India-backed ‘loss and damage fund’ gets the green signal at COP 27
India on Sunday called as historic the UN climate summit in Egypt for securing an agreement on establishing a fund to address loss and damage due to climate change-induced disasters, saying “the world has waited far too long for this”.
Making an intervention in the closing plenary of COP 27, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav also said the world should not burden farmers with mitigation responsibilities.
He welcomed the inclusion of “transition to sustainable lifestyles and sustainable patterns of consumption and production in our efforts to address climate change” in the cover decision of the deal struck in Sharm El-Sheikh.
‘Historic COP’
“You are presiding over a historic COP where agreement has been secured for loss and damage funding arrangements including setting up a loss and damage fund. The world has waited far too long for this. We congratulate you on your untiring efforts to evolve consensus,” Yadav said addressing the Egyptian presidency.
“Providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable,” was one of the key points India was stressing upon.
India engaged constructively and actively on the subject of loss and damage, which refers to destruction caused by climate change-induced disasters, during the course of discussions, along with “phasing down of all fossil fuels”.
The success of the talks hinged on the fund to address the “loss and damage”, which was proposed by the G77, China and India, least developed countries and small island states.
For the first time, the nations of the world decided to help pay for the damage an overheating world is inflicting on poor countries, but they finished marathon climate talks on Sunday without further addressing the root cause of those disasters — the burning of fossil fuels.
Loss and damage
The deal, gavelled around dawn in this Egyptian Red Sea resort city, establishes a fund for ‘loss and damage’.
It is a big win for poorer nations which have long called for cash — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate-worsened floods, droughts, heat waves, famines and storms despite having contributed little to the pollution that heats up the globe.
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“We note that we are establishing a four-year work program on climate action in agriculture and food security. Agriculture, the mainstay of livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers, will be hard hit from climate change. So, we should not burden them with mitigation responsibilities. Indeed, India has kept mitigation in agriculture out of its NDCs,” Yadav said.
On the establishment of a work program on just transition, Yadav said for most developing countries, just transition cannot be equated with decarbonisation, but with low-carbon development.
“Developing countries need independence in their choice of energy mix, and in achieving the SDGs (sustainable development goals). Developed countries taking the lead in climate action are, therefore, a very important aspect of the global transition,” he said.
Just transition means transition to a low-carbon development strategy over a time scale that ensures food and energy security, growth and employment, leaving no one behind in the process.
After tense negotiations that ran through the night, the Egyptian COP27 presidency released a draft text for an overall agreement – and simultaneously called a plenary session to gavel it through as the final, overarching agreement for the U.N. summit.
The session approved the text’s provision to set up a “loss and damage” fund to help developing countries bear the immediate costs of climate-fuelled events such as storms and floods.
Shy over fossil fuels
The deal followed a game of climate change chicken over fossil fuels.
Early Sunday morning, delegates approved the compensation fund but had not dealt with the contentious issues of an overall temperature goal, emissions cutting and the desire to target all fossil fuels for phase down. Through the wee hours of the night, the European Union and other nations fought back what they considered backsliding in the Egyptian presidency’s overarching cover agreement and threatened to scuttle the rest of the process.
The package was revised again, removing most of the elements Europeans had objected to but added none of the heightened ambition they were hoping for.
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The agreement includes a veiled reference to the benefits of natural gas as low emission energy, despite many nations calling for a phase down of natural gas, which does contribute to climate change.
Nor does the deal expand on last year’s call to phase down global use of unabated coal even though India and other countries pushed to include oil and natural gas in language from Glasgow. That too was the subject of last-minute debate, especially upsetting Europeans.
(With Agency inputs)