Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, chair of COP27, reads the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the document that concluded the climate summit on Sunday Nov. 20, to an exhausted audience after tough and lengthy negotiations that finally reached an agreement to create a fund for loss and damage, a demand of the global South. CREDIT: Kiara Worth/UN
by Daniel Gutman (sharm el sheikh)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL SHEIKh, Nov 20 (IPS) – They were on the brink of shipwreck and did not leave happy, but did feel satisfied that they got the best they could. The countries of the global South achieved something decisive at COP27: the creation of a special fund to address the damage and loss caused by climate change in the most vulnerable nations.
The fund, according to the Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan, the official document approved at dawn on Sunday Nov. 20 in this Egyptian city, should enable “rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction” following extreme weather events in these vulnerable countries.
Decisions on who will provide the money, which countries will benefit and how it will be disbursed were left pending for a special committee to define. But the fund was approved despite the fact that the issue was not even on the official agenda of the summit negotiations, although it was at the center of the public debate before the conference itself.
“We are satisfied that the developed countries have accepted the need to create the Fund. Of course, there is much to discuss for implementation, but it was difficult to ask for more at this COP,” Ulises Lovera, Paraguay’s climate change director, told IPS, weary from a longer-than-expected negotiation, early Sunday morning at the Sharm El Sheikh airport.
“This COP has taken an important step towards justice. I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. He also described as an achievement that a “red line” was not crossed, that would take the rise in global temperature above the 1.5-degree limit.
More than 35,000 people from nearly 200 countries participated in the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian seaside resort on the Red Sea, where the critical dimension of global warming in the different regions of the world was on display, sometimes dramatically.
Practically everything that has to do with the future of the modes of production and life of humanity – starting with energy and food – was discussed at a mega-event that far exceeded the official delegations of the countries and the great leaders present, such as U.S. President Joe Biden and the Brazilian president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Hundreds of social organizations, international agencies and private sector stakeholders came here to showcase their work, seek funding, forge alliances, try to influence negotiations, defend their interests or simply be on a stage that seemed to provide a space for all kinds of initiatives and businesses.
At the gigantic Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Center there was also a global fair with non-stop activities from morning to night in the various pavilions, in stands with auditoriums of between 20 and 200 seats, where there was a flurried program of presentations, lectures and debates, not to mention the more or less crowded demonstrations of activists outside the venue.
In addition, government delegates negotiated on the crux of the summit: how to move forward with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which at COP21 in 2015 set global climate change mitigation and adaptation targets.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres (3rd-R) walks hurriedly through the Sharm El Sheikh Convention Center during the last intense hours of the COP27 negotiations, when there were moments when it seemed that there would be no agreement and the climate summit would end in failure. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
On the brink of failure
Once again, the nine-page Sharm El Sheikh Implementation Plan did not include in any of its pages a reference to the need to abandon fossil fuels, but only coal.
The document was the result of a negotiation that should have ended on Friday Nov. 18, but dragged on till Sunday, as usually happens at COPs. What was different on this occasion was a very tough discussion and threats of a walkout by some negotiators, including those of the European Union.
But in the end, the goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, established in the Paris Agreement, was maintained, although several countries tried to make it more flexible up to 2.0 degrees, which would have been a setback with dramatic effects for the planet and humanity, according to experts and climate activists.
“Rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions (are) required – lowering global net greenhouse gas emissions by 43 percent by 2030 relative to the 2019 level – to limit global warming to 1.5°C target,” reads the text, although no mention is made of oil and gas, the fossil fuels most responsible for those emissions, in one of the usual COP compromises, since agreements are reached by consensus.
The Bolivian delegation in Sharm El Sheikh, which included officials as well as leaders of indigenous communities from the South American country, take part in a meeting with journalists at COP27 to demand more ambitious action. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS
The priorities of the South
Developing countries, however, focused throughout the COP on the Loss and Damage Fund and other financing mechanisms to address the impacts of rising temperatures and mitigation actions.
“We need financing because we cannot deal with the environmental crisis alone. That is why we are asking that, in order to solve the problem they have caused, the rich nations take responsibility,” Diego Pacheco, head of the Bolivian delegation to Sharm El Sheikh, told IPS.
Environmental organizations, which showed their power in Egypt with the presence of thousands of activists, also lobbied throughout COP27 for greater commitments, including mitigation actions.
“This conference cannot be considered an implementation conference because there is no implementation without phasing out all fossil fuels,” the main cause of the climate crisis, said Zeina Khalil Hajj of the international environmental organization 350.org.
“Together for implementation” was precisely the slogan of COP27, calling for a shift from commitments to action.
“A text that does not stop fossil fuel expansion, that does not provide progress from the already weak Glasgow Pact (from COP26) makes a mockery of the millions of people living with the impacts of climate change,” said Khalil Hajj, head of global campaigning at 350.org.
One of the demonstrations by climate activists at COP27 held in Egypt Nov. 6-20, demanding more ambitious climate action by governments, as well as greater justice and equity in tackling the climate crisis. CREDIT: Busani Bafana/IPS
The crises that came together
Humanity – as recognized by the States Parties in the final document – is living through a dramatic time.
It faces a number of overlapping crises: food, energy, geopolitical, financial and economic, combined with more frequent natural disasters due to climate change. And developing nations are hit especially hard.
The demand for financing voiced by countries of the global South thus takes on greater relevance.
Cecilia Nicolini, Argentina’s climate change secretary, told IPS that it is the industrialized countries, because of their greater responsibility for climate change, that should finance developing countries, and lamented that “the problem is that the rules are made by the powerful.”
However, 80 percent of the money now being spent worldwide on climate change action is invested in the developed world, according to the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the world’s largest funder of climate action, which has contributed 121 billion dollars to 163 countries over the past 30 years, according to its own figures.
In this context, the issue of Loss and Damage goes one step further than adaptation to climate change, because it involves reparations for the specific impacts of climate change that have already occurred, such as destruction caused by droughts, floods or forest fires.
“Those who are bearing the burden of climate change are the most vulnerable households and communities. That is why the Loss and Damage Fund must be established without delay, with new funds coming from developed countries,” said Javier Canal Albán, Colombia’s vice minister of environmental land planning.
“It is a moral and climate justice imperative,” added Canal Albán, who spoke at a press conference on behalf of AILAC, a negotiating bloc that brings together several Latin American and Caribbean countries.
But the text of the outcome document itself acknowledges that there is a widening gap between what developing countries need and what they actually receive.
The financing needs of these countries for climate action until 2030 were estimated at 5.6 trillion dollars, but developed countries – as the document recognized – have not even fulfilled their commitment to provide 100 billion dollars per year, committed since 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, and ratified in 2015, at COP21 which adopted the Paris Agreement.
It was the absence of any reference to the need to accelerate the move away from oil and natural gas that frustrated several of the leaders at the COP. “We believe that if we don’t phase out fossil fuels there will be no Fund that can pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change,” Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister, who was at the two-week conference in Sharm El Sheikh held Nov. 6-20, told IPS.
“We have to put the victims first in order to make an orderly and just transition,” she said, expressing the sentiments of the governments and societies of the South at COP27.
As climate change and human activity threaten ocean life, researchers are now monitoring the sound of coral reefs in an attempt to analyze their health. And the public can listen in and help. Ian Lee has more.
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The operator of a natural gas storage well in Western Pennsylvania says workers have successfully plugged a leak that had been spewing massive amounts of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere for two weeks.
Equitrans Midstream said the well at its Rager Mountain storage facility, located in a rural area about 1.5 hours east of Pittsburgh, was sealed shut with concrete on Sunday. The well had been venting about 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day since Nov. 6, according to initial estimates.
If accurate, that would total more than 1.4 billion cubic feet in methane, equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from burning more than 7,200 tanker trucks of gasoline.
Pennsylvania environmental regulators have issued the company notice of five potential violations of state law.
A written statement provided Sunday by Equitrans says the company had verified a 0% gas reading at and around the well. More than 250 feet of cement was pumped into the wellbore above two plugs to ensure venting does not recur, the company said.
The Rager facility is in Jackson Township, at the heart of the Marcellus Shale formation that has seen a boom in gas production since the introduction of hydraulic fracturing more than a decade ago. Residents living as four miles away from the leak told The Associated Press on Friday they could hear the roar of pressurized gas escaping from the well and smell the fumes.
Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is colorless and odorless. But when the gas is processed for transport and sale, producers add a chemical called mercaptan to give it a distinctive “rotten egg” smell that helps make people aware of leaks.
Methane’s Earth-warming power is some 83 times stronger over 20 years than the carbon dioxide that comes from car tailpipes and power plant smokestacks. Oil and gas companies are the top industrial emitters of methane, which, once released into the atmosphere, will be disrupting the climate for decades, contributing to more heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires and floods.
The leak came as the Environmental Protection Agency on Nov. 11 updated proposed new rules intended to cut methane and other harmful emissions from oil and gas operations.
The citations issued against the company by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection include failures to properly maintain and operate the gas facility, creating a public nuisance and producing a “hazard to public health a safety.” The company was also cited for failing to provide state inspectors “free and unrestricted access.”
LAGOS, Nigeria — Teenage climate activists in Nigeria’s largest city are recycling trash into runway outfits for a “Trashion Show.”
Chinedu Mogbo, founder of Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative, a conservation group working with the activists, said the show was designed to raise awareness about environmental pollution.
Lagos, one of Africa’s most populous cities with more than 15 million people, generates at least 12,000 metric tons of waste daily, authorities say. And implementation of environmental laws is poor: The World Bank estimates that pollution kills at least 30,000 people in this city every year.
This year’s show came just as world leaders wrapped up two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
In collaboration with young activists and models, the Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative says it’s out to recycle as many plastics as possible, one community at a time.
It organizes regular trash clean-ups across communities, at drainage ditches and beaches. The plastic litter is then used to create fabrics for the fashion show.
Draped in red plastic spoons and fabric, 16-year-old Nethaniel Edegwa said she joined this year’s edition as a model “to make a change.”
“We can see that we are all being affected by the climate change, so I really want to make a difference,” Edegwa said.
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Asadu contributed from Abuja, Nigeria.
