(Sharm el-Sheikh) Difficult negotiations resume on Saturday at COP27 in Egypt, which was extended by at least one day in the absence of agreement on several contentious points, starting with the financing of climate damage suffered by developing countries.
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries gathered in the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh were to increase meetings and bilateral discussions overnight from Friday to Saturday to try to move forward on the most difficult points, such as the fate of fossil fuels. or compensation for the damage already caused by climate change, “loss and damage”.
The Egyptian presidency, criticized for the delay in these complex climate negotiations under the aegis of the UN, promised Friday – theoretical day of the end of the negotiations – to take matters into their own hands.
Sameh Choukri, president of this COP27, also urged the parties to “move up a gear” in the negotiations.
“An agreement is not necessarily within reach,” French Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said on Friday.
“Discussions need to intensify quickly,” said WWF’s Manuel Pulgar-Vidal. “We can’t afford to have so many negotiation topics that remain unresolved until the next COP. »
One of the most complex issues remains that of “loss and damage”, more than ever at the center of the debates after the historic floods that hit Pakistan and Nigeria, and for which developing countries are calling for a dedicated fund.
timid advances
On this point, timid progress has however been made.
The “facilitators” of this issue at the center of North-South friction have published a motion for a resolution on the issue, with three options, one of which acts on the principle of creating a fund whose exact operating mechanisms will then be determined.
Option deemed acceptable Friday “with some changes” by Sherry Rehman, Pakistani Minister of Climate Change and current chair of the powerful G77 + China negotiating group, which includes more than 130 countries.
The rich countries had for years been very reluctant to the idea of specific funding, but the European Union made an opening on Thursday by accepting the principle of a “response fund for loss and damage”.
An agreement with conditions, in particular that it be reserved for the “most vulnerable” and have a “broad base of contributors”. In other words: including emerging countries with substantial resources such as China.
The Europeans, supported by other groups, are at the same time calling for the reaffirmation of strong objectives in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The European offer was hailed as “a major concession and breakthrough” by Seve Paeniu, finance minister of the small, peaceful archipelago of Tuvalu, threatened by rising waters.
But neither China nor the United States made their position known immediately.
Fossils
The future of fossil fuels, whose use since the industrial revolution is essentially responsible for global warming, is also the subject of intense negotiations.
COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 displayed for the first time the objective of reducing the use of coal without capturing CO2. An objective that some countries want to push further by explicitly citing oil and gas, which however arouses little enthusiasm among producing countries.
A final draft text published by the Egyptian presidency does not mark any progress on this point, even if it underlines for the first time the need to accelerate in renewable energies.
The document calls on the other hand “to continue efforts to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5 ° C”, clearly referring to the objectives of the Paris agreement, which some feared to see watered down.
A cornerstone of the fight against climate change, this 2015 agreement aims to limit global warming “well below 2°C” compared to the pre-industrial era, and if possible to 1.5°C.
But the current commitments of the various countries are far from allowing this objective to be met. According to UN analyses, they make it possible at best to limit global warming to 2.4°C by the end of the century.