At the UN climate conference in Egypt, the participating states and organizations should actually set the course for the future. “The time for talking about losses and damage is over,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in Sharm el-Sheikh. «The world burns and drowns before our eyes». However, the urgent warning does not bring unity to the COP27. The biggest bone of contention is still whether poor countries should receive compensation payments for unavoidable climate damage from industrialized countries in the future.
“Why should we pay the ultimate price?” Molwyn asked James. For Antigua and Barbuda, he represents the group of small island states particularly affected by climate change. He believes that the COP should decide on a fund to compensate for climate damage. “Anything else would be no less than fraud.”
“The clock is ticking”
The group of the so-called G77 – an association of more than 130 developing countries – takes the same view. “The clock is ticking – not just for this COP, but for this humanity,” warned Pakistan’s climate minister Sherry Rehman. Setting up a financial pot is the least the rich countries can do.
The first version of the final paper went through the media on Friday morning. It spoke of an “urgent and immediate need for new, additional, predictable and adequate financial resources”. The EU climate commissioner Frans Timmermanns explained in the plenum that the fund should be financed by a “broad donor base”. Not only the industrialized countries should pay for this, but also the emerging countries that are particularly high emitters – for example China. However, it is still completely unclear whether the Asian country would participate in the financing of the fund.
However, in his address to the COP plenum, Timmermans also made it clear that financial support for states hard hit by climate change, known in UN parlance as “loss and damage”, should not replace or undermine efforts to mitigate climate change. to limit. “If we don’t reduce emissions, all our restrictions will be in vain.” The efforts of states so far are nowhere near enough to stop global warming at 1.5 degrees. Timmermans also criticizes the fact that many countries have not tightened up their national climate protection plans accordingly. You absolutely have to agree with that.
In 2015, the states in Paris agreed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. The world has now warmed up by more than 1.1 degrees, Germany even more. According to scientific warnings, exceeding the 1.5-degree limit significantly increases the risk of triggering so-called tipping elements in the climate system and thus uncontrollable chain reactions.
Lots of leeway in design
“The talk of damage and loss is overdue,” said UN climate chief Simon Stiell. “We have heard encouraging statements about a willingness to be flexible and compromise,” said Jennifer Morgan, the special representative for international climate policy at the State Department, who is acting as one of two facilitators on the issue.
There is no precise definition of damage and loss. However, the term usually includes damage from extreme weather events – such as drought or flooding – and from slow changes in the course of global warming, such as rising sea levels or desertification. It is about consequences that go beyond what people can adapt to, or about situations where the means to adapt are lacking.
No exit from oil and gas
An important means of tightening climate protection plans would be to reach agreement on a global phase-out of oil and gas. However, it does not appear that the participating states will agree on this. The draft final bill does mention the phasing out of coal-fired power generation, but not the abandonment of oil and gas.
Greenpeace Germany executive director Martin Kaiser calls on Green Foreign Minister Baerbock to do more to phase out fossil fuels: “It would be absolutely unacceptable if, at the end of a two-week climate conference in the middle of the climate crisis the results of the previous year were repeated at most,” Kaiser told the German news agency.
Criticism of this comes from, among others, Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He noted that Saudi Arabia, for example, rejects any discussion of fossil fuels when it comes to climate protection. It’s like saying the economy isn’t about money.
Whether anything will change at the end of the climate conference remains to be seen. The oil, coal and gas lobby is in any case more strongly represented at COP27, according to a data analysis by environmental organization Global Witness and Corporate Europe Observatory. According to the report, 636 participants at the conference are working to save fossil fuels – 25 per cent more than at last year’s meeting in Scotland.
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
