COP27: Loss and damage fund for vulnerable countries is “a symbolic breakthrough, but so far it is nothing more than a declaration”

• The Climate Change Conference closed with an agreement that included the creation of a fund for the financing of loss and damage for the most vulnerable countries.
• Experts and environmentalists have criticized the inability in negotiations to advance agreements to gradually reduce the use of fossil fuels.

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27) ended last weekend in the city of Sharm el Sheikh, in Egypt, with an action that took almost three decades to become a reality: the creation of a fund for the financing of loss and damage for the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

The creation of this fund was a long-standing demand of several nations, especially Pacific islands. The fact that it has materialized is an advance that, however, falls short when you look at all the pending issues that were left on the table to prevent the temperature of the planet from continuing to rise. In particular, there was no walk on the path to reducing the use of fossil fuels.

The decision to create the fund has been described as historic, but it has not been exempt from criticism, especially since previous agreements related to other climate funds – such as developed countries allocating 100 billion dollars annually from 2020 – have not yet been fulfilled.

“This is a historic outcome that benefits the most vulnerable around the world. We have determined the way forward in a decades-long conversation about financing loss and damage, deliberating on how to address impacts on communities whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by the worst impacts of climate change,” said Simon Stiell, UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change during the closing plenary session of COP27.

In contrast to this decision is what many consider a major failure in negotiations: the inability to advance agreements to gradually reduce the use of fossil fuels.

India, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) —which brings together 39 countries— as well as the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) —which brings together Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Peru— and several countries of the European Union such as Denmark, Spain and France. Among others, they insisted during the 15 days of the negotiations that the final text include concrete references to the phase-out of all fossil fuels: coal, gas and oil.

A recent United Nations report on Climate Change indicates that, so far, efforts not to increase global temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century are not working, because to achieve this would have to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45% by 2030. On the contrary, with the current commitments of governments, in relation to GHG emissions, the planet could reach 2.5 degrees Celsius of temperature increase by the end of the century.

Commitment to addressing vulnerability

“It is a milestone that the fund for loss and damage, which was expected 30 years ago, has been approved. And it is very important because, on the one hand, you can count on a financial mechanism that manages to strengthen and support the most vulnerable countries and, on the other hand, there is a recognition of these conditions of vulnerability and climate justice,” says Catalina Góngora, Policy Specialist at The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Colombia.

Góngora points out that from the first day of COP27 the discussion on loss and damage was a central issue, especially due to the scenario of global economic crisis and inflation caused by the war in Ukraine. And he mentions that for Latin America it is important, because it is a region with island countries in the Caribbean and that also has strong pressures.

However, Góngora points out that the structure of this fund has not been defined, nor how the resource flows will be nor which countries could access those resources. “It is an opportunity for Latin America, for example, in the issue of which countries can access the fund. If there is a general conception of vulnerable countries, the region can access these resources, but if you talk about particular conditions, you may prioritize islands and countries located mainly in Africa.”

Although the COP27 agreement does not specify how this fund will work, what is established is the creation of a Transition Committee that must meet before the end of March 2023 to reach COP28, which will be held in Dubai, with a clear roadmap on this fund.

For Eugenio Rengifo, executive director of Fondo Naturaleza Chile, “what happened at the close of COP27 finally tipped the balance towards hope. In more than a decade of discussions, we were able to advance this conversation to find resources and direct them to compensate for losses and damages.”

Rengifo highlighted the role of the Minister of Environment of Chile, Maisa Rojas, who together with the Minister of Germany, Jennifer Morgan, Secretary of State and Special Commissioner for International Climate Action of Germany, led the instance dedicated to this issue.

“Very happy to have played a role in this outcome at COP27: Germany and Chile co-facilitated this discussion. First we managed to put the issue on the agenda and then the decision to establish a fund for losses and damages,” Minister Rojas posted on her social networks.

The report The Cost of Delay Why Damage Financing Should Be Agreed at COP 27?, prepared by The Loss and Damage Collaboration, states that climate change losses in developing countries range from $290 billion to $580 billion by 2030. The paper states that “these estimates do not include non-economic losses and damages, such as psychological impacts and biodiversity loss, which are profound but cannot be fully translated into monetary terms, meaning that the actual cost is much higher than what is accounted for on a balance sheet.”

The Republic of Vanuatu, an island located in the South Pacific, was the first country to demand a fund for island nations affected by sea level rise in 1991. Since then the issue had been postponed until it was finally adopted at the Sharm el Sheikh conference in Egypt.

During this COP27, the most dramatic call came in the message of the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, Kausea Natano, a country also located in the Pacific, between Australia and Hawaii, which is sinking under the waters of the sea and whose inhabitants, 12,000 in total, have begun to migrate to Fiji. In Latin America, the impacts of climate change are visible in sea level rise, droughts and hurricanes, mainly in Central America and the Caribbean.

For Carlos Tornel, a researcher at Durham University, in the United Kingdom, specializing in the process of transition, justice and energy sovereignty, the agreement to create a loss and damage fund is “a symbolic advance” on a fundamental issue for the most vulnerable countries, mainly for island nations. “But so far it is nothing more than an empty statement without content,” he says.

Tornel’s concern dates back to COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, when a Green Climate Fund was established, through which developed countries would allocate funds for this purpose, “which never came,” says Tornel. “At COP15 they agreed that there would be 100 billion dollars annually, starting in 2020, deposited in an entity that could distribute them, but so far only about 20 billion have been delivered, well below all expectations.”

