The hope of saving the COP27 in Egypt returned on Saturday evening, after an agreement on the issue of climate damage suffered by poor countries, one of the main sticking points, but difficult negotiations continued on the ambitions of lowering greenhouse gases Greenhouse.
“An agreement has been reached” on the creation of a specific fund dedicated to these “losses and damages” which “directs” the financial means to the most vulnerable countries, indicated a European source to AFP.
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister and serving chair of the powerful G77+China negotiating group, which includes more than 130 countries, said she was “optimistic about a positive outcome” on the issue.
“From the perspective of the African continent, we are absolutely delighted if this decision is approved”, welcomed Barbara Creecy, the South African Minister of the Environment.
The agreement still needs to be formalized in a grand final meeting.
The conference, which should have ended on Friday evening, blocked for a long time on this question of compensation for the damage already caused by climate change, “losses and damage”.
This subject is more than ever at the center of the debates after the historic floods that recently hit Pakistan and Nigeria.
The countries of the South insisted since the start of the COP two weeks ago on the creation of a specifically dedicated fund, a request initially received with reluctance by Western countries.
“Fragile countries”
The European Union ended up taking a step forward, accepting the principle on the condition that the money be allocated to the most vulnerable countries and that the funding base be widened to countries which have experienced strong growth in the last three decades — starting with China or Saudi Arabia.
Chinese envoy Xie Zhenhua said on Saturday that the fund should benefit all developing countries, but conceded that it should be directed “first to fragile countries”.
This announcement gives hope that this 27th international climate conference, which seemed on the verge of failure on Saturday morning, will be saved.
“Rather disagree than a bad agreement,” European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans thundered to the press earlier in the day.
“We are concerned about some of the things we have seen and heard in the last 12 hours,” he said, adding that the Europeans’ aim was to keep the warming limit of 1 “alive”, 5°C, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.
The Egyptian presidency, criticized for the slowness of the negotiations, ended up publishing a new, long-awaited draft final text at the start of the afternoon.
“Not at the right level of ambition”
This proposal still has to be discussed at a meeting of heads of delegations, amended and possibly approved later in the evening by negotiators from nearly 200 countries gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh for discussions that have already lasted a day. .
The document reaffirms the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to limit global warming to “well below 2°C” compared to the pre-industrial era, and if possible to 1.5°C.
The text stresses that the impacts of climate change would be much less significant at 1.5°C and shows the importance of continuing the “efforts” to respect this limit.
On the energy side, the draft final resolution mentions the end of “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, but not the exit from oil or gas.
The objective of a gradual exit from coal – acquired from Glasgow last year – is reaffirmed, but now with a call to accelerate the development of renewables during this decade.
But many countries were still pushing on Saturday afternoon for ambitions to be strengthened on the side of lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
“The mitigation component is not at the right level of ambition, particularly on the use of fossil fuels”, warned the French Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
“We must emerge from COP27 with a set of decisions that keeps life alive [l’objectif de] 1.5°C and protects the most vulnerable,” said Marshall Islands Climate Envoy Tina Stege.
The current commitments of the various countries are far from enabling the 1.5°C objective to be met.
According to UN analyses, they allow at best to limit warming to 2.4°C by the end of the century, leading humanity towards the risk of irreversible tipping points being reached and causing an uncontrollable runaway of climate change.