2023-10-21 10:53:06
A crucial meeting on “loss and damage” climate change before COP28 separated on the grounds of failure, countries of the North and South not having managed to reach an agreement, according to corroborating sources at Agence France-Presse (AFP), Saturday 21 october.
An agreement in principle was reached last year at COP27 in Egypt on the creation of a fund to compensate for “loss and damage” nations of the South, vulnerable to climate change. Much remained to be clarified before the next COP28, which will be held in Dubai from November 30 to December 12: its exact form, the beneficiary countries and the contributors – among whom the West would like to include China.
A transition committee on establishing the fund met late Friday night in Aswan, southern Egypt, but delegates found themselves unable to reach an agreement and postponed a possible decision to another meeting, from November 3 to 5, in the United Arab Emirates, according to a broadcast of the debates available on an official United Nations YouTube account.
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“Deep chasm”
Before their failure, discussions broke down over the location of the fund: the alternative proposed it within the World Bank, accused of being in Western hands, or in a new independent structure, demanded by a number of developing countries, but long to set up and complex to provide new money.
This failure “clearly shows the deep chasm between rich and poor countries”estimated Harjeet Singh, senior official of the NGO Climate Action Network, who attended the debates, in a comment sent to AFP on Saturday morning.
“Developed countries must be held accountable for their shameless attempts to have the fund hosted by the World Bank, to refuse to discuss the amount of financing and to disregard their responsibilities” under the terms of international climate agreements already concluded, he says.
Echoing this, an official from the NGO Union of Concerned Scientists declared: “Today’s disappointing result is a hard blow for the populations (…) suffering a cascade of consequences from climate change. » “The United States and other rich countries seem more concerned with evading or minimizing their responsibilities”added Rachel Cleetus, quoted in a press release from her organization.
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