Still moving towards a final agreement at the climate summit? Fund for loss and damage gets green light | Abroad

Loss and damage has been the main bone of contention in the climate negotiations, which have dragged on for more than a day past their scheduled end at 6 p.m. Friday. More specifically, it concerns financing by the rich countries for the climate damage already suffered in poor countries.

For a long time there seemed to be little room for maneuver, but on Thursday evening European negotiator Frans Timmermans left the door ajar, on the condition that the fund would only be intended for the most vulnerable countries and on the condition that the ambitions to limit global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius would be tightened.

The proposal that has now been adopted provides for the creation of a fund to help developing countries with damage caused by the consequences of climate change, such as floods, droughts or extreme weather. The poorer countries, which are most affected by the effects of climate change, seem to have won a major blow.

A so-called ‘Transitional Committee’ with representatives from all negotiating groups must ensure that the fund becomes operational by the next COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates.

Immediately after the approval of the fund, Switzerland asked for the plenary session to be suspended for half an hour in order to better study the texts before it. The Egyptian presidency agreed.

Officially, CO27 was supposed to end on Friday evening, but like almost all previous UN climate conferences, extensions are involved. COP27 chairman Sameh Shoukry already announced on Friday afternoon that the summit would certainly run until today. The EU is currently still negotiating on a number of important points, which are still in the most recent draft version of the agreement.

For example, the Europeans are still doing their best to include in the text not only the need to phase out coal use, but all fossil fuels – also oil and gas. In Glasgow, at the climate summit last year, it was not possible to get this into the final statement.

LOOK. “Time is not on our side,” said COP27 president Sameh Shoukry

Earlier in the day, negotiations at the climate summit were still deadlocked. Frans Timmermans, who is leading the negotiations at EU level, even threatened to resign. He said in the morning that he would “rather have no result” than “a bad result”.

“We need to move forward, not backward, all European Union ministers are ready to walk away if we don’t get a result that does justice to what the world expects,” he said.

Timmermans concerned about a successful outcome of the climate summit: “No result is better than a bad result”

Belgium signs plea to reduce government emissions to zero: “However, final text of climate summit is not yet available”