COP28 conference looks set for conflict after tense negotiations over climate damage fund

BENGALURU, India (AP) Tense negotiations at final meeting on a loss and damage fund An international fund to help poor countries hit hard by global warming concluded Saturday in Abu Dhabi, with participants agreeing that the World Bank would temporarily host the fund for the next four years.

The United States and several developing countries have expressed disappointment with the draft agreement, which will be sent to world leaders for signing at COP28 climate conferencewhich begins in Dubai later this month.

The US State Department, whose officials participated in the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, said in a statement that it was satisfied with the conclusion of an agreement, but regretted that the consensus reached among negotiators on the voluntary nature of the donations to the fund is not reflected in the final agreement.

The agreement sets out the fundamental objectives of the fund, including for its planned launch in 2024, and specifies how it will be administered and who will oversee it, including the requirement for developing countries to have a seat on the board. , in addition to the world. Role of banks.

Avinash Persaud, special envoy to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on climate finance, said the agreement was a difficult but crucial outcome. It was one of those things where success can be measured by the equality of discomfort. Persaud negotiated on behalf of Latin America and the Caribbean during the meetings.

He said failure to reach an agreement would have cast a long shadow over the COP.

Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s top negotiator, host of last year’s climate conference, said: “It does not address certain points, in particular the scale and sources (of financing) and (the) recognition costs borne by developing countries.

THE request to create a fund Helping poor countries hit hard by climate change has been at the center of UN climate negotiations since they were launched 30 years ago and were finally brought to fruition at last year’s climate conference in Egypt.

Since then, a small group of negotiators representing both rich and developing countries have met several times to finalize the details of the fund. Their last meeting in the Egyptian city of Aswan in November ended in an impasse.

While acknowledging that a deal on the fund is better than a deadlock, climate policy analysts say there are still many gaps that need to be filled if the fund is to be effective in helping communities poor and vulnerable people around the world, hit by increasingly frequent climate-related problems. disasters.

The meetings fulfilled that mandate, but were far from successful, said Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA who has followed the negotiations over the last year. Wu said the fund requires almost nothing from developed countries. … At the same time, it responds to very few of the priorities of developing countries, the very ones, it must be repeated, which are supposed to benefit from this fund.

Sultan al-Jaber, UAE federal minister and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company which will oversee COP28 next month, welcomed the results of the meetings.

Billions of people, lives and livelihoods vulnerable to the effects of climate change depend on adopting this approach recommended at COP28, he said.

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This story corrects the timing of the COP28 climate conference.

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Seth Borenstein, AP Science editor in Washington, contributed to this report.

Follow Sibi Arasu on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @sibi123

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