(Sharm el-Sheikh) After difficult negotiations that overflowed the scheduled timetable, COP27 ended on Sunday with a highly disputed text on aid to poor countries affected by climate change, but without new ambitions for the reduction of greenhouse gas.
Opened on November 6 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the UN climate conference ended at dawn more than a day late, becoming one of the longest COPs in history. .
“It was not easy”, but “we finally fulfilled our mission”, underlined its Egyptian president Sameh Choukri.
A final declaration resulting from many compromises was finally adopted, calling for a “rapid” reduction in emissions, but without new ambition compared to the COP in Glasgow in 2021.
“We have to drastically reduce emissions now, and that’s a question that this COP has not answered,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The European Union said it was “disappointed”.
On the other hand, this edition was marked by the adoption of a resolution described as historic by its promoters, on compensation for the damage caused by climate change already suffered by the poorest countries.
The issue of climate “loss and damage” in poor countries almost derailed the conference, before being the subject of a last-minute compromise text. Even if the text leaves many questions unanswered, it enacts the principle of the creation of a specific financial fund.
“Loss and damage in vulnerable countries can no longer be ignored even if some developed countries had decided to ignore our suffering,” said young Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate.
Decline criticized
The text on emission reductions was also hotly contested, with many countries denouncing a backsliding on the ambitions defined at previous conferences.
In particular on the most ambitious objective of the Paris agreement, to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, however reaffirmed in the final decision.
The current commitments of the signatory countries do not make it possible to meet this objective, nor even that of containing the rise in temperature to 2°C compared to the pre-industrial era, when humans began to use responsible fossil fuels en masse. of global warming.
These commitments, assuming they are fully met, would at best put the world on a trajectory of +2.4°C by the end of the century and, at the current rate of emissions, on that of a catastrophic +2.8 °C.
However, with nearly 1.2°C of warming currently, the dramatic impacts are already multiplying.
The year 2022 was an illustration of this, with its procession of devastating droughts, megafires and floods, impacting crops and infrastructure.
The costs are also soaring: the World Bank has estimated the cost of the floods at 30 billion dollars, which left a third of Pakistani territory under water for weeks and claimed millions of victims.
Poor countries, often among the most exposed, but generally responsible for little of the global warming, have been calling for funding for “loss and damage” for years.
“Usual suspects”
Accused by some of a lack of transparency in the negotiations, the Egyptian Choukri claimed that there had been “no bad intentions” and that he had “managed to prevent one party or another from having to back down” .
However, the battle will not end with the adoption of the Sharm el-Sheikh resolution since it remains deliberately vague on certain controversial points.
Operational details must be defined for adoption at the next COP, at the end of 2023 in the United Arab Emirates, promising new clashes. Particularly on the issue of contributors, developed countries insisting that China be part of it.
Another subject that shook the COP: emissions reduction ambitions.
Many countries considered that the texts proposed by the Egyptian presidency constituted a step backwards on the commitments to regularly raise the level made in Glasgow.
“This COP has weakened the obligations for countries to present new and more ambitious commitments”, regretted Laurence Tubiana, architect of the Paris agreements of 2015.
Not to mention the question of reducing the use of fossil fuels, the cause of global warming, but barely mentioned in texts on climate.
Briton Alok Sharma, president of COP26, said a point on fossils had been “watered down at the last moment”.
Coal had been cited in 2021 after tough exchanges, but in Sharm el-Sheikh the “usual suspects”, in the words of one delegate, once again opposed it for oil and gas. Saudi Arabia, Iran or Russia are the most advanced countries.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she was disappointed that the reduction in emissions and the phase out of fossil fuels had been “evaded by some big emitters and oil producers”.
The development of renewables is however the subject of an unprecedented mention alongside “low emission” energies, an expression generally applied to nuclear power.