As temperatures rise, COP27 produces landmark damage deal but little else

Barring a last-minute EU agreement on the establishment of a loss and damage fund for poor nations, November’s UN climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh saw negligible progress on the big issues.

The most newsworthy moment at this month’s COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt came at the end of the conference, when the European Union agreed to set up a fund to provide financial aid to poor and developing countries for damage sustained as a result of extreme weather and climate-related disasters.

Proposed on the final Friday by the European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans, the fund was a concession to the G77 group of developing countries, who had made the establishment of a fund one of their core demands at the summit. It was also so-called “climate justice” – the idea that rich countries, which have consistently failed to reduce emissions, have a moral obligation to provide assistance to poorer nations, which often bear the brunt of climate-related damage.

The fund will provide the financial assistance that developing countries have been seeking for decades in order to rebuild physical and social infrastructure after climate-related disasters. Wealthy countries had been stalling on agreeing to this demand throughout the summit, claiming that more time was needed in order to ascertain whether such a fund was necessary and how it would work.

The agreement on a loss and damage fund is undoubtedly an important milestone, but it is only a start – the EU is yet to determine how the money will be provided, and where it will come from.

The global climate talks, held from 6–18 November 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, had been deadlocked until this late intervention. But while some parties hailed the EU agreement on the loss and damage fund as a sign that the summit had been a success, in many respects COP27 was yet another missed opportunity, with no real progress made on global decarbonization or the delivery of an annual sum of USD 100 billion to poor nations, as promised at the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

Highway to hell

It had been clear from the opening day of the summit that this was not going to be business as usual. Speaking to over 100 world leaders, Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, accused the industrialized world of failing developing nations, saying that if governments did not take action to reduce emissions there would be a billion climate refugees around the world by the middle of the century.

“We were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution,” said Mottley. “Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost as a result of those greenhouse gases from the industrial revolution? That is fundamentally unfair.”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres had earlier called on the governments of rich and poor nations to unite in a “historic pact” to reduce greenhouse emissions and increase the use of green energy and low-carbon technology. Warning that the world was “on a highway to climate hell”, he said that the means to combat the climate crisis existed but that action was imperative.

“A window of opportunity remains open, but only a narrow shaft of light remains,” said Guterres. “The global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch. One thing is certain: those that give up are sure to lose.”

However, the next two weeks saw frustratingly little progress made on most of the key issues, with some countries backtracking on promises or trying to water down prior agreements.

Climate finance and decarbonization

Chief among them was the goal of committing to limiting temperature rise to 1.5 °C in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement. This aim had already been diluted since, at COP26 in Glasgow last year, countries agreed to reduce the limit from 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures to 1.5 °C in response to clear scientific evidence that 2 °C was too risky.

Countries had also agreed to strengthen their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis, in view of the fact that these commitments remained too weak to achieve the 1.5 °C target. In Egypt, however, some countries attempted to renege on this commitment, as well as the 1.5 °C goal. Ultimately, they failed to get support for this U-turn, but they did manage to remove a resolution stipulating that emissions should peak by 2025.

COP27 also saw no substantial progress on the 2009 pledge by wealthy nations to channel USD 100 billion to poor countries every year – a commitment that was originally to have been fulfilled by 2020. And the harsh truth is that even USD 100 billion is a miniscule investment – the amount needed to meet the 2015 goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C would easily run into trillions.

Fossil fuels

There was also a disappointing lack of progress on fossil fuel reductions at COP27. One of the most significant achievements of last year’s summit in Glasgow had been an agreement to phase down the use of coal. This was the first time in the three-decade history of climate change conferences that the final text had included a resolution on fossil fuels. At COP27, India and a number of other countries wanted to build on this commitment and extend it to cover all fossil fuels. Despite heated discussion, however, this proposal failed and the resolution in the final text remained unchanged.

Nevertheless, the final text did feature the inclusion of a vague provision to increase production of “low-emissions energy”. This could mean wind and solar power, nuclear reactors, or even gas which, although it produces fewer emissions than coal, is still a fossil fuel. It seems unlikely that much progress will be made on moving away from gas in the near future: many developing countries (especially in Africa) have large unexploited reserves and are hoping to capitalize on them. Indeed, many of these nations saw COP27 as a chance to try to strike gas deals, especially in light of the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the global fossil fuel market.

Another missed opportunity

In the end, COP27 will probably go down as yet another spurned chance to make real, measurable progress on climate change. The timing of the summit was not ideal: the Russian withdrawal from Kherson overshadowed the first week of COP27, pushing it down the news agenda in Europe, while the controversial build-up to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar also diverted attention in the second week.
In reality, the responsibility for the failure of the summit to achieve lasting goals lies with the world’s leading economies, and particularly oil and gas-producing nations, which yet again succeeded only in kicking the can down the road – a road that is growing shorter and shorter.

– By Alastair Gill