Cairo: A “disappointing” fortnight of UN talks in Bonn has taken much work just five months ahead of a crucial climate summit, diplomats and analysts said, after talks failed to make concrete progress on efforts to combat global warming. Afterwards.
In the closing session on Thursday, developing countries expressed dismay at the low progress in the mid-year session on key issues, especially setting up a finance facility to deal with rising damages from extreme weather and rising seas.
The lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) said the 39-member group had not received assurances that climate finance would be “delivered at scale or speed.”
“The climate emergency is rapidly wreaking havoc. Yet within these walls, the process seems out of step with reality,” said Conrad Hunt, the UN ambassador for the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda.
Alex Scott of think-tank E3G said the weak results from Bonn – which did not take any major steps toward the global goal of driving emissions reductions or adaptation – gave diplomats a “huge task” ahead of November’s COP27 summit in Egypt. ” drop offs.
E3G’s climate diplomacy leader told reporters, “It looks like the negotiators have come without political squabbles … make sure we approach COP27 with a real sense of progress.”
crack
Negotiations in Bonn were fueling long-standing tensions between developing and developed countries over who should take greater responsibility for reducing climate-changing emissions and about how to repair and pay for “harm and damage”.
From the outset, there was controversy among countries as to whether and how to put into a dialogue the official agenda of the United Nations on establishing a dedicated fund for loss and damage.
In Bonn the issue was left undecided, prompting outgoing UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa to call for a “major political decision” at COP27 on finances for losses and damages.
This – along with increased funding for adaptation and clean energy – is “critical to creating a more sustainable and resilient future,” she said in a statement.
Harjit Singh, a senior adviser at Climate Action Network International, said for the first time in Bonn many developed countries had acknowledged the gap in funding vulnerable countries to help them recover from the effects of climate change, with little to do with their had a role.
But rich countries – including the European Union, Switzerland and the United States – then stalled discussions on a new finance facility and did not even allow developing countries to add it to the COP27 agenda, he said.
“Instead of using empty words, rich countries should show a sense of (a) international cooperation and solidarity,” Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Paris in practice
Espinosa said the focus now was on ensuring that the Egyptian COP, in the city of Sharm el-Sheikh, “could be exactly the place where the important promises of the Paris Agreement turn into reality.”
Countries set about rapidly and deeply reducing emissions to meet the most stringent goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 Fahrenheit) and to assess their collective progress in doing so. Discussions started in Bonn.
But there were divisions on how to pursue a program aimed at addressing emissions reduction globally – countries at risk asked for it to continue until 2030, while some countries, such as China, wanted it to just Lasted for a year.
Wealthy governments also sought to include major emerging economies in mitigation programs, but faced backlash from developing countries, which have historically contributed little to carbon emissions.
David Vasco, director of international climate action at the US-based World Resources Institute, called on rich countries to strengthen their emissions reduction targets from major pollutants and provide needed funding for vulnerable countries to tackle the effects of a warming planet .
“Perhaps the most conclusive result of these (Bon) talks is that developed countries have now realized that the demand for harm and loss solutions is gaining ground,” he said.
“Addressing this issue is a central measure of success for the United Nations Climate Summit in Egypt,” he added in a statement.
‘unconscious’
Climate-sensitive nations have long grappled with a slow pace of progress in UN talks, with their key demands – including more finance – largely unfulfilled.
A report by the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20) on 55 economies hard hit by climate change – from Bangladesh to Kenya to South Sudan – found this month that they have lost nearly $525 billion – or an average of 20 per cent of their wealth – over the past two years. percentage was lost. decades due to the effects of global warming.
A major UN science report in February warned that if measures to curb emissions from fossil fuel use around the world are not increased dramatically, the damages from climate change are already increasing. and are prepared to be worse.
In Bonn’s concluding session, Switzerland said talks on its ambition to cut emissions to keep the 1.5C target within reach did not see enough progress, warning that this year “we could lose 1.5 degrees” – something We just can’t stand it.”
AOSIS’s Hunt called on high-emitting countries to submit stronger plans to cut emissions by the UN deadline in late September, warning of a “code red” situation, with the world on the edge of “overshoot in disaster”. But it was.
“Science should be the basis of our decision here, yet we are left with a disappointing conclusion. This is an unconscious way of negotiating with vulnerable countries,” he told delegates from people around the world who freely or fairly struggle to survive.