Climate negotiators near deal
World leaders appeared close to salvaging a climate summit yesterday that had teetered on the brink of failure, as many wealthy nations agreed to pay billions of dollars into a fund to assist developing countries in the crosshairs of global warming.
Negotiators reached a tentative deal on a ‘‘loss-and-damage fund’’ that represented a significant shift for United States leaders, who have long feared such payments could make America liable for a huge sums, given its historical contribution to emissions. But the Biden administration could no longer resist in the face of possible global condemnation at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27.
Several factors, including resistance on Capitol Hill, could undercut the nascent plan and trip up financing for it. UN negotiators have established a panel that would spend the next year determining what such a fund would look like, who would give money to it, and which countries could tap into it.
Even so, the agreement marks a huge victory for the Global South and supporters of the global climate talks, if it gains approval. The deal emerged from late negotiations between small island states and European Union diplomats, according to European officials.
‘‘A stunning breakthrough,’’ said Jean Su, a board chairperson for the advocacy coalition Climate Action Network International. In a tweet, she called the brokered deal ‘‘a testament to the incredible mobilisation of vulnerable countries and civil society . . . A dam has been broken.’’
This year’s global climate gathering – billed by its host nation as the ‘‘Africa COP’’, short for ‘‘conference of the parties’’ – left many advocates of climate action disappointed. It failed to ensure nations would do more to meet their goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5C , a target that scientists see as essential to blunt the worst expected effects of climate change.
The agreement to date has skirted other key issues, including a proposed phasing out of fossil fuels.
Negotiators were under pressure to make more progress as talks stretched overnight into yesterday morning.
A group called the High Ambition Coalition, which represents more than two dozen ministers, called a media conference on Saturday, local time, to demand more action.
‘‘We come together to say that we must emerge from COP27 with a package of outcomes that keeps 1.5C alive and protects the world’s vulnerable,’’ said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, reading a statement on behalf of the group.
Nations at the COP27 climate conference in Egypt must still negotiate other aspects of the conference’s final decision, including how ambitious countries must be in their efforts to curb planet-warming emissions.
Diplomats warned that details of those carbon-cutting measures are still undecided, and an impasse over one part of the text could doom the whole package.
The individual actions of nations are crucial if COP27 can recommit to the 1.5C target, affirmed at last year’s summit in Scotland.
Scientists warn that warming is on pace to surge well past that threshold and is already propelling drought, floods, deadly heat waves and famine across the world.