U.N. climate talks make initial headway
Negotiators agree to discuss reparations for nations that have suffered damage.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Envoys from around the globe gathered Sunday in this Egyptian seaside city for talks on tackling climate change amid a multitude of crises, including the war in Ukraine, high inflation, food shortages and an energy crunch.
Notching up a first small victory at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27, negotiators agreed after two frantic days of preliminary talks to formally discuss the question of vulnerable nations receiving money for the loss and damage they’ve suffered from climate change. The issue has been debated for years, with rich nations, including the United States, pushing back against the idea of climate reparations.
“The fact that it has been adopted as an agenda item demonstrates progress and parties taking a mature and constructive attitude toward this,” said the U.N.’s top climate official, Simon Stiell. “This is a difficult subject area. It’s been floating for 30-plus years. I believe it bodes well.”
The decision was welcomed by civil society organizations.
“At long last, providing funding to address losses and damages from climate impacts is on the agenda of the U.N. climate negotiations,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute. But he cautioned that negotiators “still have a marathon ahead of us before countries iron out a formal decision on this central issue.”
German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan — who led negotiations on the issue, along with representatives of Chile, in the run-up to the talks — said the agreement could help negotiators make “serious progress” on the issue of reducing emissions.
The outgoing chair of the talks, British official Alok Sharma, said countries made considerable progress at their last meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, in keeping alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.
However, experts say the likelihood of meeting that target, agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord, is slipping away. Temperatures around the world have increased by about 1.2 C (2.2 F) since preindustrial times.
Sharma warned that other crises mean that international efforts to curb climate change are being “buffeted by global head winds.”
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s brutal and illegal war in Ukraine has precipitated multiple global crisis, energy and food insecurity, inflationary pressures and spiraling debt,” Sharma said. “These crises have compounded existing climate vulnerabilities and the scarring effects of the pandemic.”
“As challenging as our current moment is, inaction is myopic and can only defer climate catastrophe,” he added. “We must find the ability to focus on more than one thing at once.
“How many more wakeup calls does the world actually need?” Sharma continued, citing recent devastating floods in Pakistan and Nigeria and historic droughts in Europe, the U.S. and China.
His successor, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, said Egypt would “spare no effort” to make the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh a success and achieve the goals of the Paris accord.
In an opening speech, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hoesung Lee, said countries have “a once-in-ageneration opportunity to save our planet and our livelihoods.”
Cutting emissions is only part of the task. Scientists and campaigners say the world also needs to do more to adapt to the effects of global warming that can no longer be avoided.
The head of the U.N. migration agency urged the international community Sunday to mobilize human and financial resources to address growing climate migration. António Vitorino told the Associated Press that millions of people “are already suffering in their daily lives because of the impacts of natural disasters and climate change.”
“We are running short of time to act,” added Vitorino, director general of the International Organization for Migration. “The international community needs to mobilize the expertise, human resources but also the financial resources to come in to support those who are already today seriously impacted by climate change.”
Vitorino, director general of the International Organization for Migration, said the world needs to double the current $100-billion funding for adaption, especially in regions and communities impacted by the fastchanging climate.
“If we don’t focus on solutions for the future,” he said, “we will leave a dramatic humanitarian crisis.”
More than 40,000 people registered for this year’s talks, reflecting the sense of urgency as weather events around the world cost lives and billions of dollars in repairs. Organizers say about 110 world leaders will attend, many of them speaking at a high-level event Monday and Tuesday. President Biden is expected to arrive later in the week.
But some major world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were not planning to come, casting doubt on whether the talks in Egypt can result in any significant deals to cut emissions without two of the world’s biggest polluters.
Rights groups again criticized Egypt for restricting protests and stepping up surveillance during the summit and highlighted the case of Alaa Abdel Fattah, a prominent imprisoned prodemocracy activist. His aunt, the award-winning novelist Ahdaf Soueif, said Abdel Fattah went into a “full hunger strike” Sunday and stopped drinking water at 10 a.m. local time.