Funding drama threatens UN climate summit - POLITICO - POLITICO

Funding drama threatens UN climate summit - POLITICO

Funding drama threatens UN climate summit

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Negotiations over an international fund for climate damages are at risk of falling apart, a development that would pose a major embarrassment for the upcoming United Nations climate summit.

The fund is supposed to help developing countries — which have contributed the least pollution — grapple with the irreversible impacts of climate change like rising seas and extreme weather. But talks to set up the “loss and damage” fund have become mired in mistrust and acrimony, with countries unable to agree even on the fundamentals, such as who pays, who benefits and how it should be designed, write Zia Weise, Sara Schonhardt and Karl Mathiesen.

If countries don’t find a compromise in the coming days, “it will break COP,” warned Avinash Persaud, the lead negotiator for Barbados, after negotiations stalled earlier this month. “I feel that not enough people are sufficiently worried about that.”

Talks will resume Friday in a last-ditch effort to nail down key details for the fund before the COP28 summit begins Nov. 30 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

If they fail, it raises questions about whether nations can resolve the even thornier questions awaiting them at the summit, such as vulnerable countries’ call for a commitment to phase out fossil fuels. And it would undermine whatever trust lingers from last year’s COP, when world leaders hailed a “historic” agreement to work together to create the fund.

Playing with fire

At least one negotiator has already brought up an explosive alternative: holding big polluters like the U.S. and European Union liable for their years of planet-warming emissions.

“If this fund ends up as an empty shell, this could revive the calls for liability, historical responsibility and compensation,” said Mohamed Nasr, chief negotiator for the U.N. talks’ outgoing Egyptian presidency.

The U.S. has called that a nonstarter — and if ever proposed, it could cause the country to ditch loss and damage negotiations. But the Biden administration also faces a major political obstacle to pledging any money at all for the fund: congressional approval, particularly with Republicans in control of the House.

Advocates for developing countries worry that a loss and damage fund will depend on rich nations’ goodwill, unless a language of commitment is woven into it. They noted that wealthy countries did not keep a preexisting promise to fund $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, which has undermined poorer nations’ trust in climate talks.

“One of the ways in which developed countries can change the dynamic of the negotiations is by putting some money on the table,” Persaud said. “They need to come up with a number and say, if the fund is agreed, we will put in $X hundred million.”

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That’s it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.

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