COP27 summit agrees on landmark climate ‘loss and damage’ fund, but does little to encourage rapid cuts to fossil fuel use
In a setback for the Trump administration’s push for fossil fuel and other fossil fuel-based energy production to move beyond US borders and into the global economy, the international community agreed Thursday to create a global fund to compensate people and communities affected by climate change — but there was nothing in the summit to force countries to begin or accelerate ambitious action to combat climate change.
The final draft text of the Paris Agreement on climate change, drawn up at the COP25 in the South Korean city of Incheon, calls for a fund “to facilitate adaptation, resilience, and recovery in areas and sectors severely affected by the adverse impacts of climate change or its impacts.”
The COP27 process, which has just ended, is now the next major effort on the world stage with a final agreement expected in 2018 or 2019.
The text says the fund, which will be administered by the UN climate negotiations process, will fund “individual and institutional losses and damages resulting from natural disasters, economic sectors impacted by climate change, agriculture, health and well-being, and the cultural and natural heritage of people and communities.”
This is a major change from the previous text, which said that countries were to “conduct and facilitate” the creation of a fund.
Countries agreed on Wednesday to create the fund and to “provide an opportunity to learn from and benefit from lessons learned from” past experience and “build upon their contributions to accelerate the work to reduce emissions to net zero.”
But they did little to move beyond the “loss and damage” phase in the negotiations process. Instead, negotiators decided to focus on the “adaptation of infrastructure and adaptation of livelihoods” as a single component of the fund, and the creation of the fund would have been left up to the countries.
The draft text of the Paris Agreement in full:
For over forty years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has established the basis for the international community to adopt a legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Since the 1992 UNFCCC entered into force, the world has achieved significant reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.
