COP27 talks extended amid lack of consensus
SHARM EL-SHEIKH: The COP27 global climate summit in Egypt will continue on Saturday, adding an extra to negotiations, to allow delegates more time to agree on divisive issues such as how to compensate the poorest countries for the damage caused by climate change and how fast the world should bring down greenhouse gas emissions.
The European Union tried to break the deadlock late on Thursday, offering a new fund for loss and damage (the term used for the cost of climate change impact) in exchange for stronger ambition to mitigate emissions. Early on Friday morning, the Egyptian presidency published a draft agreement that offered no firm proposal on the first part and fell short on the second.
Delegates expect the talks to go into overtime as they strive for a last ditch compromise.
The EU proposal would include a commitment to immediately establish a new loss and damage response fund with details worked out over the next year as well as a commitment to examine debt and reform the multilateral development banks. The block wants large developing world emitters such as China to pay in. In exchange, countries would vow to peak global emissions before 2025 and phase down all fossil fuels — not just coal, which was spelled out in the Glasgow climate pact last year. “If this proposal by the European Union on the fund is to be accepted, then only in a package deal with serious, serious plans on mitigation,” EU climate chief, Frans Timmermans said. “This is our final offer.”
SHARM EL-SHEIKH: The United Nations climate agency on Friday published a draft negotiating text of the deal that delegates at the COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh are hoping to agree in the coming days.
The text, which builds on earlier, less formal iterations, did not set out the proposed solution to one of the most contentious issues at the summit, the ‘loss and damage’ financial arrangements to provide funding to developing countries suffering catastrophic climate events.
Instead it contained placeholder
text, indicating delegates were still seeking consensus on the matter.
The issue made it onto the formal summit agenda for the first time in what was seen as a
breakthrough on a subject that has long divided developed and developing nations.
Since then however, talks on what to do next have made little progress.
Late on Thursday, the European Union made a proposal aimed at resolving the impasse.
The overarching deal text, time-stamped at 03:30 AM reflecting the intensity of the final negotiations, reaffirmed key points in last year’s COP26 deal in Glasgow and the Paris 2015 agreement on limiting the rise in global temperatures.
The text said the conference: “Reaffirms the Paris Agreement temperature goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.”