The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, lamented this Sunday the lack of ambition of the 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27) regarding the reduction of emissions.
“We need to drastically reduce emissions [de gases com efeito de estufa] now, and that is a question that this COP has not answered,” Guterres said after the climate conference.
The vice president of the European Commission also said that the negotiations fell short of what was necessary and stressed that “a very short step for the inhabitants of the planet” had been taken.
“It does not provide sufficient additional efforts on the part of two major emitters to increase and accelerate their emission reductions”, said Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, in a fiery speech, in the final plenary session of COP27, after two weeks of conference, in Egypt.
The UN annual climate conference today approved an agreement that provides for the creation of a fund to finance climate damage suffered by “particularly vulnerable” countries, in a decision described as historic.
The resolution was unanimously adopted in the plenary assembly, followed by thunderous applause, at the end of the annual UN climate conference.
The resolution emphasizes the “immediate need for new, additional, predictable and adequate financial resources to help developing countries that are particularly vulnerable” to the “economic and non-economic” impacts of climate change.
Among these possible financing modalities is the creation of a “loss and damage response fund”, a demand from developing countries.
The modalities for the implementation of the fund must be prepared by a special commission, to be adopted at the next COP28, at the end of 2023, in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of “loss and damage”, which was more at the center of the debate than ever, after the devastating floods that recently hit Pakistan and Nigeria, almost made COP27 unfeasible.
Delegates this morning approved the offset fund, but did not address controversial issues such as the goal of controlling rising temperatures, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and phasing out fossil fuels.
In the early hours of the morning, the European Union and other nations were opposing what they considered a setback in the Egyptian presidency deal, threatening to sink the rest of the process.
The agreement was revised again.
“It’s not as strong as we’d like it to be, but it’s not against” what was decided at last year’s UN climate conference, Norwegian climate minister Espen Barth Eide said.
The agreement includes a veiled reference to the benefits of natural gas as low-emissions energy, despite many nations calling for a gradual reduction in the use of natural gas, which contributes to climate change.
The document does not mandate faster cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but it does keep alive the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Egyptian presidency had reverted to proposals dating back to 2015, which mentioned a more flexible target of two degrees.
The 27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change began on November 6 and ended today in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, bringing together more than 35,000 participants, including several country leaders, with around two thousand interventions on more than 300 themes.
Source: TSF
