COP27 extended by a day, several contentious issues remain
Vibha Sharma
New Delhi, November 19
The 27th Conference of Parties (COP), which was supposed to wrap up its work today, has been extended by a day to attempt to take the ongoing negotiations to a logical end, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav posted late last evening.
“COP is a party-driven process and hence consensus on key issues is vital to the process. The extension is an attempt towards achieving just that,” he said.
“A lot of issues, including mitigation work programme, the global goal on adaptation, loss and damage, and climate finance are being negotiated as they remain contentious,” Yadav added.
Amid the hard negotiations to fine tune a final climate agreement acceptable to all, a formal draft of the UN climate summit deal in Egypt on Friday welcomed the Parties’ agreement for the first time to include an agenda item related to Loss and Damage. It also expressed “deep concern towards the significant financial costs associated with loss and damage for developing countries, resulting in increasing the burden of indebtedness and impairing the realization of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals”.
Discussion on “loss and damage” is “reflection of the wide global consensus around the grave situation in relation to loss and damage and the need for effective funding arrangements related to responding to loss and damage in particular addressing loss and damage,” it states.
However, the draft does not include any proposal on ‘loss and damage’ funding—a key demand of developing countries like India.
Though the draft expresses “grave concern that the goal of developed country Parties to mobilise jointly $ 100 billion per year by 2020 has not yet been met” and emphasises “accelerated financial support for developing countries from developed countries and other sources is a critical enabler to enhance mitigation action and address inequities in access to finance, including its costs, terms and conditions, and economic vulnerability to climate change for developing countries”
While reaffirming “the Paris Agreement temperature goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”, it also “reaffirms the resolution to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C requires immediate, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions and urging developed country Parties to enhance their provision of support, including finance, technology transfer and capacity-building, to developing country Parties for taking ocean-based climate action”.
While there is no mention of setting to the new fund for addressing loss and damage, under the energy sub-head, it “calls on the importance of enhancing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix at all level as part of diversifying energy mixes and systems, and encourages the continued efforts to accelerate measures towards the phase down of unabated coal power and phase out and rationalize inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards just transitions”
According to the document about $4 trillion a year needs to be invested in renewable energy until 2030 – including investments in technology and infrastructure – to allow us to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Furthermore, a global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investments of at least $ 4-6 trillion a year. Delivering such funding will require a transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes, engaging governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors,” it adds
The draft cover text commends the parties that submitted updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
India submitted its updated NDCs to the UNFCCC in August.
The formal draft also urges parties to communicate new or updated long-term low-emission development strategies aimed at enhancing contribution to global net zero emissions by or around mid-century, in line with the best available science and aligned with their NDCs taking into account different national circumstances.
