COP27: Frankie the dinosaur protests against the climate crisis 1:15
(CNN) --
The world has failed to reach an agreement to phase out fossil fuels after several oil-producing nations obstructed marathon UN climate talks.
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries at the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt took the historic step of agreeing to establish a "loss and damage" fund aimed at helping vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters and agreed that the world it needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by 2030.
The agreement also reaffirmed the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
However, an attempt to tackle the biggest source of global warming emissions causing the climate crisis ended in fiasco after several nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, blocked a key proposal to phase out all fossil fuels, not just charcoal.
The COP27 summit agrees a climate fund for "loss and damage" in a historic agreement
“It is beyond frustrating to see several large emitters and oil producers obstructing the backlog in mitigating and phasing out fossil fuels,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement.
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Addressing the summit early Sunday morning, the European Union's climate chief, Frans Timmermans, said the EU was "disappointed" with the final outcome of the summit.
“What we have in front of us is not enough of a step forward for people and the planet…we should have done a lot more,” Timmermans said.
Victory for the victims of the climate crisis
However, the agreement to help the world's most vulnerable countries deal with loss and damage represents a breakthrough in what has been a contentious negotiation process.
It is the first time that countries and groups, including the United States and the European Union that have long resisted, have agreed to set up a fund for countries vulnerable to climate disasters made worse by pollution produced disproportionately by wealthy, industrialized nations.
Negotiators and non-governmental organizations observing the talks hailed the agreement as a significant achievement, after developing nations and small island countries joined in turning up the pressure.
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“The agreements reached at COP27 are a victory for the whole world,” Molwyn Joseph, president of the Alliance of Small Island States, said in a statement.
“We have shown those who have felt neglected that we hear them, we see them, and we are giving them the respect and attention they deserve.”
The creation of the fund also became one of the main demands of the activists who attended the summit.
Unlike previous years, when large protests and strong calls for action became part of the event, the demonstrations were silenced this year.
Protests are rare and mostly illegal in Egypt and the Egyptian government has imposed strict limits on protesters attending the conference.
Still, the largest protest of the summit saw hundreds of activists marching through the site last weekend, demanding climate payments.
On Friday, 10-year-old Ghanaian activist Nakeeyat Dramani received a standing ovation in plenary after calling on delegates to “have a heart and do the math”.
Climate activists held a series of protests during the conference, demanding an end to fossil fuels and climate finance.
(Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The fund will focus on what can be done to support loss and damage remedies, but does not include liability or compensation provisions, a senior Biden administration official told CNN.
Reaching the agreement was not easy.
The summit was originally scheduled to end on Friday, but it dragged on for a long time with negotiators still trying to nail down the details while the conference venue was dismantled.
The United States and other developed countries have long sought to avoid such provisions that could expose them to legal liability and lawsuits from other countries.
And in earlier public statements, US climate envoy John Kerry had said that loss and damage was not the same as climate repairs.
“'Reparations' is not a word or a term that has been used in this context,” Kerry said on a recent call with reporters earlier this month.
And he added: "We have always said that it is imperative that the developed world help the developing world deal with climate impacts."
Details about how the fund would operate remain unclear.
The text leaves many questions about when it will be finished and operational, and how exactly it will be financed.
The text also mentions a transition committee that will help nail down those details, but does not set any specific future deadlines.
And while climate experts celebrated the victory, they also noted the uncertainty ahead.
“This loss and damage fund will be a lifeline for poor families whose houses are destroyed, farmers whose fields are ruined and islanders forced to leave their ancestral homes,” said Ani Dasgupta, director general of the World Resources Institute.
"At the same time, developing countries are leaving Egypt without clear assurances about how the loss and damage fund will be monitored."
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The result of a fund came about this year in large part because the G77 bloc of developing countries stuck together, wielding greater influence over loss and damage than in previous years, climate experts said.
“They needed to come together to force the conversation we're having now,” Nisha Krishnan, director of resilience at the World Resources Institute for Africa, told reporters.
“The coalition has stood by this conviction that we needed to stay together to get this done and to drive the conversation forward.”
For many, the fund represents a hard-fought victory of many years, pushed over the finish line by the global attention paid to climate disasters, such as Pakistan's devastating floods this summer.
"It was like a big buildup," former US climate envoy Todd Stern told CNN.
“This has been around for quite some time and it is becoming increasingly annoying for vulnerable countries because not a lot of money is being invested yet.
As we can see, the real impacts of disasters caused by climate change are becoming more intense."
Frans Timmermans from the EU speaks to journalists during the summit.
(Credit: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek/Getty Images)
The text remains at 1.5 degrees
Global scientists have warned for decades that warming should be limited to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a rapidly approaching threshold as the planet's average temperature has already risen to around 1.1 degrees.
Beyond 1.5 degrees, the risk of extreme droughts, wildfires, floods and food shortages will increase dramatically, scientists said in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from the ONU.
But while summit delegates affirmed the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, climate experts expressed dismay at the lack of mention of fossil fuels or the need to phase them out to prevent rising temperatures. global.
As it did last year at the Glasgow summit, the text calls for an unabated phase-down of coal power and the "elimination of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" but goes no further by calling for the phasing out of all fossil fuels, including oil and gas.
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“The influence of the fossil fuel industry was found across the board,” Laurence Tubiana, executive director of the European Climate Foundation, said in a statement.
“The Egyptian presidency has produced a text that clearly protects the oil and gas petrostates and fossil fuel industries.
This trend cannot continue in the United Arab Emirates next year.”
Dramatic action was needed to maintain the 1.5 degree number reached in Glasgow last year.
On Saturday, EU officials threatened to pull out of the meeting if the final agreement did not support the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
In a carefully choreographed press conference, Timmermans, flanked by a full list of ministers and other senior officials from EU member states, said that "no deal is better than a bad deal."
“We don't want 1.5 Celsius to die here and today.
That for us is completely unacceptable,” she said.
The talks were further complicated by the fact that Kerry, who was leading the US delegation, tested positive for coronavirus on Friday.
He continued to communicate with his team and their foreign counterparts by phone, but his physical absence was noticeable during the critical moment of the summit.
US climate envoy John Kerry gestures to his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua at the COP27 summit.
(Credit: Nariman El-Mofty/AP)
US and China resume climate talks
In addition to the final deal, the summit brought several other important developments, including the resumption of formal climate talks between the United States and China, the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
After China froze climate negotiations between the two countries this summer, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restore communications between the US and China when they met the last week at the G20 summit in Bali, paving the way for Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua to meet again formally.
"Without China, even if the US is ... moving toward a 1.5 degree program ... if we don't have China, no one else can achieve ... that goal," Kerry told CNN last week. .
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The two sides met during the second week of the COP, trying to pick up where they left off before China called off talks, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
They focused on specific action points, such as improving China's plan to cut emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and its overall emissions target, the source said.
Unlike last year, there was no big joint climate announcement from the two countries.
But the resumption of formal communication was seen as an encouraging sign.
Li Shuo, a Beijing-based global policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia, said this COP "saw extensive exchanges between the two parties, led by Kerry and Xie."
"The challenge is that they should do more than talk, [and] they should also lead," Shuo said, adding that the restarted formal dialogue "helps prevent the worst outcome."
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