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Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
LAGOS, Nigeria — Teenage climate activists in Nigeria’s largest city are recycling trash into runway outfits for a “Trashion Show.”
Chinedu Mogbo, founder of Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative, a conservation group working with the activists, said the show was designed to raise awareness about environmental pollution.
Lagos, one of Africa’s most populous cities with more than 15 million people, generates at least 12,000 metric tons of waste daily, authorities say. And implementation of environmental laws is poor: The World Bank estimates that pollution kills at least 30,000 people in this city every year.
This year’s show came just as world leaders wrapped up two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
In collaboration with young activists and models, the Greenfingers Wildlife Initiative says it’s out to recycle as many plastics as possible, one community at a time.
It organizes regular trash clean-ups across communities, at drainage ditches and beaches. The plastic litter is then used to create fabrics for the fashion show.
Draped in red plastic spoons and fabric, 16-year-old Nethaniel Edegwa said she joined this year’s edition as a model “to make a change.”
“We can see that we are all being affected by the climate change, so I really want to make a difference,” Edegwa said.
———
Asadu contributed from Abuja, Nigeria.
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Follow all AP stories on climate change issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
For the first time ever, rich nations, including a top-polluting U.S., will pay for the climate-change damage inflicted upon poorer nations.
These smaller economies are often the source of the fossil fuels CL00, +0.19%,
minerals PICK, -0.20%
and other raw materials behind the developed world’s modern conveniences and technologicial advancement, including many practices responsible for the Earth-warming emisisons. And yet the developing world shoulders the worst of the droughts, deadly heat, ruined crops and eroding coastlines that take lives and eat into economic growth.
The deal, called “loss and damage” in summit shorthand, was struck as the U.N.’s Conference of Parties, or COP27, gaveled to a close near dawn Sunday in Egypt. Official talks ended Friday, but negotiations extended into the weekend.
It was a big win for poorer nations which have long sought money — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate-worsened floods, famines and storms despite contributing little directly to the pollution that heats up the globe. It took last-minute, pre-summit negotiations to even get the topic on the official agenda.
“Three long decades and we have finally delivered climate justice,” said Seve Paeniu, the finance minister of island nation Tuvalu, according to the Associated Press. “We have finally responded to the call of hundreds of millions of people across the world to help them address loss and damage.”
“ ‘Three long decades and we have finally delivered climate justice.’ ”
— Seve Paeniu, finance minister for Tuvalu
Pakistan’s environment minister, Sherry Rehman, said the establishment of the fund “is not about dispensing charity.” Pakistan, hit by devastating drought and more, dominated climate-change headlines this year.
“It is clearly a down payment on the longer investment in our joint futures,” she said, speaking for a coalition of the world’s poorest nations.
How does COP27 ‘loss and damage’ work? And where’s China?
According to the agreement, the fund would initially draw on contributions from developed countries and other private and public sources such as international financial institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
While major emerging economies such as China wouldn’t automatically have to contribute, that option remains on the table. This is a key demand by the European Union and the U.S., who argue that China and other large polluters currently classified as “developing” countries have the financial clout and responsibility to pay their way.
The fund would be largely aimed at the most vulnerable nations, though there would be room for middle-income countries that are severely battered by climate disasters to get aid.
Getting serious about methane
Attention on methane, a more-potent but shorter-lasting greenhouse gas than carbon, was considered a major win at the summit. Some 150 countries have now signed on to the voluntary Global Methane Pledge, an official effort to cap the release of the GHG whose reduction presents perhaps the easiest way to reduce the global warming.
With the pledge, countries representing 45% of global methane emissions have vowed to reduce their emissions by 30% by 2030. If methane-reduction pledges are met, the result would be equivalent to eliminating the GHG emissions from all of the world’s cars, trucks, buses and all two- and three-wheeled vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency.
COP27 talks wrapped without concrete progress on the contentious issue of shifting an overall 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature limit from a voluntary marker to an established requirement of nations. Most voluntary pacts among nations and private entities, including a vow by Amazon.com AMZN, -0.75%,
Ford Motor F, +0.58%,
Apple AAPL, +0.38%
and others signing on to a “First Movers” pledge, loosly use the 1.5-degree limit set in 2015 when talks took place in Paris.
Private banks, insurers and institutional investors representing $130 trillion said they would align their investments with the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, toward a pledge to net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050. Advocacy groups cheer the pledge and its expanding roster but are also keeping up pressure on the signatories to speed up progress toward this goal and to stop undermining the pledge with fossil-fuel investment.
The Egypt pact was also void of firmer language on emissions cutting and the desire by some officials to target all fossil fuels NG00, +1.16%
for a phase-down.
Natural gas, which is relatively cheaper to produce than other fossil fuels, has been the major alternative to more-polluting coal in electricity generation. Still, it has its own emissions risk.
In the U.S., for example, electricity is the most common energy source used for cooking — electricity often powered by gas. Still, about 38% of U.S. households use natural gas directly for cooking, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Natural gas providers also own an established pipeline infrastructure that may serve alternative energy, and is pushed by the industry as a viable alternative alongside solar, wind ICLN, -0.15%
and other means. The industry also promotes its efforts to cap methane leaks.
“ ‘It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers.’”
— Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock
With fossil fuels in their sight, the European Union and other nations fought back at what they considered backsliding in the Egyptian presidency’s overarching cover agreement and threatened to scuttle the rest of the process, while advancing their own draft. The package was revised again, removing most of the elements Europeans had objected to but adding none of the heightened ambition they were hoping for, the AP said.
Egypt has played a unique role as host, representative of Africa, which sits at the front lines of those hurt by climate change and yet, remaining loyal to its own fossil-fuel ambitions and those of OPEC nations.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock voiced frustration.
“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers XOM, -0.87%
The agreement includes a veiled reference to the benefits of natural gas as low- emission energy, despite many nations calling for a phase down of natural gas, which does contribute to climate change.
Fossil-fuel industry’s presence
At least 636 representatives of the fossil fuel industry registered to attend the summit, a 25% increase over the industry’s presence last year, according to an analysis released by three advocacy groups.
More fossil fuel lobbyists are on the roster than any single national delegation, besides the UAE who has registered 1,070 delegates compared to 176 last year, according to a report from Corporate Accountability, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and Global Witness (GW).
Frances Colón, senior director for International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, found plenty of fault with this round of talks.
“The final text reflects the outsized and corrupting presence of fossil fuel and big agricultural lobbyists at COP27, compounded by a lack of ambition from key, high-emitting countries,” she said, in a statement. “The agreement makes only a passing reference to the 1.5-degree Celsius warming goal and does not include any new language on phasing down or phasing out all fossil fuels RB00, -0.09%
— the only way to reach emissions reduction goals and secure a livable future.”
Colón also worried that the official statement did not adequately advance efforts. World leaders failed to reference the twin, interlocking crises of nature loss and climate change, and declined to link COP27 to next month’s U.N. biodiversity summit in Montreal.
“ ‘The agreement makes only a passing reference to the 1.5-degree Celsius warming goal and does not include any new language on phasing down or phasing out all fossil fuels — the only way to reach emissions reduction goals and secure a livable future.’”
— Frances Colón of the Center for American Progress
While the new agreement doesn’t ratchet up calls for reducing emissions, it does retain language to keep alive the voluntary global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The Egyptian presidency kept offering proposals that harkened back to 2015 Paris language which also mentioned a looser goal of 2 degrees.
This year’s pact also neglected to toughen the main sticking point from the previous COP, in Glasgow last year. At that time, China and India united to dig in unless coal language was softened. Nations this year did not expand on last year’s call to phase down global use of “unabated coal” even though India and other countries pushed to include oil and natural gas in language from Glasgow.
“We joined with many parties to propose a number of measures that would have contributed to this emissions peaking before 2025, as the science tells us is necessary. Not in this text,” the United Kingdom’s Alok Sharma said.
Climate campaigners are concerned that pushing for strong action to end fossil fuel use will be even harder at next year’s meeting, which will be hosted in Dubai, located in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
ISLAMABAD — A breakthrough funding deal at the COP27 conference to help poor countries ravaged by climate change was welcomed Sunday by Pakistan, a nation devastated this year by record-breaking monsoon rains,
Flooding likely worsened by global warming submerged a third of Pakistan’s territory, left 33 million people scrambling to survive, and an estimated $40 billion in losses to the economy.
Pakistani officials, who had framed the country as a victim of climate change and sought compensation from bigger polluting nations, called the funding deal “a step in reaffirming the core principles of climate justice.”
The compensation agreement hammered out early Sunday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh establishes funding for “loss and damage” suffered by poor countries as a result of global warming.
It is a big win for developing nations that have long called for cash — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate-worsened floods, droughts, heat waves, famines and storms despite having contributed little to the pollution that heats up the globe.
It has also long been called an issue of equity for nations hit by weather extremes and small island states that face an existential threat from rising seas.
“Three long decades and we have finally delivered climate justice,” said Seve Paeniu, the finance minister of Tuvalu. “We have finally responded to the call of hundreds of millions of people across the world to help them address loss and damage.”
Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Twitter welcomed the development, calling it the “first pivotal step towards the goal of climate justice.”
Sharif acknowledged the work done on the summit deal by his Cabinet minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, and her team. He said it’s now up to a transitional committee to build on the historic development.
Rehman in a tweet said: “It’s been a long 30-year journey from demand to formation of the Loss and Damage Fund for 134 countries. We welcome today’s announcement and joint text hammered out through many nights.”
“We look forward to (the fund) being operationalized, to actually become a robust body that is able to answer with agility to the needs of the vulnerable, the fragile and those on the front line of climate disasters,” she said.
Pakistan suffered huge losses in the floods that affected a third of its 33 million population, who faced unprecedented suffering in terms of human and property losses. More than 1,700 people were killed and nearly 13,000 others injured. Over 13,000 kilometers (8,080 miles) of roadway, 439 bridges and 2.28 million houses were damaged or destroyed.
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Pakistan came out a winner as a result of the compensation deal.
“Win for climate justice, win for developing world in honor of 33 million victims of Pakistan floods and millions around the world who suffer from a climate catastrophe they did not create and do not have resources to address,” Zardari said.