The fossil fuel problem

“If the issue of fossil fuels is not addressed directly and clearly, the climate crisis cannot be effectively addressed,” says Andrés Gómez, researcher in the Energy and Climate Justice Area of Censat Agua Viva Friends of the Earth in Colombia.

Gómez questions that in the COPs there is no progress in the commitments to achieve “a transition that moves us away from fossil fuels.” In that sense, the specialist highlights the role of the Colombian government “which for the first time has arrived at a conference on climate change with a different perspective, precisely, from the impulse of an energy transition to leave out fossil fuels,” referring to the speech of the president of his country, Gustavo Petro, who in his presentation on November 7 called on the world to stop consuming oil and coal.

But beyond Petro’s call to reduce and eliminate the use of coal, oil and gas and the repeated calls for attention on this issue from other world leaders such as Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), and organizations such as AOSIS and AILAC that group developing countries, the final text of COP27 only mentions the transition to “low emissions” energies.

For Ana Carolina González, Director of Programs at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), COP27 has been “a disappointment” with the results of the final text, because “there is no qualitatively greater ambition than that of the Glasgow agreements and it seems that, at times, there were setbacks in the negotiation.”

González points out that the issue of the progressive reduction of fossil fuels was at the center of the agenda, both in the negotiations and in the parallel events. “Many countries put this issue on the negotiating agenda, to be included in the text. At first India floated the idea that it would be a phase-down, not only of coal [como se acordó en Glasgow en 2021] but of all fossil fuels. I think that encouraged other countries — like Colombia and even the United States — to join the discussion.”

Also joined, González continues, all the AILAC countries and of course Tuvalu, among other Pacific islands, as well as Norway, the main producer of hydrocarbons in Europe. “There were about 80 countries supporting some kind of phase-down to fossil fuels. I think the fact that a significant group of countries has put the issue on the table, although it has not remained in the final text, gives us an idea that it is a central issue, “says González.

Oil, a presence that cannot be erased

“I think COP27 has been taken over by businessmen. I’ve been feeling it since Glasgow, but now it’s much more and I think in Dubai it will be stronger,” says Melanie Canales, a member of the National Organization of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru.

In this way, the indigenous leader refers to the claims of civil and environmental organizations for the presence of more than 600 lobbyists from the oil industry who were at the conference in Egypt.

The fear of activists, environmentalists and experts is that the number of lobbyists will increase for COP28, which will be held in 2023 in Dubai, a country whose economy is based on oil.

It is a situation that worries us a lot, adds Canales, because no commitments have been made to reduce emissions, nor is it being considered to revalue ancestral knowledge and technologies for adaptation and mitigation to climate change.

Canales also questions agreements that focus on forests, and mainly on the Amazon, only as carbon sinks and their relationship with carbon markets. “Entrepreneurs are thinking about taking care of the Amazon and forests only for the benefits of carbon, that’s why they offer to pay for taking care of forests. But we must not think only of the Amazon, we need to think about the integral territory. What will happen to the Andean glaciers that feed the rivers of the Amazon? What will happen to the sea? From our women’s organization we have always made visible that the struggle is for the integral territory.”

Osver Polo, of the Citizen Movement against Climate Change (MOCICC), believes that social organizations and environmental movements must improve their strategies for monitoring and accountability to the governments of their countries. “Before they reach the world conferences we should have a national process to take clear and defined positions. But it is also important to have regional positions at the level of Latin American countries.”

Polo also mentions the pressures and restrictions to which activists have been subjected during COP27. Due to Egypt’s restrictions on street demonstrations, marches and protests at COP27 were held inside the conference center where the global meeting was held. However, even within this space there have been restrictions on participants, such as “when three indigenous leaders were removed from a plenary for raising a banner and expressing a message aloud, while a presentation was being made,” says the representative of Moccic.

“At the COPs, it is also necessary to open spaces for dialogue between governments and environmental organizations and indigenous leaders, so that they can be heard, as the elected president of Brazil, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, has done, who met with civil society,” adds Polo.

Although this had been called “the COP of implementation”, that is, a conference to define and specify the actions to meet the goals set in the Paris Agreement and in Glasgow, experts point out that little progress has been made on this path.

For Catalina Góngora, representative in The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Colombia, this COP has not defined the mechanisms for implementing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) that countries have presented for the reduction of their GHG emissions. Nor have the financial agreements been clear, nor how they will be fulfilled. “It is a debt of previous agreements and if we talk about implementation we must have clear accounts, which we have to implement and prioritize.”

For Ana Carolina González, from NRGI, the agenda on a just energy transition has not been at the center of the discussion, “but above all it is still pending to think about the transition with a view from the communities, from women, from young people, from, let’s say, the people who will be most impacted by the transition process itself.”

Eugenio Rengifo, from Fondo Naturaleza Chile, mentions that this time there has been a more direct approach between climate change and biodiversity conservation. “They used to run on separate lanes and today I return from Egypt hoping to have heard a speech in which those elements were incorporated.”

Rengifo points out that the presentation of Chile’s Marine Protected Areas Program, during COP27, is a sign of the closeness and “a cross between global warming and how we care for biodiversity.”

The truth, Rengifo continues, one way is how to attack fever and the other is how to attack infection, which is the issue of biodiversity. “That is the great crisis we have today, we are facing a crisis of extinction of species and biodiversity that has as a symptom global warming, but if we do not address the origin of the flow of the problem we will hardly achieve significant changes.”

Source: Mongabay