At the end of the day, the western countries put the agreement on the damage and loss fund for countries in a weak position due to climate damage on the table again. In addition, Russia and Saudi Arabia put the brakes on the decline of fossil fuels.
In Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, the COP27 climate meeting of the United Nations has come to an end.
In the closing session, an agreement was approved on the damage and loss fund for countries in a vulnerable position that have suffered from climate disasters.
The creation of the agreement received applause from the delegations. Representatives of different countries have spent two weeks in Egypt negotiating climate measures and the demands of developing countries to receive compensation from rich and more polluting countries for the damages caused by extreme weather events.
The meeting stretched well over 30 hours into overtime, which means that the Egyptian meeting was the third longest COP meeting to date. The closing session started on Sunday morning at four o’clock local time.
The BBC said on its website (you will go to another service)that there had been an open discussion during the day on Saturday that a settlement regarding climate damage compensation would have already been reached.
Despite this, the western countries reopened the discussion on the damage and loss fund on Saturday evening.
Macron: The agreement on the damage and loss fund as such is insufficient
On Saturday night, the French president Emmanuel Macron commented at the summit of French-speaking countries in Tunisia that the agreement on the damage and loss fund is insufficient as such.
According to Macron, the idea of a single fund to curb the effects of climate change is inappropriate at best and insufficient at worst.
The EU announced on Friday that it will not accept the base paper of the host country, Egypt, because it does not aim to reduce emissions sufficiently. The EU wants to stick to the 1.5 degree goal, i.e. to keep global warming at a maximum of 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times.
Now the temperature has risen by about 1.2 degrees, and the world has already seen extreme weather phenomena caused by the changing climate.
Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans said on Saturday that the European Union would rather miss a result than achieve a bad result. He even warned that the EU is ready to walk out of the climate negotiations.
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The EU turned its back at the last minute and is now supporting the controversial fund from which poor countries are paid for the damages caused by the climate crisis