The world’s biggest polluters must must now live up to their promises and pay into the fund. A 2009 agreement for a $100 billion fund created by richer nations to pay for the development of poor nations was never fully funded.
After days of intense negotiations that stretched into early Sunday morning in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters.
“This COP has taken . I welcome the decision to establish a fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” UN said in a video message issued from the conference venue in Egypt, underscoring that the voices of those on frontlines of the climate crisis must be heard.
The UN chief was referring to what ended up becoming the thorniest issue at this COP, shorthand for the annual Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ().
Developing countries made strong and repeated appeals for the establishment of a loss and damage fund, to compensate the countries that are the most vulnerable to climate disasters, yet who have contributed little to the climate crisis.
“Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust,” he underscored, stressing that the UN system will support the effort every step of the way.
“I call upon all of you to view these draft decisions not merely as words on paper but as a collective message to the world that we have heeded the call of our leaders and of current and future generations to set the right pace and direction for the implementation of the Paris agreement and the achievement of its goals.”
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History was made today at #COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh as parties agreed to the establishment of a long-awaited loss and damage fund for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
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November 19, 2022
Mr. Shoukry added: “The world is watching, I call on us all to rise to the expectations entrusted to us by the global community, and especially by those who are most vulnerable and yet have contributed the least to climate change.”
After missing their Friday night deadline, negotiators were finally able to on the most difficult items of the agenda, including a loss and damage facility – with a commitment to set up a financial support structure for the most vulnerable by the next COP in 2023 – as well as the post-2025 finance goal, and the so-called mitigation work programme, that would reduce emissions faster, catalyze impactful action, and secure assurances from key countries that they will take immediate action to raise ambition and keep us on the path towards 1.5°C.
Yet, while agreement on these issues was seen as a welcome step in the right direction, there appeared to be little forward movement on other key issues, particularly on the phasing out of fossil fuels, and tightened language on the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Observers have warned that new language including “low emissions” energy alongside renewables as the energy sources of the future is a significant loophole, as the undefined term could be used to justify new fossil fuel development against the clear guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change () and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The combat against climate change continues
Mr. Guterres reminded the world of what remain the priorities regarding climate action, including the ambition to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and keep alive the ’s 1.5 degree Celsius limit, and pull humanity “back from the climate cliff”.
“We need to drastically reduce emissions now – and this is an issue this COP did not address,” he lamented, saying that the world still needs to make a giant leap on climate ambition, and to end its addiction to fossil fuels by investing “massively” in renewables.
The UN chief also emphasized the need to make good on the long-delayed promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries, establishing clarity and a credible roadmap to double adaptation funds.
He also reiterated the importance of changing the business models of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.
“They must accept more risk and systematically leverage private finance for developing countries at reasonable costs,” he said.
Kiara Worth
Our planet is still in the emergency room
The UN chief said that while a fund for loss and damage is essential, it’s not an answer if the climate crisis washes a small island State off the map – or turns an entire African country into a desert.
He renewed his call for just energy transition partnerships to accelerate the phasing out of coal and scaling up renewables and reiterated the call he made on his opening speech at COP27: a .
“A Pact in which all countries make an extra effort to reduce emissions this decade in line with the 1.5-degree goal. And a Pact to mobilize – together with international financial institutions and the private sector – financial and technical support for large emerging economies to accelerate their renewable energy transition,” he explained, underscoring that this is essential to keep the 1.5 degree limit within reach.
Kiara Worth
‘I share your frustration’
The UN chief also sent a message to civil society and activists which had been so vocal since the conference’s opening day: “I share your frustration”.
Mr. Guterres said that climate advocates – led by the moral voice of young people – have kept the agenda moving through the darkest of days and they must be protected.
“The most vital energy source in the world is people power. That is why it is so important to understand the human rights dimension of climate action,” he said, adding that the battle ahead will be tough and that “it will take each and every one of us fighting in the trenches each and every day…we can’t wait for a miracle.”
Echoing this sentiment, Kenyan environmental youth activist Elizabeth Wathuti, said: “COP27 may be over, but the fight for a safe future is not. It is now more urgent than ever that political leaders work to agree a strong global deal to protect and restore nature at the upcoming Global Biodiversity Summit in Montreal. “
Ms. Wathuti added: “The interconnected food, nature and climate crisis are right now affecting us all – but the frontline communities like mine are hardest hit. How many alarm bells need to be sounded before we act?”
Time is running out
In his video message, Mr. Guterres highlighted that COP27 concluded with “much homework” still to be done and little time in which to do it.
“We are already halfway between the [2015] Paris Climate Agreement and the 2030 deadline. We need all hands on deck to drive justice and ambition,” he stated.
The Secretary-General added that this includes ambition to end the “suicidal war” on nature that is fuelling the climate crisis, driving species to extinction and destroying ecosystems.
“Next month’s is the moment to adopt an ambitious global biodiversity framework for the next decade, drawing from the power of nature-based solutions and the critical role of indigenous communities,” he urged.
In his closing remarks, UNFCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, said: “At COP27… we’ve determined a way forward on a decade-long conversation on funding for loss and damage.” Among other positive steps, he said that in the text adopted Sunday morning, “we have been given reassurances that there is no room for backsliding. It gives the key political signals that indicate the phase-down of all fossil fuels is happening.”
The negotiations at COP27 had not been easy. “…Not been easy at all. But this historic outcome does move us forward and it benefits the vulnerable people around the world,” he stated.
And with that in mind, he said: “There is no need in putting ourselves through all that we have just gone through if we are going to participate in an exercise of collective amnesia the moment the cameras move on,” and called for all Parties and delegations to hold each other accountable for the decisions that had just been taken.
Mr. Stiell added that he would personally shepherd the drive forward on Nationally Determined Contributions, or , which are at the core of the Paris Agreement and embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
He went on to say that civil society should take significant credit for bringing the international community to this historic moment in the combat against climate change.
“Without the voices of individuals, whether they are activists, scientists, researchers, youth or indigenous peoples we would not have gotten this far…your voices have a direct impact on the way we find our way forward at the multilateral level.”
Kiara Worth
COP27 convened over 35,000 people, including government representatives, observers and civil society.
The highlights of the meeting included, among others, of the High-Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities.
The report slammed greenwashing – misleading the public to believe that a company or entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is – and weak net-zero pledges and provided roadmap to bring integrity to net-zero commitments by industry, financial institutions, cities and regions and to support a global, equitable transition to a sustainable future.
Also during the Conference, the UN announced the , which calls for initial new targeted investments of $ 3.1 billion between 2023 and 2027, equivalent to a cost of just 50 cents per person per year.
Meanwhile, former US Vice-President and climate activist Al Gore, with the support of the UN Secretary-General, created by the Climate TRACE Coalition.
The tool combines satellite data and artificial intelligence to show the facility-level emissions of over 70,000 sites around the world, including companies in China, the United States and India. This will allow leaders to identify the location and scope of carbon and methane emissions being released into the atmosphere.
Another highlight of the conference was a of five major sectors – power, road transport, steel, hydrogen, and agriculture – presented by the COP27 Egyptian Presidency.
The Egyptian leadership also announced launched the , to improve the quantity and quality of climate finance contributions to transform agriculture and food systems by 2030.
This was the first COP to have a dedicated day for , which contributes to a third of greenhouse emissions and should be a crucial part of the solution.
Other initiatives announced at COP27 included:
The Sharm El-Sheik
Action on Water Adaptation and Resilience Initiative ()
African (ACMI)
The Campaign
The
The n (FMC) Cement & Concrete Commitment
Want to know more? Check out our , where you can find all our coverage of the COP27 climate summit, including stories and videos, explainers, podcasts and our daily newsletter.
After days of intense negotiations that stretched into early Sunday morning in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries at the latest UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, reached agreement on an outcome that established a funding mechanism to compensate vulnerable nations for ‘loss and damage’ from climate-induced disasters.
“This COP has taken an important step towards justice. I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a video message issued from the conference venue in Egypt, underscoring that the voices of those on frontlines of the climate crisis must be heard.
The UN chief was referring to what ended up becoming the thorniest issue at this COP, shorthand for the annual Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Developing countries made strong and repeated appeals for the establishment of a loss and damage fund, to compensate the countries that are the most vulnerable to climate disasters, yet who have contributed little to the climate crisis.
“Clearly this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust,” he underscored, stressing that the UN system will support the effort every step of the way.
“I call upon all of you to view these draft decisions not merely as words on paper but as a collective message to the world that we have heeded the call of our leaders and of current and future generations to set the right pace and direction for the implementation of the Paris agreement and the achievement of its goals.”
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History was made today at #COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh as parties agreed to the establishment of a long-awaited loss and damage fund for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. https://t.co/spmWVUjTva
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November 19, 2022
Mr. Shoukry added: “The world is watching, I call on us all to rise to the expectations entrusted to us by the global community, and especially by those who are most vulnerable and yet have contributed the least to climate change.”
After missing their Friday night deadline, negotiators were finally able to reach conclusions on the most difficult items of the agenda, including a loss and damage facility – with a commitment to set up a financial support structure for the most vulnerable by the next COP in 2023 – as well as the post-2025 finance goal, and the so-called mitigation work programme, that would reduce emissions faster, catalyze impactful action, and secure assurances from key countries that they will take immediate action to raise ambition and keep us on the path towards 1.5°C.
Yet, while agreement on these issues was seen as a welcome step in the right direction, there appeared to be little forward movement on other key issues, particularly on the phasing out of fossil fuels, and tightened language on the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Observers have warned that new language including “low emissions” energy alongside renewables as the energy sources of the future is a significant loophole, as the undefined term could be used to justify new fossil fuel development against the clear guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The combat against climate change continues
Mr. Guterres reminded the world of what remain the priorities regarding climate action, including the ambition to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and keep alive the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius limit, and pull humanity “back from the climate cliff”.
“We need to drastically reduce emissions now – and this is an issue this COP did not address,” he lamented, saying that the world still needs to make a giant leap on climate ambition, and to end its addiction to fossil fuels by investing “massively” in renewables.
The UN chief also emphasized the need to make good on the long-delayed promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries, establishing clarity and a credible roadmap to double adaptation funds.
