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A major agreement of the UN COP27 climate summit fell into disarray after discussions to set up a fund to help countries suffering from the devastating effects of global warming collapsed during the early hours of Saturday morning.
The clash between rich nations and developing economies during extended three-day talks sets the course for a difficult UN COP28 climate summit next month in Dubai.
The agreement to create a so-called loss and damage fund was an important conclusion at the last COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt, when leaders from developing countries celebrated the plan to aid “particularly vulnerable” nations.
But after almost a year of fraught negotiations between countries over how to get the fund up and running, the fourth round of talks in the Egyptian city of Aswan ended in discord over who should fund it, where it should be based and who would be eligible for support.
The failure to reach an agreement adds pressure to next month’s COP28 summit, which already has a packed agenda. This includes a ‘stock take’ of how countries are responding to climate change as well as setting a goal to help governments adapt to dealing with global warming.
“Whether or not the loss and damage fund becomes fully operational is a key measure of success for the COP28 summit,” said Preety Bhandari, senior adviser in the global climate programme and the finance centre at the World Resources Institute.
Sultan al-Jaber, president-designate of COP28, had on Friday strongly urged countries to reach a consensus, with the talks pushed overnight.
After the talks collapsed, COP28 said it would host another round of negotiations in Abu Dhabi early next month.
If the members of the 24-person transition committee negotiating the global loss and damage fund “cannot reach common ground at the final gathering in Abu Dhabi next month, we are destined for very rocky negotiations in Dubai”, said Bhandari.
“The entire COP28 negotiations could get derailed if developing countries’ priorities on funding for loss and damage are not adequately addressed.”
COP28’s Jaber said on Saturday that an agreement on the fund was “essential” and he believed “all issues are solvable”.
“The eyes of the world” were on the committee members, he said in a statement. “Billions of people, lives and livelihoods who are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, depend upon the successful delivery.”
The group of 77 developing economies plus China considered walking out of the talks earlier this week over a key dispute about the role the World Bank in hosting the fund.
The G77 and China initially opposed the World Bank running the fund, but took part in talks on Friday on the basis of the lender taking on a leading role, said Avinash Persaud, special climate envoy to Barbados and a member of the transition committee. But those conversations faltered once again after a clash over the capitalisation of the fund.
“After a summer of tumbling climate records and loss of lives, livelihoods and shelter, developed countries are withdrawing from taking responsibility for capitalising a fund to support the climate-vulnerable,” he said.
While developed countries led by the US were responsible for the vast majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions behind global warming, they were not prepared to shoulder the responsibility of funding to deal with the consequences, Persaud said.
US climate envoy John Kerry has argued in the past that China, as the world’s biggest annual polluter, and Saudi Arabia, as the world’s largest oil exporter, should also play a bigger role in financing the fund. He has also advocated for reform of the World Bank to step up to provide greater funding for poorer nations.
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