Cop27 on brink of striking global compensation deal

A GLOBAL agreement to compensate developing countries for the impacts of climate change was on the verge of being reached at the Cop27 climate summit last night.

A draft text in tense extra time of the summit in Egypt accepted the principle of a fund for poorer nations to help pay for damage from floods, rising sea levels and other natural disasters.

But the UK joined calls last night for the agreement to also include language on cutting emissions to maintain the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5C. A final agreement at the summit requires consensus from the nearly 200 countries at the UN talks.

The draft agreement left open questions of exactly who would pay the compensation, and to which countries.

The US and EU have been pushing for China to pay up amid concerns that rich emerging economies, such as Saudi Arabia, could be eligible to receive cash.

It also left unresolved the question of whether new money would be committed, and how much, or if funding could be taken from existing pledges. These issues are not expected to be resolved before next year’s climate summit in the UAE.

The prospect of the inclusion of socalled “loss and damage” in the final text would be a first for the Cop summit and was welcomed by developing nations and activists, who have been calling for climate compensation for decades.

Negotiators battled to reach agreement on loss and damage and other key questions yesterday, as the summit, branded the most chaotic in years, entered its final hours.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, told journalists that “the idea of a single [loss and damage] fund is at best inappropriate, at worst largely insufficient”, echoing previous comments he has made about the need to revamp the global financial architecture.

The Egyptian hosts, who are responsible for shepherding a conclusion to the talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, were accused of a lack of transparency over draft agreements.

The European Union initially threatened to walk away from the talks, with its climate representative Frans Timmermans saying “no decision is better than a bad decision”.