He also reiterated the importance of changing the business models of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.
“They must accept more risk and systematically leverage private finance for developing countries at reasonable costs,” he said.
Kiara Worth
Our planet is still in the emergency room
The UN chief said that while a fund for loss and damage is essential, it’s not an answer if the climate crisis washes a small island State off the map – or turns an entire African country into a desert.
He renewed his call for just energy transition partnerships to accelerate the phasing out of coal and scaling up renewables and reiterated the call he made on his opening speech at COP27: a climate solidarity pact.
“A Pact in which all countries make an extra effort to reduce emissions this decade in line with the 1.5-degree goal. And a Pact to mobilize – together with international financial institutions and the private sector – financial and technical support for large emerging economies to accelerate their renewable energy transition,” he explained, underscoring that this is essential to keep the 1.5 degree limit within reach.
Kiara Worth
‘I share your frustration’
The UN chief also sent a message to civil society and activists which had been so vocal since the conference’s opening day: “I share your frustration”.
Mr. Guterres said that climate advocates – led by the moral voice of young people – have kept the agenda moving through the darkest of days and they must be protected.
“The most vital energy source in the world is people power. That is why it is so important to understand the human rights dimension of climate action,” he said, adding that the battle ahead will be tough and that “it will take each and every one of us fighting in the trenches each and every day…we can’t wait for a miracle.”
Echoing this sentiment, Kenyan environmental youth activist Elizabeth Wathuti, said: “COP27 may be over, but the fight for a safe future is not. It is now more urgent than ever that political leaders work to agree a strong global deal to protect and restore nature at the upcoming Global Biodiversity Summit in Montreal. “
Ms. Wathuti added: “The interconnected food, nature and climate crisis are right now affecting us all – but the frontline communities like mine are hardest hit. How many alarm bells need to be sounded before we act?”
Time is running out
In his video message, Mr. Guterres highlighted that COP27 concluded with “much homework” still to be done and little time in which to do it.
“We are already halfway between the [2015] Paris Climate Agreement and the 2030 deadline. We need all hands on deck to drive justice and ambition,” he stated.
The Secretary-General added that this includes ambition to end the “suicidal war” on nature that is fuelling the climate crisis, driving species to extinction and destroying ecosystems.
“Next month’s UN Biodiversity Conference is the moment to adopt an ambitious global biodiversity framework for the next decade, drawing from the power of nature-based solutions and the critical role of indigenous communities,” he urged.
In his closing remarks, UNFCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, said: “At COP27… we’ve determined a way forward on a decade-long conversation on funding for loss and damage.” Among other positive steps, he said that in the text adopted Sunday morning, “we have been given reassurances that there is no room for backsliding. It gives the key political signals that indicate the phase-down of all fossil fuels is happening.”
The negotiations at COP27 had not been easy. “…Not been easy at all. But this historic outcome does move us forward and it benefits the vulnerable people around the world,” he stated.
And with that in mind, he said: “There is no need in putting ourselves through all that we have just gone through if we are going to participate in an exercise of collective amnesia the moment the cameras move on,” and called for all Parties and delegations to hold each other accountable for the decisions that had just been taken.
Mr. Stiell added that he would personally shepherd the drive forward on Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, which are at the core of the Paris Agreement and embody efforts by each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
He went on to say that civil society should take significant credit for bringing the international community to this historic moment in the combat against climate change.
“Without the voices of individuals, whether they are activists, scientists, researchers, youth or indigenous peoples we would not have gotten this far…your voices have a direct impact on the way we find our way forward at the multilateral level.”
Kiara Worth
COP27 convened over 35,000 people, including government representatives, observers and civil society.
The highlights of the meeting included, among others, the launch of the first report of the High-Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities.
The report slammed greenwashing – misleading the public to believe that a company or entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is – and weak net-zero pledges and provided roadmap to bring integrity to net-zero commitments by industry, financial institutions, cities and regions and to support a global, equitable transition to a sustainable future.
Also during the Conference, the UN announced the Executive Action Plan for the Early Warnings for All initiative, which calls for initial new targeted investments of $ 3.1 billion between 2023 and 2027, equivalent to a cost of just 50 cents per person per year.
The tool combines satellite data and artificial intelligence to show the facility-level emissions of over 70,000 sites around the world, including companies in China, the United States and India. This will allow leaders to identify the location and scope of carbon and methane emissions being released into the atmosphere.
Another highlight of the conference was a so-called master plan to accelerate the decarbonization of five major sectors – power, road transport, steel, hydrogen, and agriculture – presented by the COP27 Egyptian Presidency.
This was the first COP to have a dedicated day for Agriculture, which contributes to a third of greenhouse emissions and should be a crucial part of the solution.
There have been 21 editions of the men’s World Cup since its inauguration in 1930 but Qatar 2022 is set to be a tournament like no other.
Since it was announced as the host city almost 12 years ago, it was always destined to be a World Cup of firsts.
From extreme weather to tournament debuts, CNN takes a look at the ways this year’s competition will be breaking new ground.
This will be the first time the Qatari men’s national team will participate in a World Cup finals, having failed to qualify through usual means in the past.
FIFA, the sport’s governing body, permits a host nation to take part in a World Cup without having to go through the qualifying rounds, which means the small Gulf state can now test itself against the best in world soccer.
Qatar is relatively new to the sport, having played its first official match in 1970, but the country has fallen in love with the beautiful game and the national team has steadily improved.
In 2004, The Aspire Academy was founded in the hope of finding and developing all of Qatar’s most talented sportspeople.
In recent years, that has reaped rewards for its soccer team. Qatar won the Asia Cup in 2019, capping off one of the most memorable runs in the tournament’s history, conceding only one goal throughout the tournament.
Seventy percent of the squad that won the trophy came through the academy, and that number has only increased heading into the World Cup.
Coached by Spaniard Felix Sanchez, Qatar will be looking to surprise people and faces a relatively kind group, alongside Ecuador, Senegal and The Netherlands.
The World Cup has always been held in either May, June or July but Qatar 2022 will break away from such tradition – more out of necessity.
Temperatures in Qatar can reach over 40 degrees Celsius over those months so, with this in mind, the tournament was moved to a cooler time.
However, winter in Qatar is a relative term with temperatures still likely to be around 30 degrees, but organizers hope to combat the heat with multiple methods, such as high-tech cooling systems in stadiums.
The change in tournament dates has played havoc with some of the biggest domestic leagues in the world.
All of Europe’s top leagues have had to work a winter break into their schedules, meaning congested fixture lists before and after the tournament.
One of FIFA’s justifications for awarding Qatar the hosting rights was the ability to take the tournament to a new part of the world.
None of the 21 previous World Cups have been held in an Islamic country and this month’s tournament will be a chance for the region to celebrate its growing love for the game.
However, it undoubtedly raises a few problems that organizers have had to tackle. For many fans, drinking alcohol has, and will continue to be, a big part of the experience of such tournaments.
In Qatar, though, it’s illegal to be seen drunk in public, which has forced organizers to come up with inventive ways to circumnavigate the issue.
As a result, alcohol will only be served in designated fan parks around Doha and there will be separate areas for fans to sober up before and after matches.
World’s only openly gay active pro footballer is concerned for LGBTQ community ahead of Qatar 2022
04:39
– Source:
CNN
Another question mark around the tournament is how the country will be able to deal with the influx of an expected one million visitors, given it’s the smallest country to host the World Cup, with a population of just under three million.
As a result, all eight stadiums are in and around Doha, the capital city, and are all within an hour’s drive of each other.
Organizers say the travel infrastructure – including buses, metro and car hires – will be able to cope with the increased pressure.
One benefit of the small distances between venues is that fans will be able to see up to two games in one day. Should traffic be kind.
Due to its size, Qatar has also had to be smart with its accommodation. Two cruise ships, MSC Poesia and MSC World Europa, are being moored in Doha to provide some support to hotels.
Both vessels will offer the usual cruise ship experience, but fans won’t be sailing any further than the 10-minute shuttle-bus ride into the heart of Doha.
For those fans prone to a touch of sea sickness, organizers have also built three ‘Fan Villages’ which will offer a place to stay on the outskirts of the city.
These include a variety of accommodation – including caravans, portacabins and even camping experiences – and all are located within reasonable distances of the venues.
Also, for those able to afford a little more, there will be luxury yachts docked in Doha’s harbor, which can offer a place to sleep for, let’s face it, an extortionate price.
FIFA has pledged to make Qatar 2022 the first carbon neutral World Cup, as world soccer’s governing body continues its pledge to make the sport more environmentally friendly.
It, alongside Qatar, pledged to offset carbon emissions by investing in green projects and buying carbon credits – a common practice used by businesses to “cancel out” the impact of a carbon footprint.
Qatar, the world’s largest emitter per capita of carbon dioxide, has said it will keep emissions low and remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as the tournament produces by investing in projects that will capture the greenhouse gases.
For instance, it will be sowing the seeds for the largest turf farm in the world by planting 679,000 shrubs and 16,000 trees.
The plants will be laid at stadiums and elsewhere around the country and are supposed to absorb thousands of tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year.
However, critics have accused organizers of “greenwashing” the event – a term used to call out those who try to cover their damage to the environment and climate with green initiatives that are either false, misleading or overstated.
Carbon Market Watch (CMW), a nonprofit advocacy group specializing in carbon pricing, says Qatar’s calculations are grossly underestimated.
Qatar 2022 will also see female referees officiate a men’s World Cup match for the first time.
Yamashita Yoshimi, Salima Mukansanga and Stephanie Frappart have all been named among the 36 officials selected for the tournament.
They will be joined by Neuza Back, Karen Diaz Medina and American Kathryn Nesbitt, who will be traveling to the Gulf nation as assistants.
Frappart is arguably the most famous name on the list after she wrote her name into the history books in 2020 by becoming the first woman to take charge of a men’s Champions League match.
But looking to learn from her in Qatar is Rwanda’s Mukansanga, who told CNN that she was excited to embrace the challenge of refereeing at a major tournament.
“I would look at what the referees are doing, just to copy the best things they’re doing, so that one day I would be in the World Cup like this,” she said, adding that her family couldn’t wait to see her take to the pitch.
