After a slow start to negotiations, Egypt’s COP27 presidency presented an ambitious timeline for Week 2, aiming to get all countries to agree by Friday on a “cover story,” a political declaration setting out the goals and commitments agreed in Sharm. el-Sheikh.
“We still have a lot of work ahead of us if we want to make meaningful, tangible effects that we can be proud of; now we want to shift gears,” COP27 pre-Observer and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Monday in a speech to delegates. . . ” Time is not on our side and the world is watching: let’s unite and surrender now. “
Despite Shoukry’s appeals, a number of key issues remain stalled, several negotiators and observers warned. The most debatable factor on the table is loss and damage, or how developed countries compensate emerging countries for the extreme weather events they experience, even if they don’t particularly contribute to greenhouse fuel emissions.
The issue is in the official conference of the Conference of the Parties for the first time at COP27 after a years-long struggle to reach it, ministers can now debate and make decisions on the issue. Developing countries need to establish a new “facility” or programme to provide technical assistance and financing to address climate-related loss and damage, with a transparent roadmap towards this purpose set out at the end of this meeting.
“There is a longer-term technique to set up a financing mechanism, but I think from the point of view of the African Group of Negotiators, we want the continent to suffer loss and damage,” said South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy.
Further underscoring the urgency of the problem, some countries are calling for an “interim fund” for countries recently hit by weather disasters, according to Matthew Samuda, Jamaica’s minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth.
While some technical issues were resolved in the first week, all the maximum policy issues, adding loss and damage, regulations governing foreign carbon markets and a program to step up efforts to reduce emissions, remain open, said Alden Meyer, a veteran COP and senior associate at the E3G think tank.
“All the problems of the crisis have stalled,” Meyer said. “You move on to the moment with the maximum of the big unresolved trade problems. “
With just five days to go until the end of the conference, the threat is that talks will become entangled around the most contentious issues, preventing negotiators from reaching a deal until Friday and delaying the process for a full year, until COP28.
At the same time, the latest results of the talks at Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh hotel are based on some other beach pickup: the Group of 20 Nations summit to be held some 6,000 miles away in Bali, Indonesia. What the G20 says about climate change and fossil fuels in its own final communiqué will have an impact on Sharm el-Sheikh.
“If those talks go well and there is positive momentum in Bali, the ministers here will reach agreements by the end of the week,” Meyer said. “On the other hand, if there are traffic jams and setbacks in Bali, it will be very difficult for ministers to compromise here because their bosses may simply disagree in Bali. “
Still, it will be difficult to get delegates to fully settle for a new logo facility or loss-and-damage program at this COP. Officials and other evolved countries say investment mechanisms already exist, adding the Adaptation Fund established in 2001, the Green Climate Fund established in 2010 or the Global Shield. The latest is a new G7 initiative coordinated through Germany to target disaster insurance and financing to countries. Respond to climate-exacerbated droughts, floods and storms.
“I don’t think anybody has fully explained what a facility is or what form it might take, and there’s all sorts of criticism about what it could be,” U. S. President John Kerry’s special envoy for climate said Saturday. a well-known fact that the U. S. is not yet in the U. S. “The U. S. and many other countries will not identify some sort of legal provision similar to reimbursement or liability. “
Specific funding pledges made at previous COPs have fallen short, adding a pledge made in 2009 to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance through 2020. This time, countries are asking for the money to be provided until the end of the summit, but it needs a political agreement to identify a new facility, said Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the weather and energy program at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “Pointing to existing establishments as a way forward is a diversionary tactic,” Cleetus said.
Some sort of compromise on loss and damage will most likely be reached later this week, said Richie Merzian, director of the Australian Institute’s weather and energy program and a former leading negotiator on loss-damage issues for the country. The canopy documents will have to be accepted in all countries, the final wording will most likely reflect the lowest and not unusual denominator and leave many other people dissatisfied, he said.
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