By: TT Sharm el-Sheikh, TT’s envoy
Published: Less than 30 min ago
Updated: Less than 10 min ago
It mentions 1.5 degrees and carbon – but not all climate-damaging fossil fuels. With two days left until COP27 ends in Egypt, a first draft of the final document has been presented.
The collective decision is a kind of summary and an important political signal about the urgent way forward in the fight against climate change.
In the unusually long draft (20 pages) on the table, reference is made to the goal of phasing out some coal power and some fossil subsidies formulated during the climate summit in Glasgow last year. However, there are no direct references to gas or oil.
India has been pushing for wording to phase out all fossil fuels (according to observers to remove the one-sided focus on coal) – but no such wording exists at the moment either.
That the draft does not explicitly mention oil or gas, or calls for the phasing out of all climate-damaging fossil fuels, is a failure, according to critics who hope for a more ambitious signal from Sharm el-Sheikh.
“It is time to stop living in denial, the era of fossil fuels must come to a quick end,” says Yeb Saño from Greenpeace International in a comment, for example.
However, the document is only a draft and far from complete.
Does not mention fund
But there is also nothing here about a new fund that will compensate the most vulnerable countries for climate-related damage and losses, which is a major and sensitive issue at the meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh. On the other hand, it is “welcomed” that the parties at all agreed to include the issue of damages and losses linked to financing on the official agenda.
The draft also underlines the importance of continuing efforts to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees, compared to pre-industrial times, and ideally 1.5 degrees. Concerns have been raised that the wording of the 1.5 degree target will be watered down or deleted completely from the collective decision.
Overtime?
Delegates from almost 200 countries have had their say on what they think should be included in the final document. The draft forms a basis for the continued negotiations in the coming days and will likely be reworked several times.
According to the schedule, COP27 should end on Friday, but it is almost more the rule than the exception that the schedule breaks and the negotiations run into the weekend.
The latest forecast that TT has received from a source in the negotiations was that the meeting stick – perhaps – could be hit on the table around lunchtime on Saturday. Whether that is true remains to be seen.
Facts
UN climate summit
The UN climate summit COP27 is held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt from 6-18 November. Then representatives from all over the world gather to discuss and negotiate how the global climate work under the Paris Agreement is to be implemented.
In the Paris Agreement of 2015, most of the world’s countries agreed to keep the increase in the global average temperature well below 2 degrees, and most preferably below 1.5 degrees, compared to pre-industrial times.
But the countries’ plans to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases are far from sufficient to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, according to a compilation that the UN climate secretariat UNFCCC has made of all climate plans ahead of the meeting. If the plans are followed, the world is instead headed for around 2.5 degrees of warming before the end of the century
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