It’s not yet decided when the women will be refereeing their first match at the tournament, but there will be some new rules to enforce.
For the first time, teams will be able to use up to five substitutes and managers can now pick from a squad of 26 players, rather than the usual 23.
Qatar 2022 is set to start on November 20. You can follow CNN’s coverage of the World Cup here.
Climate change activists at COP27, currently underway in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
by Aimable Twahirwa (sharm el sheikh)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 20 (IPS) – After a tense impasse and many hours of negotiations, almost 200 countries struck a deal to set up a loss and damage fund to assist nations worst hit by climate change – a demand considered not-negotiable by the developing countries.
COP27 was extended by a day after negotiators couldn’t agree on the fund – leading to UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying on Friday, November 18, 2022, that the time for talking about loss and damage finance is over. He alluded to a growing breakdown of trust between developing and developed countries.
Guterres, early on Sunday, November 20, 2022, welcomed the fund saying: “I welcome the decision to establish a loss and damage fund and to operationalize it in the coming period. Clearly, this will not be enough, but it is a much-needed political signal to rebuild broken trust.”
He added that the voices of those on the frontlines of the climate crisis must be heard.
Under the previous global climate summit, which took place in Glasgow, Scotland last year, parties agreed on the roadmap where developing countries, which did little to cause the climate crisis, arrived with a determination to win a commitment from rich nations to compensate them for this damage.
On several occasions during negotiations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, also the COP27 President, stated that climate finance remains key for Africa since the continent contributes 4 percent to global emissions and is adversely affected to a much higher degree by global warming-relate events.
On losses and damages, some climate finance experts believe that ongoing climate talks on finance at COP27 are one of the most painful examples of the African proverb that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.
“Ongoing negotiations on loss and damage are the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” Sophia Murphy, the Executive Director of the US-based Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), told IPS.
Delegates debate climate finance on the sidelines of COP27 at Sharm El Sheikh. Credit: Aimable Twahirwa/IPS
IATP is a think tank that analyses the interconnection between agriculture, trade, and climate in developing countries.
Since 2015, loss and damage have served as the main catalyser under the UNFCCC process, especially for enhancing financial support for adaptation to avert, minimise and address climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
Murphy pointed out that the G77 includes a very wide range of countries and interests, and the climate crisis is not suffered equally across the South.
“Currently developing nations at COP27 are likely showing that everyone is responsible for the negative realities of climate change and loss and damage negotiations is the most recent iteration of this long-standing fight,” she said.
While many negotiators in Sharm El Sheikh believe that rich countries are lagging in measures to allocate loss and damage funding, there is a consensus that the current negotiations on climate finance did not go very well, particularly with respect to the expectations for COP27.
Dr Somorin Olufunso, Regional Principal Officer, Climate Change and Green Growth (East Africa) at the African Development Bank, told IPS that the finance negotiation is primarily a “trust” negotiation.
“Unfortunately, if the trust is broken, it may affect other issues being negotiated and ultimately affect our collective action of combatting climate change,” the senior financial expert said.
The bank published the 2022 African Economic Outlook report on the needs of African Countries for loss and damage in 2022-2030 at between USD 289.2 to USD 440.5 billion. The estimated adaptation finance needs are in a similar order of magnitude.
For many Africans, according to Olufunso, the negotiations were not aggressive enough in finding solutions urgently needed at both scale and speed.
Until the end of the summit, loss and damage fund remained a major sticking point.
“Negotiations are going well in some items and not well in other items (…) Rwanda and other vulnerable countries had much expectation in securing a decision of adopting the establishment of loss and damage fund,” Faustin Munyazikwiye, the Deputy Director General of Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (REMA) and Rwanda’s Lead negotiator, told IPS in an interview.
According to him, this item did not go well.
African negotiators at COP27 prioritised filling gaps between present risks associated with climate change and financing for adaptation.
However, most developing countries prefer to ensure that finance for loss and damages is channelled through the private sector and is not necessarily a liability for rich countries.
But other experts believe that cost of repairing these damages is staggering and the countries which should pay are the ones who contributed to climate change in the first place.
While some climate finance experts observe that the commitment by rich nations to pay the developing world $100 billion cannot even compensate what Africa’s needs, others point out that COP27 must deliver a bold finance facility to pay for loss and damage to communities already impacted by climate change on the continent.
Kelly Dent, the Global Director of External Engagement at the UK-based World Animal Protection, told IPS most vulnerable countries, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa, are considering the climate emergency as a matter of life.
“Without a coherent and meaningful agreement on finance, COP27 will fall short of its mission and put millions of lives at risk,” she said.
From Dent’s perspective, a roadmap to track and deliver a doubling of adaptation finance is critical.
The 2022 UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report, released on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, indicates that the continent requires 7 to 15 billion US dollars annually to enhance adaptation to climate change besides the nearly 3 trillion dollars investment that is needed to implement nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and cap emissions in line with the Paris climate deal.
Climate reparations, or “loss and damage” funding, is a highly divisive and emotive issue that is seen as a fundamental question of climate justice.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Government ministers and negotiators from nearly 200 countries finally secured an agreement Sunday aimed at keeping a critically important global heating target alive.
The new political deal reaffirms efforts to limit global temperature rise to the crucial temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and the creation of a new “loss and damage” fund that would compensate poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by climate change.
Delegates struggled to build consensus on an array of issues, even as a flurry of U.N. reports published ahead of the conference made clear just how close the planet is to irreversible climate breakdown.
The scale of division between climate envoys saw talks run beyond Friday’s deadline, with campaigners accusing the U.S. of playing a “deeply obstructive” role by blocking the demands of developing countries. The final agreement was reached in the early hours of Sunday morning following tense negotiations throughout the night, with many delegates exhausted by the time the deal was announced.
Some of the major sticking points included battles over whether all fossil fuels or just coal should be named in the decision text and whether to set up a “loss and damage” fund for countries hit by climate-fueled disasters.
The highly divisive and emotive issue of loss and damage dominated the U.N.-brokered talks and many felt the success of the conference hinged on getting wealthy countries to agree to establish a new fund.
The summit made history as the first to see the topic of loss and damage funding formally make it onto the COP27 agenda. The issue was first raised by climate-vulnerable countries 30 years ago.
Lifting hopes of a breakthrough on loss and damage thereafter, the European Union said late Thursday that it would be prepared to back the demand of the G-77 group of 134 developing nations to create a new reparations fund.
The proposal was welcomed by some countries in the Global South, although campaigners decried the offer as a “poison pill” given the bloc said it was only willing to provide aid to “the most vulnerable countries.”
Rich countries have long opposed the creation of a fund to address loss and damage and many policymakers fear that accepting liability could trigger a wave of lawsuits by countries on the frontlines of the climate emergency.
Negotiators at the UN’s COP27 climate summit have reached a tentative agreement to establish a loss and damage fund for nations vulnerable to climate disasters, according to negotiators with the European Union and Africa, as well as non-governmental organizations who are observing the talks.
The United States is also working to sign on to a deal on a loss and damage fund, Whitney Smith, a spokesperson for US Climate Envoy John Kerry, confirmed to CNN.
The fund will focus on what can be done to support loss and damage resources, but it does not include liability or compensation provisions, a senior Biden administration official told CNN. The US and other developed nations have long sought to avoid such provisions that could open them up to legal liability and lawsuits from other countries.
If finalized, this could represent a major breakthrough in negotiations on a contentious subject – and it’s seen as a reversal, as the US has in the past opposed efforts to create such a fund. It could pave the way for an agreement at a final Sharm el-Sheikh COP27 plenary expected come on Saturday night Egypt time.
But it’s not yet settled – an EU source directly involved with the negotiations cautioned earlier Saturday that the deal is part of the larger COP27 agreement that has to be approved by nearly 200 countries. Negotiators have been working throughout the day and into the night.
But progress has been made, the source said. In a discussion Saturday afternoon Egypt time, the EU managed to get the G77 bloc of countries to agree to target the fund to vulnerable nations, which could pave the way to a deal on loss and damage.
If finalized, the deal would represent a major breakthrough on the international stage and far exceed the expectations of this year’s climate summit, and the mood among some of the delegates was jubilant.
Countries who are the most vulnerable to climate disasters – yet who have contributed little to the climate crisis – have struggled for years to secure a loss and damage fund.
Developed nations that have historically produced the most planet-warming emissions have been hesitant to sign off on a fund they felt could open them up to legal liability for climate disasters.
Details on how the fund would operate remain murky. The tentative text says a fund will be established this year, but it leaves a lot of questions on when it will be finalized and become operational, climate experts told reporters Saturday. The text talks about a transitional committee that will help nail down those details, but doesn’t set future deadlines.
“There are no guarantees to the timeline,” Nisha Krishnan resilience director for World Resources Institute Africa told reporters.
Advocates for a loss and damage fund were happy with the progress, but noted that the draft is not ideal.
“We are happy with this outcome because it’s what developed countries wanted – though not everything they came here for,” Erin Roberts, founder of the Loss and Damage Collaboration, told CNN in a statement. “Like many, I’ve also been conditioned to expect very little from this process. While establishing the fund is certainly a win for developing countries and those on the frontlines of climate change, it’s an empty shell without finance. It’s far too little, far too late for those on the frontlines of climate change. But we will work on it.”
At COP27 the demand for a loss and damage fund – from developing countries, the G77 bloc and activists – had reached a fever pitch, driven by a number of major climate disasters this year including Pakistan’s devastating floods.
The conference went way into overtime on Saturday, with negotiators still working out the details as the workers were dismantling the venue around them. At points, there was a real sense of fatigue and frustration.
Earlier in the day, EU officials threatened to walk out of the meeting if the final agreement fails to endorse the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Global scientists have for decades warned that warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees – a threshold that is fast-approaching as the planet’s average temperature has already climbed to around 1.1 degrees. Beyond 1.5 degrees, the risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages will increase dramatically, scientists said in the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
In a carefully choreographed news conference Saturday morning, the EU’s Green Deal tsar Frans Timmermans, flanked by a full line-up of ministers and other top officials from EU member states, said that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
“We do not want 1.5 Celsius to die here and today. That to us is completely unacceptable,” he said.
