While heads of state and government started on Sunday, two-week climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh make their statements, host country Egypt has had its first success. At this summit, the question of blame, about who is responsible for climate damage, will be discussed. And that does not happen in one of the many side rooms, but as an official part of the negotiating agenda. Rich countries have always managed to prevent this in recent years.
“A very sensitive discussion”, Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) called the subject on Monday morning in a conversation with RTL News, but something ‘about which we should have a dialogue with each other’. Rutte said he feared “a stacking” of responsibilities, if money has to go to the international climate fund of 100 billion dollars a year, as was agreed years ago, and to damage repair in poor countries. Rutte pointed out that the Netherlands has already reserved extra money for that climate fund. That amount will be increased from 1.2 billion euros to 1.8 billion euros in 2025.
This puts Rutte in line with other Western countries, which do not intend to make too concrete agreements about damage. Better warning systems have been decided, so that extreme weather causes fewer victims worldwide. There will also be talk of insurance schemes that poor countries can rely on in the event of a disaster – until now, insurance companies that should be doing that have rejected these kinds of funds precisely for weaker countries.
Lightning visit
Prime Minister Rutte paid a lightning visit to the climate summit on Monday; in the evening he already returns to the Netherlands. During his visit to the conference, he attended a meeting on food security and the opening of the Water Pavilion on the conference site, to which the Netherlands contributes with its knowledge in the field of water management and as co-organizer of a major water conference in 2023. .
Rutte also signed an agreement with Oman on the development of green hydrogen. “A crucial pillar of the Dutch energy transition,” said the prime minister, because green hydrogen can be an important source of energy for the chemical industry and the steel industry, both of which are highly dependent on fossil fuels.
Also read: The theme of the climate summit in Egypt: money
Just before the summit in Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Dutch government kept a promise it made at the climate summit in Glasgow a year ago. Under pressure from the House of Representatives and action groups, the cabinet promised not to provide any more government guarantees on fossil energy projects abroad. These will stop from 1 January: investments in oil and gas fields are out of the question if the temperature rise must remain below one and a half degrees.
But there are exceptions, the cabinet wrote to the House of Representatives on Thursday. For example, if the development of new oil and gas fields is important for the European security of energy supply. According to Rutte, it is logical that the cabinet does not fully fulfill the promise of Glasgow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is “geopolitically throwing everything upside down,” he told NOS. “You cannot therefore 100 percent rule out that you will never, in any way contribute to the development of fields if it is necessary for our energy security.” According to Rutte, the promise still stands: “We ultimately want to get rid of that support for export credit insurance.”
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Future generations
In his opening speech, UN chief António Guterres pointed to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible by ending the use of fossil fuels. Only in this way can the world community, in his view, prevent “future generations from being condemned to a climate catastrophe.” According to Guterres, humanity has a choice: “cooperate or disappear”.
After him, the floor was given to Mohammed bin-Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates, which will organize the climate summit in 2023. The Emirates are members of OPEC, the organization of the oil exporting countries, and Bin-Zayed had a clear message for the audience. His country is “a responsible supplier of energy and will continue to play that role for as long as the world needs oil and gas.”