Climate reparation on climate summit agenda

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP):

Envoys from around the globe gathered Sunday in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for talks on tackling climate change amid a multitude of competing crises, including the war in Ukraine, high inflation, food shortages and an energy crunch.

Notching up a first small victory, negotiators agreed after two frantic days of COP 27 preliminary talks to formally discuss the question of vulnerable nations receiving money for the loss and damage they’ve suffered from climate change. The issue has weighed on the climate summit talks for years, with rich nations, including the United States, pushing back against the idea of climate reparation.

“The fact that it has been adopted as an agenda item demonstrates progress and parties taking a mature and constructive attitude towards this,” said the United Nations’ top climate official, Simon Stiell.

“This is a difficult subject area. It’s been floating for 30-plus years,” he said. “I believe it bodes well.”

The decision was also welcomed by civil society groups.

“At long last, providing funding to address losses and damages from climate impacts is on the agenda of the UN climate negotiations,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.

But he cautioned that participants “still have a marathon ahead of us before countries iron out a formal decision on this central issue.”

German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan, who led negotiations on the issue together with Chile in the run-up to the talks, said the agreement could help negotiators also make “serious progress” on the issue of reducing emissions.

The outgoing chair of the talks, British official Alok Sharma, said countries had made considerable progress at their last meeting in Glasgow in keeping alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.

Experts say that chances of meeting that target, agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord, are fast slipping away, though. Already, temperatures around the world have increased by about 1.2 C (2.2 F) since pre-industrial times.

Sharma warned that other global crises meant international efforts to curb climate change were being “buffeted by global headwinds”.

“Putin’s brutal and illegal war in Ukraine has precipitated multiple global crisis, energy and food insecurity, inflationary pressures and spiralling debt,” said Sharma of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “These crises have compounded existing climate vulnerabilities and the scarring effects of the pandemic.”

His successor, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, said Egypt would “spare no effort” to make the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh a success and achieve the goals of the Paris accord.

In an opening speech, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hoesung Lee, said countries have “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to save our planet and our livelihoods.”

Cutting emissions is only part of the task, however. Scientists and campaigners say the world also needs to do more to adapt to those effects of global warming that cannot be avoided anymore.