The EU made it clear that it was willing to agree to a loss and damage fund – a major shift in its position compared to just a week ago – but only in exchange for a strong commitment on the 1.5 degree goal.
As the sun went down on Sharm el-Sheikh, the mood shifted to cautious jubilation, with groups of negotiators starting to hint that a deal was in sight.
But, as is always the case with top-level diplomacy, officials were quick to stress that nothing is truly agreed until the final gavel drops.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Negotiators at U.N. climate talks in Egypt say they have struck a potential breakthrough deal on the creation of a fund for compensating poor nations that are the most vulnerable to climate change, called ‘loss and damage.’
“There is an agreement on loss and damage,” Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna told The Associated Press Saturday. “That means for countries like ours we will have the mosaic of solutions that we have been advocating for.”
It still needs to be approved unanimously in a vote later today.
Saturday afternoon’s draft proposal came from the Egyptian presidency.
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— UN climate talks drag into extra time with scant progress
— Despair, lack of progress at climate talks, yet hope blooms
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Two separate drafts released by the Egyptian presidency, on efforts to step up emissions cuts and the overarching decision of this year’s talks, barely build on what was agreed in Glasgow last year.
The texts leave in place a reference to the Paris accords goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)” which scientists say is far too risky.
They also don’t suggest any new short-term targets for either developing or developed countries, which experts say are needed to achieve the more ambitious 1.5 C (2.7 F) goal that would prevent some of the more extreme effects of climate change.
A new proposal on the issue of loss and damage that calls for the creation of a new fund to help developing countries hit by climate disasters said developed countries would be “urged” to contribute to the fund, which would also draw on other private and public sources of money such as international financial institutions.
However, the proposal does not suggest that major emerging economies such as China have to contribute to the fund, which was a key ask of the European Union and the United States.
It also does not tie the creation of the new fund to any increase in efforts to cut emissions, or restrict the recipients of funding to those countries that are most vulnerable.
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Alok Sharma, the British official who chaired last year’s climate talks in Glasgow, declined to comment on criticism of the Egyptian presidency, but made clear that an ambitious outcome to combat climate change was crucial.
“Every presidency runs things in their own way,” he said. “The key issue for me and for the UK is that what we have here at the end of the day is a balanced and ambitious text across all the key pillars,” he said.
“For us it’s also vitally important to not just preserve what we agreed in Glasgow but that we build on that as well,” said Sharma, referring to the recommitment made last year to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) and a pledge to increase efforts to slash emissions cuts.
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Spain’s environment minister said they are willing to walk out if they can’t reach a fair deal at the U.N. climate talks.
“We could be exiting of course,” said Teresa Ribera. “We won’t be part of a result that we find unfair and not effective to address the problem that we are handling, which is climate change and the need to reduce emissions.”
Ribera said she is “concerned” that a draft of the final document may not include a mention of the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit target set in Paris in 2015.
She added she didn’t want to see a result “that may backtrack what we already did in Glasgow,” referring to the renewed commitment to the 1.5 C goal at the climate summit last year.
“That’s something that we’d like to see, that there is a strong commitment to the 1.5 target,” said Teresa Ribera.
On the role of the presidency, Ribera said that the process has been “very confusing.”
“It is not clear … and we are running out of time,” she said.
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Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said parties must now “rise to the occasion” in a news conference Saturday morning.
“The issue now rests with the will of the parties,” Shoukry said at a press conference. “It is the parties who must rise to the occasion and take upon themselves the responsibility of finding the areas of convergence and moving forward.”
On a new draft text for the overarching decision at the conference, which was being worked on overnight, Shoukry said that “a vast majority of the parties indicated to me that they considered the text as balanced and that they constitute a potential breakthrough that can lead to consensus.”
He added that “all must show the necessary flexibility” in reaching a consensus, and that Egypt was merely “facilitating this process.”
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New Zealand’s climate minister has said a draft of the final document circulated by the presidency “has been received quite poorly by pretty much everybody,” adding that delegations are going into another round of talks.
Speaking to The Associated Press, James Shaw called the draft “entirely unsatisfactory.”
He added that the proposal “abandons really any hope of achieving 1.5 (degrees Celsius, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit),” referring to the warming limit agreed at the Paris agreement back in 2015.
He said parties will continue to work on the issue as well as look to reach consensus on a loss and damage fund for developing nations who are suffering from the impacts of climate change.
“Everybody wants an outcome on loss and damage and everybody wants to keep 1.5 alive. So that’s what we’re going to keep doing,” he said.
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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock says that responsibility for the fat of the U.N. climate talks “now lies in the hands of the Egyptian COP presidency.”
She said the European Union had made clear overnight that “we will not sign a paper here that diverges significantly from the 1.5 C path, that would bury the goal of 1.5 degrees.”
“If these climate conferences set us back then we wouldn’t have needed to travel here in the first place,” she said.
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A vent at an underground natural gas storage well in Western Pennsylvania has been spewing massive amounts of planet-warming methane into the atmosphere for more than 11 days and attempts to plug the leak have thus far failed.
Owner Equitrans Midstream said the well at its Rager Mountain storage facility, located in a rural area about 1.5 hours east of Pittsburgh, is venting about 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, according to initial estimates.
If accurate, that would total 1.1 billion cubic feet in emissions so far, equal to the greenhouse gas emissions from burning 1,080 rail cars of coal.
Pennsylvania environmental regulators issued the company notice of five potential violations of state law. As a precaution, the Federal Aviation Administration has restricted aircraft from within a 1-mile radius of the leaking well.
A written statement provided Friday by Equitrans spokeswoman Natalie Cox said “there are no immediate public safety concerns” and the company has been working with a specialty well services company to plug the leak, which was first reported Nov. 6.
The Rager facility is in Jackson Township, at the heart of the Marcellus Shale formation that has seen a boom in gas production since the introduction of hydraulic fracturing more than a decade ago. Residents living as far as four miles away from the leak told The Associated Press on Friday they could hear the roar of pressurized gas escaping from the well and could smell the fumes.
Tracey Ryan, who homeschools her two young children at her house about three miles away, said the air reeks of sulfur and the noise is so bad she has had trouble sleeping.
“When you’re laying in bed at night, it sounds like a jet plane taking off,” said the 39-year-old mother. ”It’s unreal, the noise that’s coming, and it’s constant. … Everybody just keeps telling us we’re safe. But it doesn’t feel safe if you can hear it and smell it.”
Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is colorless and odorless. But when the gas is processed for transport and sale, producers add a chemical called mercaptan to give it a distinctive “rotten egg” smell that helps make people aware of leaks.
Methane’s earth-warming power is some 83 times stronger over 20 years than the carbon dioxide that comes from car tailpipes and power plant smokestacks. Oil and gas companies are the top industrial emitters of methane, which, once released into the atmosphere, will be disrupting the climate for decades, contributing to more heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires and floods.
The new leak comes as the Environmental Protection Agency on Nov. 11 updated proposed new rules intended to cut methane and other harmful emissions from oil and gas operations.
The Rager facility has 10 storage wells with a total storage capacity of 9 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Equitrans announced Thursday the leak had been stopped when workers flooded the leaking well, but the hiss of venting gas returned early Friday morning.
Cox cautioned the estimate of 100 million cubic feet of natural gas leaking per day is preliminary and the company would be unable to provide an accurate account of the gas lost until an inventory verification study is completed.
The initial estimate would potentially put the Rager leak as smaller but comparable to the daily emissions from the worst uncontrolled gas leaks in U.S. history — a 2018 blowout at an Ohio gas well owned by a subsidiary of ExxonMobil and the 2015 disaster at the Aliso Canyon storage facility in California.
The citations issued against the company by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection include failures to properly maintain and operate the gas facility, creating a public nuisance and producing a “hazard to public health a safety.” The company was also cited for failing to provide state inspectors “free and unrestricted access.”
Lauren Camarda, spokeswoman for the state environmental agency, said that when members of a state emergency response team first arrived at the site on Nov. 7 they were initially barred from entering and told “access was restricted to critical personnel only.”
Cox said that when the state team arrived, Equitrans’ contractors were still in the process of implementing a safety boundary to avoid introducing a potential ignition source that could ignite the highly flammable methane leaking into the air.
The gas is coming from a vent designed to relieve intense pressures building up in the well and prevent a blowout. Cox said the company is now withdrawing gas from four storage wells to reduce the overall pressure in the field. Efforts to plug the leak were expected to continue through the weekend, including attempts to plug the well with concrete.
Nearby residents said a resolution can’t come soon enough.
Edana Glessner, who runs a wedding venue 3.6 miles from the well site, said the smell was making her nauseous and impacted her business.
“You could hear it during the last wedding we had,” she said. “And it smelled, but everybody was OK with it. We said we’re really sorry.”
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Biesecker reported from Washington and Rubinkam from northeastern Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of mangrove seedlings are growing in a small bay of an island south of Fiji’s main island Viti Levu. The Pacific Island Countries are vulnerable to climate change and need resources to adapt. Credit: Tom Vierus/Climate Visuals
Opinion by Labanya Prakash Jena (sharm el-sheikh)
Inter Press Service
Sharm El-Sheikh, Nov 18 (IPS) – The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) – 14 small island developing nations in the Pacific Ocean – comprise one of the most exposed and vulnerable regions to climate change and natural calamities. The region did not cause this climate crisis; the crisis stemmed from heavy carbon emissions by developed countries. Yet paradoxically, the countries in the region are also the least resourced to adapt to climate change.
The IMF estimates that the PICs need an additional investment of an average of 9% of GDP on developing climate-resilient infrastructure over the next ten years. Some countries’ climate-resilient infrastructure needs more than 10% of their GDP. However, this much capital mobilisation is impossible for the region with low per capita income, volatile economy, lack of fiscal space, and low saving rate. Besides, these countries have also committed to ambitious targets to decarbonize their economies.
In this scenario, international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make the region resilient and prosperous. The longer the delay in building the much-needed climate-resilient infrastructure, the higher the cost and greater the risk of exposing these countries to extreme events for a longer time.
