Climate crisis fund
Time to act to cut carbon emissions drastically
On Sunday, the world agreed to establish a fund to compensate poor and vulnerable countries for the “loss and damage” they have suffered due to climate change. The fund calls for wealthy and industrialized nations, which are more responsible for causing the climate crisis, to contribute money to help developing countries to cope with it. This decision is a step forward by the international community toward tackling climate change.
It is time for South Korea, a huge emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs), to carry out its responsibility in a way that fits its international status. The agreement came on the sidelines of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) that took place in Sharm el-Sheikh, a coastal city of Egypt. The event attracted representatives from 198 countries and groups including some 90 heads of state.
Negotiators engaged in marathon talks until the last moment, extracting the conclusion early Sunday morning, two days after the planned closing session. The fund is designed to help less-developed countries that are vulnerable to the climate crisis due to difficulties such as droughts, flooding and rising sea levels despite having less responsibility for such disasters. Developing countries have so far called for wealthier nations to take more responsibility for the climate crisis as they mainly depended on fossil fuels in the process of industrialization. Yet the United States and other advanced counties have been lukewarm as they will need to pay a huge amount of money if they indeed acknowledge their liability.
What is regrettable is that the participants have failed to reach an agreement on the details of the fund, such as how to create and distribute it. The key issue will be which and how much the countries should offer as well as receive from the fund. The EU, which led the negotiations, allegedly claimed Africa’s poorest countries and submerging Pacific island nations should be the biggest beneficiaries.
The international community should more proactively engage in negotiations to come up with tangible solutions. Any effective and binding measures should be provided to prevent a recurrence of the 2009 agreement, under which developed countries promised to offer $100 billion per year to developing countries, but to no avail.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cited the need to do more to reduce emissions now. “The world stills needs a giant leap on climate ambition,” he said. What is regrettable is the world has failed to reach an agreement on reducing the uses of oil and natural gas to curtail carbon emissions.
South Korea, the 11th-largest emitter of GHGs, should do more to reduce emissions. It needs to decrease the use of coal for power generation while increasing the portion of renewable energy to 30 percent by 2030. It needs to make a detailed plan to reduce carbon emissions soon to carry out its role as a responsible member of the international community.