SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Government ministers and negotiators from nearly 200 countries on Tuesday began the hard slog of finding common ground for a deal at the annual U.N. climate summit, as host country Egypt assured that the slow-moving talks were on track.
Some delegates began, however, to discuss the possibility that the summit would go overtime into the weekend, with countries snagged on issues including funding for developing nations to combat and adapt to climate change.
Egypt’s special representative to the COP27 summit, Wael Aboulmagd, acknowledged that big sticking points remained, including a called-for doubling in finance to adapt for future climate disruptions and demands by developing nations for additional funds toward loss and damage.
But he said he expected an agreement to emerge.
“The future of humanity, without exaggeration, is at stake,” he said. “So we can just push and encourage and use all the tools in our toolbox. But at the end of the day 190-something sovereigns must agree.”
Country delegates said they were also watching negotiations at the G20 summit in Bali, where China’s President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden, leaders of the world’s top two most polluting nations, agreed on Monday to resume cooperation on climate change.
“I hope leaders in G20 are able to have a constructive dialogue despite the geopolitical differences and understand that climate change could actually be something that unites us,” said Shauna Aminath, climate minister for the Maldives at COP27.
“I think a strong signal from there could have an impact on climate talks in Egypt.”
SKELETON DRAFT
Egypt’s COP27 Presidency on Monday released a two-page sketch of what could become a deal, with bullet points outlining many of the issues countries have asked be included – including the most contentious.
It mentioned the urgent need for action to keep within reach the goal of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C beyond preindustrial levels, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The world has already seen more than 1.1C of warming.
“We cannot lose 1.5 at this COP,” said Alok Sharma, president of last year’s COP26 climate summit in Scotland.
But with little mention in the paper of burning fossil fuels – the main cause of global warming – the result of COP27 may focus on new commitments to get poorer nations cash to slow their emissions.
The draft document released Monday is titled a “non-paper,” making clear it was far from an official draft of what might be approved by countries at the summit’s close, scheduled for Friday, as the core political agreement from the two-week event.
“It’s all boiling down to the last days,” EU environment policy chief Virginijus Sinkevicius said on the sidelines of the summit. “It seems like still we are quite far from what we would love to have as an outcome.”
Brazil’s top diplomat at the talks said there were several other proposed texts circulating between delegations but were not yet ready to be made public.
“It’s natural, as time runs out, to reach more concrete and more ambitious decisions,” Paulino de Carvalho Neto said.
Nevertheless, he suggested the talks could extend beyond Friday’s deadline. “It is possible that this will happen. But it’s early for us to say that,” he said.
Belize negotiator Carlos Fuller said countries discussing the document Tuesday could end up adding more to the “laundry list” of issues so far outlined.
LOSS AND DAMAGE
A section in the draft on loss and damage – funding for developing countries facing unavoidable damage caused by climate change – suggested the deal would address the “need for funding arrangements” to tackle this.
It did not, however, give any hint of whether the final deal will include a new loss and damage fund – which developing countries are demanding in the negotiations, but which the European Union and United States are wary of.
The failure by rich nations to deliver in full on a past pledge to deliver $100 billion in annual climate finance to developing countries has rankled in recent years of climate talks. Last year, wealthy nations paid about $83 billion toward the goal, but said they’d meet the full pledge only in 2023.
One of Egypt’s top climate envoys, U.N. High-Level Climate Champion Mahmoud Mohieldin, was seen Tuesday wearing a red button reading “#WTF” on his lapel – the slogan standing for “where’s the finance?”
“We cannot afford a further erosion of trust between the developed and developing countries,” said Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa.
“Let us make COP27 the turning point in our efforts to make the rhetoric history and the mirages real,” Mataafa said.
India surprised some countries last week by pushing for a deal at the summit to phase down all fossil fuels – rather than just coal, as countries agreed at last year’s U.N. summit. The draft COP27 text did not hint at which route the final deal will take on this issue.
Saudi energy ministry official and COP27 negotiator Khalid Abuleif said his country, a top oil producer and defacto head of OPEC, was worried the final talks would “demonize” the fossil fuel industry.
Tom Evans, a policy analyst at non-profit think tank E3G, said the draft text did not reveal what is likely to make it into the final deal.
“Many of the issues hinted at in this paper are under live discussion at the G20 leaders summit,” he said, adding that what Group of 20 country leaders decide during their meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Bali on issues including phasing down fossil fuels could steer the COP27 summit’s final outcome.
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Reporting by Kate Abnett, Gloria Dickie, William James; Additional reporting by Jake Spring, Valerie Volcovici, Shadia Nasralla and Aidan Lewis; Writing by Katy Daigle; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Janet Lawrence
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