Labanya Prakash Jena, Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser, Indo-Pacific Region, argues international climate finance mobilisation is critical to make Pacific Island Countries resilient and prosperous. Credit: Commonwealth
Tackling the bottlenecks
There are two primary bottlenecks to international climate flows: institutional structure and lack of capacity at various levels. The PIC region’s institutional structure is plagued by limited administrative and financial capabilities, inadequate program management and accountability, and an obscure audit system to mobilise international public climate finance.
In addition, these countries lack the capacity to design and structure projects and develop a robust and tangible climate adaptation project pipeline. Besides, the region is not strategically allocating available capital, including budgetary outlays, international climate finance, development aid, and private finance. The primary focus of international institutions must be to address these challenges quickly.
Options for international climate finance: Grants, debt, equity
The total GDP of the PIC region is only about USD10 billion, with an average per capita income of approximately USD4,000 and a gross capital formation rate of 20%, according to the World Bank. This translates to a maximum domestic capital mobilisation of USD 2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the IMF estimates that the region needs an additional capital of USD 1 billion per annum for climate resilience infrastructure investment.
International grant capital is the only option to fund climate adaptation projects in the region. The reason is that any form of debt capital, even if in the form of concessional debt capital over the long term, is not an economical one. The PIC region cannot pay back debt, and it is unlikely the region’s economic size will increase at a rapid rate in the future to pay back debt.
Although the region’s primary sources of international climate finance – the Green Climate Fund (GCF), World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) – provide grants, it is only for project preparation and capacity development. These financers mostly provide debt financing, albeit at a better rate than private financers.
However, the low debt servicing ability of the region arrests them, raising foreign debt capital. It is even more problematic if the debt capital is in foreign currency (e.g., USD) – the borrowers face huge foreign currency due to expected and unexpected devaluation in the local currency, and borrowers face currency risk.
Equity capital is not the best form of financing for climate adaptation projects. Unlike climate change mitigating projects, they do not generate clear cash flows as the beneficiaries are difficult to identify to monetize climate adaptation projects. Hence, equity capital is not an efficient source of capital for climate adaptation projects.
Strategic allocation of capital is key
Unlike developed and developing countries, the PIC region does not have a have strong domestic financial and banking sector, and it rarely attracted foreign capital for large-scale investment. So, it is futile to expect large-scale private financing flows to bridge the financing gaps for their climate actions.
Moreover, the public goods nature of climate adaptation projects does not attract private financers. Hence, public financing, including capital Government budgetary outlays, international climate finance, and other development aids must be spent judiciously.
The crux is strategically allocating the available capital and aligning projects’ needs with the mandates of the public finances. One of the most efficient ways is to carve out the climate financing as a separate portfolio and decide where and how the capital would be used in various climate adaptation projects.
In addition, the climate change divisions of these countries can work closely with the Ministry of finance to mainstream climate adaptation in national development plans and sector policies and bring climate change perspectives in economic decision-making. The countries can also need to identify the projects which offer dual benefits of climate migration and adaptation, which brings a lot of attention to global climate financers.
For example, nature-based carbon sequestration through ocean conservation, forestry, and wilding (wetland, grassland) sequestrates carbon, offers natural shields, and protects human life and properties in extreme weather events. The global impact investors will find these projects attractive as they help the region become climate-resilient and create a global public good, helping everyone, including the financer’s country.
Way forward
International institutions must support Pacific Island countries to strengthen administrative and financial structures for better transparency and accountability, which can help the PICs access global public capital. In addition, Governments in the region must strategically allocate climate finance, prioritise climate actions in decision-making, integrate adaptation projects with national climate action plans, and identify suitable projects offering dual climate mitigation and adaptation benefits.
The international institutions can also help the countries identify and design projects to develop pipeline projects for funding. There is a dire need to develop institutional and local capacity to meet the needs of climate change-related economic activities in the region. But if addressed, the region will be able to finally make headway in addressing the deep adaptation challenges they face due to climate change.
Labanya Prakash Jena is the Commonwealth Regional Climate Finance Adviser for the Indo-Pacific Region.
DAWWAYAH, Iraq and ILISU DAM, Turkey — Next year, the water will come. The pipes have been laid to Ata Yigit’s sprawling farm in Turkey’s southeast connecting it to a dam on the Euphrates River. A dream, soon to become a reality, he says.
Over 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) downstream in southern Iraq, nothing grows anymore in Obeid Hafez’s wheat farm. The water stopped coming a year ago, the 95-year-old said.
The starkly different realities are playing out along the length of the Tigris-Euphrates river basin, one of the world’s most vulnerable. River flows have fallen by 40% in the past four decades as countries along its length — Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq — pursue rapid, unilateral development of the waters’ use.
The drop is projected to worsen as temperatures rise from climate change. Both Turkey and Iraq, the two biggest consumers, acknowledge they must cooperate to preserve the river system. But a combination of political failures, mistrust and intransigence are conspiring to prevent a deal on sharing the rivers.
The Associated Press conducted more than a dozen interviews in both countries, from top water envoys and senior officials to local farmers, and gained exclusive visits to controversial dam projects. Internal reports and revealed data illustrate the calculations driving disputes behind closed doors, from Iraq’s fears of a potential 20% drop in food production to Turkey’s struggles to balance Iraq’s and its own needs.
“I don’t see a solution,” said former Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.
“Would Turkey sacrifice its own interests? Especially if that means that by giving more (water) to us, their farmers and people will suffer?”
Turkey has been harnessing the river basin with a massive project to boost agriculture and generate hydroelectricity, the Southeast Anatolia Project, or GAP by its Turkish acronym. It has built at least 19 dams on the Euphrates and Tigris, with several more planned for a total of 22. The aim is to develop Turkey’s southeast, long an economic backwater.
For the farmer, Yigit, the project will be transformative.
Until now, his reliance on well water only permitted half his lands to be irrigated.
But now that the irrigation pipes have reached his farm in Mardin province, his entire 4,500 acres will be watered next year via the Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates.
In contrast, Iraq — which relies on outside sources for nearly all its water — grows more worried with every drop diverted upstream.
In 2014, its Water Ministry prepared a confidential report warning that in two years, Iraq’s water supply would no longer meet demand, and the gap would keep widening. The report, seen by the AP, said that by 2035, the water deficit would cause a 20% reduction in food production.
The report shows Iraqi officials knew how bleak the future would be without the recommended $180 billion in investment in water infrastructure and an agreement with its neighbors. Neither has happened.
Decades of talks have still not found common ground on water-sharing.
Turkey approaches the water issue as if it were the river basin’s benevolent owner, assessing needs and deciding how much to let flow downstream. Iraq considers ownership shared and wants a more permanent arrangement with defined portions.
In a rare interview, Turkey’s envoy on water issues with Iraq, Veysel Eroglu, told the AP that Turkey cannot accept to release a fixed amount of water because of the unpredictability of river flows in the age of climate change.
Eroglu said Turkey could agree to setting a ratio to release — but only if Syria and Iraq provide detailed data on their water consumption.
“That is the only way to share water in an optimal and fair manner,” Eroglu said.
Iraq refuses to provide its consumption data. That’s in part because it would show the widespread water waste in Iraq and the government weakness that makes managing water nearly impossible.
Government attempts at rationing the waning water causes outrage in southern Iraq. In August in southern Dhi Qar province, for example, tribal leader Sheikh Thamer Saeedi and dozens of protesters tried to divert water from a Tigris tributary to feed his barren lands after authorities failed to respond to his pleas for water.
The attempted diversion nearly sparked violence between local tribes before security forces intervened.
Iraq blames one Turkish infrastructure project in particular for these woes: the Ilusu Dam, on the Tigris.
Before Turkey began operating the dam in 2020, all the waters of Tigris flowed into Iraq. Now how much water comes down depends on Ankara’s consideration of Iraq’s month-to-month requests for a minimum flow, weighed against Turkey’s own hydropower needs.
Turkey contends it is unfairly scapegoated. The AP was given an exclusive tour of the dam facility in October by Turkey’s State Hydraulics Works, known by the Turkish acronym DSI, and given figures for the first time detailing flow rates and electricity production over two years.
A decade ago, Iraq received an average flow of 625 cubic meters of water per second from the Tigris. Today, the rate averages only 36% of that, Iraqi water ministry officials say.
Data provided by DSI shows that Turkey respected a request made by Iraq that it release at least 300 cubic meters per second down the Tigris during summer months when shortages are common.
But Iraqi officials say depending on such ad hoc arrangements make planning difficult.
“They can cut water, they can release water. We urgently need a water agreement just to satisfy Iraq’s minimum requirements,” said Hatem Hamid, head of the National Centre for Water Resources Management.
For example, with dire shortages anticipated in 2022, Hamid cut the state agriculture water plan in half and reduced fresh water flows to Iraq’s marshlands, to minimize salinity. But water-stressed Iran also diverted flows from tributaries feeding the marshes. The result was an environmental emergency and hundreds of dead livestock.
Back in Obeid Hafez’s farm, the land is barren.
Portraits of Hafez’s forefathers hang in his spartan living room. With his sons gone to seek work in the cities, there will be no one to till the land after him.
Talks on a deal to allow countries to trade carbon credits to help them hit their climate targets are set to drag on beyond the COP27 summit in Egypt as issues, including how to keep track of the credits, are unresolved, observers and a negotiator said.
Creating such a market is considered crucial to helping move money from richer, polluting countries to their developing country peers, and was called for in Article 6 of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Yet it might be years before countries can, on a large scale, offset their emissions with credits based on emissions-reducing projects such as in renewable energy or forestation based elsewhere, after differences emerged on technical detail.
“The Article 6 texts are all open at the present time,” said Andrea Bonzanni, International policy director at the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).
A draft document of around 60 pages, published on Wednesday, outlined how inter-country carbon trading might function, but many sections are up for debate.
Pedro Barata, carbon markets specialist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said he was impressed by the size of the draft document, but it was clear it was not leading to a decision in Sharm El-Sheikh.
“(The draft) gives an increased sense of urgency throughout the year to further negotiate and clear this very long – but fundamental – text, so that substantial progress can be locked in at COP28 in Dubai next year,” Barata said.
