheikh trapped in the hammer-and-anvil effects of these overlapping crises, and they proved unwilling to compromise on their demand for a new global fund. This fund will be part of a larger package of pots of money that countries including the U.S. had already agreed to finance, such as those aimed at providing humanitarian aid or a recently launched disaster insurance program called the Global Shield.
In addition, the deal asked the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund to investigate how they can contribute to the relief effort. The potential for really meaningful sums of capital to flow comes from these international lenders.
In fact, multilateral development banks could deliver billions of dollars to those in need if they pursued "aggressive" reforms and "took more risk, said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former World Bank vice president.
Persaud, the adviser to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, said other sources of funding could include methane taxes, cross-border carbon taxes, and fossil fuel export levies.
On Saturday evening, Bangladeshi scientist and director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development Saleemul Huq was savoring the moment. He has waged a 30-year crusade to demand that the world recognize the harm that countries like his are sustaining, and that some of the responsibility of big polluters be returned in the form of financial support.
“It's a historic win to get the fund. Now we need to build on it and make it actually deliver something to the people who are suffering,” he said.
Drama near the finale
The talks hit a final burst of turbulence Saturday morning when Timmermans, flanked by 13 stern-looking European ministers, threatened to storm out of the conference if negotiators didn’t meet the EU’s demands for stronger commitments to cut carbon pollution. Those demands included a schedule for countries to ramp up their national plans for countering climate change.
"I think our press conference this morning didn't do any harm,” Irish Environment Minister Eamon Ryan told POLITICO. “And it was honest — the text we saw in the middle of last night wasn't good text. It was just an honest assessment of it. So I think that did help."
But the political theater turned out to be only so much shouting early when the summit’s Egyptian presidency presented a final decision document that made no advance on greenhouse-gas cuts beyond what came from last year’s climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Plus it added the hat tip to gas.
Holding onto the gains achieved in Glasgow “was like a battle,” said British Member of Parliament Alok Sharma, who had presided over those talks.
While this week's negotiations went into overtime, the air conditioning did not. That left diplomats ironing out crucial details in sticky heat in their makeshift offices, where the canvas roofs and walls operated as virtual greenhouses.
Yet developing nations that have endured some of the worst of the converging global crises held firm against wealthy nations who demanded more aggressive pledges to curb emissions.
As the hot day gave way to night, negotiators for Saudi Arabia, China, India and other major developing countries huddled with Egyptian summit President Sameh Shoukry to discuss text for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, which remained fractious even hours after delegates cemented a deal on loss and damage payments.
The U.K. also joined.
The developing nations had been driving a hard line against future climate commitments across an array of economic sectors, which developed countries had sought. Sharma emerged from the Egyptian presidency’s offices stone-faced, walking stridently into a meeting where Shoukry was due to present what negotiators called his vision of a compromise.
That meeting turned into a three-hour airing of grievances. Fossil fuel heavyweights like Russia attempted to block language to phase out fossil fuels with unchecked emissions. The U.S. backed that phase-out language, said David Waskow, director of the World Resource Institute’s international climate initiative.
‘Would you like to join us?’
Talks grew tense. Sue Biniaz, the de facto U.S. lead with Kerry stuck in a hotel room, bolted after Shoukry when he briefly departed. The two chatted amidst a throng of security shadowing Shoukry, who turned away, leaving Biniaz standing expectantly. Shoukry then turned back: “Would you like to join us, Sue?” he said, then asked Biniaz to explain her objections to part of the deal as they ascended the ramp to his office.
During anonymous briefings throughout the summit’s second week, European officials had accused Shoukry of acting in the interests of a small group of countries heavily reliant on fossil fuels, including China and Saudi Arabia. An Egyptian official rejected that charge.
Friends and foes alike kept bringing up the United States’ failure to deliver its fair share of finance, undermining Biden’s tilt at leadership.
Then, after the EU changed its position and offered to support the creation of a new fund, the U.S. was left standing alone.
Late Friday, a revised payment proposal circulating at the conference site showed that U.S. resistance to creating a climate-damage fund appeared to be weakening. Just eight days after Biden boasted of his administration’s climate actions during a brief appearance on the summit’s stage, the U.S. had dropped its opposition to the talks’ most high-profile and vexing topic.
The U.S.-backed proposal didn’t go as far as an earlier one by the EU that aimed to meet calls from developing countries for a fund to help them recover from climate-fueled disasters.
But the U.S. had gone further than it planned or expected. Biden administration officials for weeks had expressed preference for an outcome that would first assess whether a new funding stream was even necessary, worrying that setting it up would be too cumbersome.
“The U.S. has had such anxiety about this for such a long time. They blocked even a conversation about it – they couldn't even talk about it,” Shaw said. “And then it was like, ‘OK, let's talk about it.’ Boom, two weeks later we've got a deal. I mean, that's unprecedented.”
Sara Schonhardt contributed to this report.
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