“A construction site”: The hard fight for the final statement of the UN climate conference North Korea fires another nuclear-capable missile

A day before the planned end of the two-week UN climate summit, the Egyptian conference leadership presented the outline for a final statement for the second time.

The 20-page paper with many unresolved issues calls for a phase-out of climate-damaging coal, but not for the abandonment of oil and gas. Environmental groups criticized Thursday that the text was a “construction site”: too long, too vague and contradictory. But there are also bright spots.

The executive director of Greenpeace Germany, Martin Kaiser, said the necessary global exit from oil and gas should now be entered into the document under high pressure. “It would be absolutely unacceptable if at the end of a two-week climate conference, in the midst of climate collapse, at most the results of the previous year were repeated.”

Oxfam expert Jan Kowalzig also told the German news agency that it would be “a big mistake” if the COP27 climate conference did not send a clear signal that moving away from all fossil fuels is inevitable. The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Johan Rockström, criticized that not talking about fossil fuels when it comes to climate protection is like saying the economy is not about money.

The two-week conference in Egypt, which was attended by some 34,000 people, is expected to end on Friday. However, an extension is considered increasingly likely.

Another unresolved problem is the demand from poor countries for compensation payments for the damage they have suffered, for example after droughts, floods or hurricanes, which are becoming more and more intense and frequent due to global warming. Whether a new pot of money will be set up for this remains unclear.

Tom Evans of the climate think tank E3G said the US and EU should present an ambitious package on the issue of compensation, known in UN jargon as “loss and damage”. Otherwise there is a risk that other points will also be diluted. He summarized: “We are not where we need to be.” The Egyptian presidency lacks a “unified vision” for lines of compromise. At 20 pages, the text is “incredibly long” with a lot of repetition and even some “rather frustrating internal contradictions”.

Many “weasel words” with vague and nebulous meanings have crept into the text, criticized Catherine Abreu of Canada’s climate advisory body NZAB. Such words would justify the “status quo” of electricity generation from oil, gas and coal, rather than advocating their phasing out.

The text calls on states to improve their largely inadequate climate protection plans by the next climate conference, which will take place in the United Arab Emirates in late 2023. Oxfam’s Kowalzig said it drew no useful conclusions that the plans are too lax. “In that regard, the text lacks much urgency and political will to turn things around before the important 1.5°C limit becomes out of reach.”

In Paris, states agreed in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed up by more than 1.1 degrees, Germany even more. According to scientific warnings, exceeding the limit of 1.5 degrees significantly increases the risk of triggering so-called tipping elements in the climate system and thus uncontrollable chain reactions.

Germanwatch’s David Ryfisch told the dpa that the COP27 is far from a result that everyone can get behind. “It is worrying that in some places the proposal is lagging behind the results of last year’s global climate summit.” On the other hand, there is a positive reference to the results of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and to the need to reform the international financial architecture so that all money flows to climate protection. (sda/dpa)