Issues to be resolved include the extent to which countries’ registries, or digital ledgers of carbon trades, might be exposed to outside scrutiny, what constitutes a carbon removal project and how to integrate existing credits already traded in private markets.
DRAFTS FOR SOME ARE A REASON FOR HOPE
Late on Thursday, another draft text was released dealing with how countries’ registries might interact with the private, so-called voluntary carbon market, and laid out technical steps to be clarified over the course of 2023.
While companies and others are already trading credits in the voluntary market, agreeing how it will mesh with the country-level system is seen as crucial to unlocking many billions of dollars for carbon projects across the globe.
Calling the publication of the drafts and a plan for further action in 2023 “a step forward”, a negotiator who declined to be named added: “I don’t know that it’s (the) big jump that was probably needed.”
Matt Williams from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit said he was worried about transparency and the potential for double-counting the same credit in two countries.
Slow progress in the carbon market discussions mirrors a struggle to agree on other climate issues ahead of the scheduled end of the COP27 summit on Friday, including that of whether to set up a fund to help poorer countries after climate disasters strike.
For some that drafts had emerged at all was cause for optimism.
“After years of negotiations about whether carbon markets under the Paris Agreement would actually exist, now they are at the stage of actually setting them up,” said Jonathan Crook, policy analyst at the non-profit Carbon Market Watch.
Karen Mapusua, SPC’s Director of the Land Resources Division, would like to see food high up on the loss and damage fund if it is agreed to. Credit Busani Bafana/IPS
by Busani Bafana (sharm el sheikh)
Inter Press Service
SHARM EL SHEIKH, Nov 18 (IPS) – Food is everything to the culture and identity of the Pacific island countries.
Climate change impacts of rising sea levels and higher temperatures threaten islanders’ food security, which is largely dependent on fisheries and subsistence agriculture. Almost 70 percent of islanders rely on agriculture for their livelihood.
Pacific island countries at the COP27 summit, taking place at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, say agriculture is high on their agenda, with parties to the UNFCCC calling for a decision to protect food security through the mobilisation of climate finance for adaptation.
Activists at the COP27 summit demand food and agriculture remain on the negotiation’s agenda. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
At the COP negotiations, agriculture features on many levels, including during discussions on the ongoing Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) – a formal process established to highlight the potential of food and agriculture in tackling climate change. However, there has been no progress in countries making commitments to placing agriculture and food systems in the final text.
The agriculture sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with land seen as a potential major carbon sink that can be considered for capturing emissions.
Could agriculture be off the menu?
“Not yet,” says Karen Mapusua, Pacific Community’s (SPC) Director of the Land Resources Division. “Unless the parties can come together and through their work demonstrate the value of the Koronivia work programme and a clear way forward for it, then that is a risk.”
She explains that it was critical to keep the Koronivia plan alive and secure a global strategy for agriculture and food systems to be considered solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
“Agriculture contributes 30 percent of emissions, and everybody has to eat, and if we do not take this seriously, then we are in trouble,” said Mapusua, who is also the President of IFOAM Organics International, a global organisation specialising in changing agricultural practices.
Pacific countries are very low emitters of harmful carbon emissions – except for a few high-input industries like sugar production in Fiji and the commercial production of exotic horticulture for export.
“We are losing productive land to sea level rise, inundation and desalination of soils near the coast,” she said. Farmers have experienced increased pests and diseases due to a change in temperatures and weather conditions. For example, the islands have been hit by an infestation of the coconut rhinoceros beetle, an invasive pest that can destroy coconut plantations.
Farmers are also experiencing changes in fruiting patterns for major crops. Farmers are relocating their vanilla plantations in Vanuatu because it no longer flowers in the area where it was once most productive.
Developing countries are also pushing for the establishment of a loss and damage facility where they can be compensated for damage caused by climate change, particularly to infrastructure. However, no decision has been reached on this demand.
“There will be a lot of competition on what goes in the loss and damage fund, but I am hopeful that because food is so essential, it will be higher up the priority list when it comes to accessing finance through such a facility, if it is agreed on,” Mapusua, told IPS.
Fish eaters but threatened fisheries
Islanders are also dependent on fisheries for food security. This sector has also been affected by rising sea levels and high temperatures, which have led to the bleaching of coral reefs, which are a key habitat for fish.
Scientific research projects a decline in coastal fisheries of up to 20 percent by 2050 in the western Pacific and up to 10 percent by 2050 in the eastern Pacific, which would impact heavily on the diet of islanders who, on average, consume 58 kg of fish annually.
Mapusua said the island countries were building aquaculture at a local level and poultry to compensate for the projected loss of fisheries.
In Vanuatu, the government was deploying fish aggregating devices (FADS), which are offshore floating objects to attract fish. The project has enabled farmers to harvest fish from the locations where the devices have been installed without travelling far from the coast to fish. In addition, a fishponds system has been promoted at the household level, encouraging families to build their own fishponds to harvest fish.
Nelson Kalo, a Senior Mitigation Officer in the Ministry of Climate Change in Vanuatu, adds there are other projects too.
“Vanuatu is also promoting climate resilience projects working with the United Nations Development Programme to replicate climate resilient root crops that communities when climate condition change.”
Climate activists and civil society have been subjected to intimidation, harassment and surveillance during the two-week gathering, held in the resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, they reported.
End harassment, ensure safety
“We are deeply concerned by reported acts of harassment and intimidation by Egyptian officials, infringing the rights of Egyptian and non-Egyptian human rights and environmental defenders at COP27, including their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, expression, and effective participation,” their statement said.
They urged Egypt to end all harassment and intimidation, and to ensure the safety and full participation of human rights defenders and civil society.
The four experts are all Special Rapporteurs appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.
They monitor and report on issues such as the situation of rights defenders worldwide, and the right of everyone to a safe, clean and healthy environment.
Interrogation and surveillance
COP27 was due to end on Friday but is almost certainly set to continue into the weekend.
Last month, the experts issued a press release raising concerns ahead of the conference and calling for full and safe participation of civil society and human rights defenders without reprisals.
However, they said they have received multiple reports and evidence of civil society members, including indigenous peoples, being stopped and interrogated by Egyptian security officers.
Local security and support staff were also repeatedly monitoring and photographing civil society actors inside the conference.
Widespread ‘chilling effect’
One human rights defender scheduled to attend COP27 was also denied entry to the country, they reported.
“We are concerned that these actions by Egyptian authorities have a chilling effect, impacting wide segments of civil society participating in COP27 as many groups have expressed concern about the need to self-censor to ensure their safety and security,” the experts said.
Concerns after COP27
The experts received reports of activists being subject to intrusive questioning at the airport when entering Egypt, sparking fears that information collected on the activities of civil society organisations during COP27 could be misused.
They also expressed concern that once the spotlight shifts from Egypt when the conference ends, local human rights defenders could be targeted and risk reprisals for their engagement during the event.
“We call on Egypt to immediately end harassment and intimidation, to ensure the rights to participation, freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly at COP27, and abstain from reprisals against civil society, human rights defenders and indigenous people’s representatives who attended COP27,” they said.
The experts are engaging with the Egyptian Government and the UN climate change secretariat, UNFCCC, on this issue.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister says they have concerns about an EU proposal on loss and damage funding for countries vulnerable to climate change made late Thursday at U.N. climate talks.
Molwyn Joseph, who spoke on behalf of small island states, said there are parts of the EU’s offer that need “adjusting,” without adding more details.
“We will wait until we meet and bilaterally to discuss the areas of concern,” he said.
Joseph met Friday with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock for talks on operationalizing loss and damage financing and said he will also hold separate talks later with China and the United States.
“We need an agreement at COP right now. That’s what we need, an agreement among all the parties,” Joseph said, adding there is a “strong possibility” to achieve an agreement on loss and damage funding by Saturday.
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Dozens of nations spearheaded by island nation Vanuatu say they will seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on countries’ legal obligations to protect people who suffer from the impacts of climate change.
Vulnerable nations and other states, including New Zealand and the Alliance of Small Island States, supported the move.
“AOSIS will benefit greatly from this initiative … The moment of this advisory legal opinion is now,” said Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Molwyn Joseph, who spoke on behalf of small island sates.
Vanuatu environment and climate minister Ralph Regenvavu welcomed the growing coalition of nations in support of the move.
On U.N. climate talks, which are set to end today although likely to go into the weekend, Regenvavu said there was renewed hope following an EU proposal late Thursday night for a loss and damage fund.
“Overnight circumstances changed and we hope for a loss and damage deal today,” he said. “We are happy with the progress made so far.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— Crunch time for UN climate talks as Friday deadline looms
— EU shakes up climate talks with surprise disaster fund offer
— Confusion, finger-pointing, opposing views at Egypt’s COP27
— Politics, climate conspire as Tigris and Euphrates dwindle
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German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Friday morning that the EU’s proposal late Thursday on a fund for vulnerable countries suffering the impacts of climate change was “a big step” in U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
The talks, set to end today but likely to go into the weekend, were buoyed by the EU offer that tied loss and damage funding for nations vulnerable to climate change with cuts to planet-warming gases.
Asked whether China will participate in such a loss and damage fund, Baerbock replied: “We are arguing massively for it.”
Baerbock said that “industrial nations carry responsibility for the past” and their wealth was built on using fossil energy. She added that “now we want to take our responsibility for the future together and that’s why we are arguing so much for countries such as China but also other big emitters also to participate in the future in supporting the weakest in the world together.”
But Baerbock did not think an agreement would could quickly.
“I packed my suitcase for the whole weekend,” she told German television.
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EU climate chief Frans Timmermans said Friday that a proposal made by the bloc on funding for loss and damage and mitigation is “a final offer” that seeks to “find a compromise” between nations as negotiators seek a way forward at the U.N. climate talks in Egypt.
The EU Executive Vice President made a surprise offer late Thursday on tying compensation for climate disasters to tougher emissions cuts.
Timmermans said he was “encouraged” by immediate reaction to the proposal and more engagement on the offer is expected Friday.
“This is about not having a failure here,” said Timmermans. “We we cannot afford to have a failure. Now, if our steps forward are not reciprocated, then obviously there will be a failure. But I hope I hope we can avoid that.”
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
