Frustrated ministers, petrified faces, flaming appeals: on the day after the planned end of the climate conference in Egypt, Foreign Minister Baerbock is once again putting pressure on the public. An important compromise emerges.
At the world climate conference in Egypt, an agreement is within reach. The tough dispute over compensation payments for poor countries, which are particularly hard hit by the climate crisis, has been settled. A new financial pot is to be set up, as the German Press Agency learned from EU circles. The payments are intended to help cushion the fatal consequences of global warming such as droughts, floods and hurricanes, but also rising sea levels and desertification.
In the evening, the negotiators from around 200 countries also had an official draft for a final declaration. In the eleven-page paper by the Egyptian conference leadership, all countries are calling for a gradual phase-out of coal. However, the demand of a number of states and climate activists to also stipulate the farewell to oil and gas is not taken up.
Climate damage fund for poor countries is to come
According to European negotiators, the agreement on the issue of compensation for climate damage enabled a meeting with the Egyptian presidency and several other countries, including island states that are particularly threatened, in the afternoon. However, a European negotiator warned that nothing would be decided until all agenda items were finally decided.
Nabeel Munir, Pakistani chief negotiator of the G77 group of more than 130 developing countries, also spoke of an agreement in principle. “I think the current draft of the damage and losses is more or less final,” he told dpa. “It should be adopted in the plenary session.” It is a “good compromise”, even if the wishes of all countries have not been fulfilled. But at least a fund will be created. “And then we’ll see how the details are worked out.” This takes time, and the two weeks in Sharm el Sheikh are too short for that. The negotiations had previously got stuck as to whether the extra financial pot should be set up, who has to pay in and what conditions it is subject to when it comes to climate protection.
The Green MEP Michael Bloss criticized the foreseeable result as insufficient. “The climate damage fund is an empty shell,” he told the dpa. “It has not been clarified whether countries like China and Saudi Arabia will pay into the fund or receive money from the fund. If the central questions are not clarified, it will remain a skeleton without content.”
Martin Kaiser from Greenpeace told the dpa that the necessary farewell to oil and gas must also be anchored in the text. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) should now campaign for this in the last few hours. Annika Schröder from the development organization Misereor predicted a “big fight”.
EU Commissioner: Better no result than a bad one
EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Baerbock had warned that morning that they would accept the UN meeting being canceled if necessary. “We will not agree to any proposals that turn back the 1.5 degree target,” Baerbock clarified after nightly negotiations. And Timmermans said that the union of states would not cross certain red lines. “It’s better to have no result than a bad one.”
In 2015, the international community agreed in Paris to limit warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. The world has now warmed up by a good 1.1 degrees, Germany even more. According to scientific warnings, exceeding the 1.5-degree mark significantly increases the risk of triggering so-called tipping elements in the climate system and thus uncontrollable chain reactions.
The call to improve climate protection plans is non-binding
The draft for the final paper also calls on states to improve their largely inadequate climate protection plans by the next climate conference, which will take place in the United Arab Emirates at the end of 2023. This remains voluntary, there is no obligation.
Global Citizen’s Friederike Röder called it “shocking” that the draft does not contain a clear timeline for delivering on the promise to provide $100 billion in climate finance to countries in the Global South. “That promise has now been broken for two years in a row and it is not clear if it will be fulfilled in 2023.”
The world climate conference, to which around 34,000 participants traveled, went into overtime on Friday evening. COP President Samih Schukri said the morning after: “There is an equal level of dissatisfaction from all sides.”
During the night, there was concern in negotiating circles because delegations were only able to see draft texts by the Egyptian COP presidency for a few minutes. “This is extremely unusual,” said a negotiator. The delegations should not have taken the text with them, but only looked at it for 20 minutes and then commented briefly.
Criticism of the hosts also grew given the delays and a negotiation process that participants describe as chaotic. COP President Schukri acknowledged the displeasure of the participants on Saturday, but played the ball back and said that the responsibility for an agreement lies with the countries. His special representative for the COP27, Ambassador Wael Abulmagd, also rejected criticism of the sluggish and sometimes cumbersome negotiation process and downplayed concerns.
Source: Stern
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