Two issues are shaping up to be the most confrontational at the climate summit being held in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh (COP27) and which should theoretically end this Friday, although the negotiations are advancing very slowly: one with one more load symbolic and another that could have important economic repercussions in the future.
On the one hand, it is under discussion whether the final political declaration makes an express call for the progressive reduction of the use of all fossil fuels to combat climate change.
On the other hand, there is a significant and heated debate on how the most vulnerable countries should be compensated for the so-called losses and damages.
In other words, due to the negative effects that climate change already has and will have in the future in nations with fewer resources, which are the least responsible for warming.
Developing countries have come together this Thursday at the summit to demand "climate justice" from the richest nations and the creation of a loss and damage fund at this COP.
Will a loss and damages fund come out of this summit?
At the center of the discussion is the creation of this fund to compensate for the impacts that climate change has generated and will generate in the most vulnerable nations.
These are, for example, the damage that islands threatened by the expected rise in sea level will suffer or the impacts suffered by countries that are hit by extreme weather events that warming is already making more violent and numerous.
For the first time at a COP, there is a specific point of discussion on the negotiating agenda on the financing of losses and damages, a really controversial issue that has been postponed until now in all previous summits.
The G77, which includes 134 developing countries and China, has openly requested that a mandate come out of this COP for the creation of a fund to finance losses and damages and that developed nations pay for being responsible history of the climate crisis.
However, the richest countries, who fear that this issue could trigger a flood of complaints in the future, are resisting and rejecting this proposal.
As the Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, explained this week, the G77 proposal does not convince the EU and other developed countries, basically, because it leaves China out of the list of countries that must pay the bill for climate change.
This country is not on the list of historical contributors to warming, but its emissions continue to grow year by year.
It ranks first among the nations that expel the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and already accumulates approximately 30% of all of them.
This is how Timmermans explained it: “China is one of the largest economies on the planet with many financial strengths.
Why shouldn't it be co-responsible for financing loss and damage?
In addition, the EU maintains that not all situations are the same, so there should not be a single fund, but instead supports different formulas and mechanisms for financing losses and damages.
The US position is even tougher and avoids any mention of a hypothetical mechanism.
The presidency of COP27, in the hands of Egypt, has distributed a document on Thursday with the points that the final declaration may include (it is not even a draft, which increases fears that the summit will end with a lot of delay).
In that text, it does not directly address the issue of financing losses and damages, waiting for the specific group that is debating it to close a proposal.
The G77 was joined this Thursday by other groups of countries, such as the group of small threatened islands (Aosis) or the so-called Alliance for Latin America and the Caribbean, which brings together eight nations in this region.
Everyone has demanded that the loss and damage fund be created at this summit.
"It's climate justice," said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's climate change minister, a country hit this summer by tremendous flooding that some studies link to global warming.
Rehman recalled that these floods have caused 30,000 million dollars in losses to her country.
“And we are only responsible for 1% of the emissions”, she added.
This debate on losses and damages takes place in a tense atmosphere.
Because rich countries have broken an important promise that they made more than a decade ago, at COP15 in 2009. They promised to mobilize —with public and private money, with aid and credit— by 2020 a total of 100,000 million dollars a year to help developing nations adapt to global warming and reduce their emissions.
But in 2020 they only reached 83.3 billion and the majority were loans.
That is what Lula da Silva, the president-elect of Brazil, referred to when he said on Wednesday at COP27 that his country was returning to the climate fight to help reduce global emissions but also to pressure the richest countries to fulfill their promises. .
The end of coal or all fossil fuels?
Last year, at the Glasgow summit, the meeting closed —also after the deadline— with a final declaration in which the use of coal was backed by a “progressive reduction”.
The text also advocated a gradual elimination of public aid for all fossil fuels.
In the final debate at that summit, India, heavily dependent on coal, was singled out for its pressure to soften references to that fossil fuel.
At this year's COP, this same country has asked that the final declaration not only include coal, but also gas and oil, something that puts oil countries in the spotlight.
In that text that the presidency of the summit released this Thursday morning, the references to coal are practically the same as in the Glasgow declaration and neither gas nor oil is mentioned, with which an important discussion is expected in this section.
In addition, public aid to fossil fuels is also discussed, but with a softer tone than in the final Glasgow text.
Last year it was pointed out that subsidies for dirty energy should be progressively eliminated.
The document of the COP27 presidency maintains that "inefficient subsidies to fossil fuels must be progressively reduced and rationalized", taking into account the circumstances of each country.
In any case, the most robust appeal from the last Glasgow summit has not prevented many countries - among them Spain and the majority of EU members - from increasing these subsidies for gasoline consumption in the last 12 months due to the war from Ukraine.
Is the goal of 1.5 degrees still alive?
During COP27, a multitude of scientific studies and organizations linked to the UN have been presented warning that humanity is not on track to comply with the Paris Agreement, which establishes that the increase in temperature at the end of the century it must stay “well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels” and try to limit it to 1.5.
At this time, the warming is already at 1.1 degrees and the countries' plans to cut emissions for this decade will lead, in the best of cases, to a warming of 2.5.
To stay at 1.5, drastic cuts are needed that the countries as a whole are not considering now.
In the text released by the presidency, the same wording is maintained as in the Paris Agreement when it comes to mentioning the objectives of the climate fight.
It is recognized that the countries' plans will reduce “global emissions in 2030 by between 5% and 10%”.
But remember, also, that to limit warming to 2 degrees, a cut of 30% would be needed.
And 45% to achieve the goal of 1.5 degrees.
Those mentions of the 1.5 target come after the G20 did the same in the final statement from their meeting in Bali, Indonesia this week.
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