Draft COP27 climate deal shows inaction on loss, damage funding
New Delhi: A formal draft of an UN summit's climate deal that came out on Friday makes no mention of India's call for phase down of all fossil fuels.
The draft showed little progress on key issues like loss and damage funding, adaptation fund replenishment and a new collective quantified goal on climate finance.
It also omits references to the need for rich nations to attain "net-negative carbon emissions by 2030" and their disproportionate consumption of the global carbon budget, something that India and other poor and developing countries have stressed during the summit in Egypt. The 10-page draft document is a refined version of the 20-page "non-paper" or an informal draft published by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the climate change conference COP27 on Thursday.
The "draft text on COP 27's overarching decision" reaffirmed that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires rapid and deep emission cuts.
It puts a "placeholder" for funding arrangements to address loss and damage, meaning that parties are yet to reach a consensus on the matter. Loss and damage refer to the consequences of climate change that go beyond what people can adapt to, or when options exist but a community doesn't have the resources to access or utilise them.
A placeholder also exists for a new global climate finance target, also known as the new collective quantified goal on climate finance, from the floor of USD 100 billion per year.
Financing or a new fund for addressing loss and damage -- for example money needed for relocating people displaced by floods -- has been a long-pending demand of poor and developing countries, including India. Developed nations, particularly the US, have opposed this new fund over fears it will hold them legally liable for massive damages caused by climate change. In a bid to prevent a collapse of talks, European Union chief negotiator Frans Timmermans proposed a plan that tied loss and damage with emission cuts.
The success of the talks depends on progress on this matter. In exchange for the fund, the proposal asks countries to peak emissions before 2025 and phase down all fossil fuels and not just coal.
