Editorial: Mixed climate outcome
Though the agreement to set up a climate compensation fund is a welcome move, the just-concluded global climate summit — COP27 — at Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh has failed to instil confidence regarding tackling the climate crisis. After two weeks of intense negotiations among 190 nations at the 27th United Nations Climate Summit, the outcome fell […]
Though the agreement to set up a climate compensation fund is a welcome move, the just-concluded global climate summit — COP27 — at Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh has failed to instil confidence regarding tackling the climate crisis. After two weeks of intense negotiations among 190 nations at the 27th United Nations Climate Summit, the outcome fell short of a push from the developed world, including the United States and Europe, for a phase-down of fossil fuels. Although a phase-down of coal was agreed upon at last year’s Glasgow conference, other fossil fuels — oil and gas — are going to remain immune. While setting up a global fund for “loss and damage”— providing financial assistance to poor nations stricken by climate disaster — is seen by some countries as a breakthrough, the real challenge lies in how well it is implemented. The idea of a climate compensation fund is not new as it was mentioned in the 2015 landmark Paris Agreement itself. But the wealthy nations have failed to deliver on their promise of providing compensation and transferring modern technologies to the poor and vulnerable nations to tackle the climate crisis. There is a genuine sense of hurt among the countries with the highest vulnerability to climate change that their concerns are not being addressed. The developing countries, in fact, have a minuscule greenhouse gas footprint. The recent devastating floods in Pakistan led to the amplification of the demands for climate reparations. At COP27, the developed nations, particularly the US, had opposed the establishment of a new fund over fears that it would hold them legally liable for massive damage caused by climate change.
The developed countries had pledged, nearly 15 years ago, to deliver $100 billion every year in climate finance by 2020, but have failed to do so. Clearly, there is a breakdown in trust between North and South, and between developed and emerging economies. The largest emitters historically had to accept responsibility for irretrievable damage as warming above pre-industrial levels is already having an effect. A transitional committee to operationalise the compensation fund will now have to get down to work out an acceptable solution. It is likely to take at least a year, until the next climate conference in the United Arab Emirates in November 2023, to sort through some of the details of how the fund can work. There is also, so far, little money for the fund, as few nations have made significant pledges of cash for loss and damage. The Egypt summit offered no progress on the commitments to limiting temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius as agreed upon at COP26 in Glasgow. The national plans that countries had submitted on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 were not enough to meet the vital goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in line with scientific advice.
