COP28 preparatory meeting on climate compensation fund fails

An important meeting in Egypt on the compensation mechanism for damages and losses, prior to the COP28 in Dubai, the great annual climate event, ended in failure according to several sources this Saturday.

Last year, at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, in Egyptparticipating countries agreed to create a mechanism to compensate for “losses and damages” suffered by developing and vulnerable nations, which have historically had less responsibility for climate change.

But everything remained to be specified in view of the COP28 Dubai, scheduled from November 30 to December 12: the exact functioning of the mechanism, the amounts, the beneficiary countries and the contributors, among whom Westerners would like to include China.

A transition committee, in charge of analyzing these issues, met until early Saturday morning in Aswan, in the south of Egypt.

The delegates confirmed their inability to reach an agreement, and referred the issue to another meeting scheduled for November 3 to 5 in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, according to the broadcast of the debates, available on an official YouTube account. from the ONU.

The president of the COP28the Emirati oil businessman Sultan al Jaber, called on negotiators this Saturday to reach an agreement before the Dubai conference, organized by the United Nations.

”It is essential that they reach consensus and make clear recommendations before the COP28 (…) I believe that all issues can be solved,” said Al Jaber, president of the Emirati national hydrocarbon company ADNOC, in a statement transmitted to AFP.

Before their failure, the talks hit a stumbling block, that of the institutional architecture of that future fund.

One option was the World Bank, accused of being in the hands of Western powers, and the other is to create a new independent structure, demanded by several developing countries, but which would require more time to set up and to feed it with fresh money.

The failure “clearly shows the deep gap between rich countries and poor countries,” said Harjeet Singh, of the NGO Climate Action Network, who attended the debates.

(With information from AFP)