Climate negotiations are in disarray as COP27 enters its second week

Talks in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, are operating nicely not on time, with discussions on key areas akin to loss and harm at a political deadlock

By Madeleine Cuff

A stream of newly arrived delegates has injected a recent buzz into the cavernous convention halls of COP27 in the course of the second week of local weather talks in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, however behind-the-scenes negotiations are in disarray, with talks operating nicely not on time.

Discussions on key areas, akin to loss and harm – funds from essentially the most polluting nations to these coping with the worst results of local weather change – and strengthening emissions cuts, reached a political deadlock on 14 November, however ministers aren’t on account of intervene to pressure progress till the center of the week.

Meanwhile, talks on the duvet textual content – a political settlement historically struck on the finish of a UN local weather convention – are nonetheless within the very early levels.

“The negotiations are facing a backlog,” says Jen Allan at Earth Negotiations Bulletin, an unbiased reporting organisation.

The cowl textual content is seen as a key doc to ship a political sign from the talks, displaying the world’s progress on local weather change since final 12 months’s COP26 summit in Glasgow, UK.

But as an alternative of a draft textual content for nations to work from, on 14 November, the Egyptian presidency of the occasion circulated solely a “summary of attainable parts” that set out requests made by events final week.

It remains to be a “laundry list” of attainable choices, says Eddy Pérez on the non-governmental organisation Climate Action Network. “We’re still far from really concretely being able to start discussions about the different options that are most suitable.”

Language on temperature targets, loss and harm and wider local weather finance issues are seen as the main sticking factors dividing nations, New Scientist understands. There is at present no language on the “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil gas use within the doc, which Greenpeace stated in a press release was “scarcely credible”.

Overall, the temper in Sharm El Sheikh is certainly one of “uncertainty”, says Pérez. There is a “sense of delay, that we are taking too much time on other things”, he says, “that we risk being distracted when we need to focus on landing this as soon as possible.”

However, a optimistic signal was that on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, on 14 November, US president Joe Biden and Chinese chief Xi Jinping agreed to restart formal talks on local weather points, after a three-month hiatus following US politician Nancy Pelosi’s go to to Taiwan.

The White House launched a press release saying the 2 leaders “agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts” on “climate change and other issues”.

China and the US are the world’s two largest emitters and their co-operation on decarbonisation efforts is essential for reaching the worldwide temperature targets set out within the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The tone set by G20 leaders of their joint assertion this week will play a decisive position within the end result of COP27, analysts consider. A robust sign on local weather motion from the G20 communiqué would ship a message to ministers at COP27 to push for extra formidable agreements, says Pérez. “If leaders at that level talk, then ministers would want to follow that kind of guidance.”

Week two of the UN local weather summit has additionally introduced recent motion on decarbonising power methods, with the US, Japan and different companions brokering a local weather finance deal price $20 billion to assist Indonesia enhance its renewable power provide and retire ageing coal crops.

The Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) follows the identical mannequin as a deal signed in Glasgow to assist South Africa. Its mixture of private and non-private finance is “probably the single largest climate finance transaction or partnership ever”, a US official advised Reuters, however the phrases of funding are nonetheless to be ironed out.

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