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GLASGOW — The US and the European Union on Saturday resisted calls from creating international locations for the COP26 summit to create a facility offering monetary help to victims of local weather disasters.
The problem of loss and harm, or the social and financial prices of local weather impacts like sea-level rise and excessive climate, was among the many debates that pushed the Glasgow convention into time beyond regulation and pitted creating international locations towards rich polluters.
Island nations demanded a separate funding facility for loss and harm. They acquired backing from the G77, a U.N. coalition of 134 creating international locations plus China, which put ahead a proposal this week.
However within the COP26 plenary on Saturday afternoon, G77 chair Guinea reluctantly accepted the present draft textual content which doesn’t embody separate funding. Antigua and Barbuda, on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, additionally conceded there could be no new monetary facility within the Glasgow settlement.
The G77 proposal had confronted sturdy opposition from the U.S. and the EU. Wealthy international locations — chargeable for the overwhelming majority of carbon dioxide within the planet’s ambiance — have lengthy resisted steps towards loss and harm financing, fearing it may result in authorized legal responsibility for previous emissions and huge compensation claims.
A senior U.S. official stated earlier this week that making a fund for compensating people or governments for loss and harm was a pink line. U.S. local weather envoy John Kerry additionally stated on the eve of the convention that Washington would not help a choice that opens the way in which for lawsuits.
The EU additionally pushed again towards the G77 proposal to create a brand new “Glasgow Loss and Harm Facility” to supply creating international locations affected by local weather disasters with monetary help. A senior European negotiator stated Saturday that the bloc’s treasuries have been against the creation of a brand new fund.
The newest draft textual content, printed on Saturday morning, incorporates a plan to arrange a dialogue between international locations and worldwide organizations to “talk about the preparations” for loss and harm funding.
It additionally units out plans for funding a program to supply technical help to international locations dealing with loss and harm. Each EU and U.S. officers have signaled help for strengthening this program, often known as the Santiago Community, which at present consists of little greater than a web site.
With little to no progress on loss and harm at earlier COPs, such a choice would mark a serious step ahead, however creating international locations and NGOs voiced disappointment on Saturday.
Aminath Shauna, surroundings minister of the Maldives, stated her nation acknowledged there had been progress on the problem, however frightened that the dialogue would finish in additional phrases and no motion. “That is the worry.”
Tasneem Essop, director of the Local weather Motion Community of civil society organizations, stated that, by blocking separate funding, “wealthy international locations have as soon as once more demonstrated their full lack of solidarity and duty to these dealing with the worst of the local weather impacts.” The draft textual content, she stated, was “a transparent betrayal by wealthy nations — the U.S., the EU and the U.Ok. — of weak communities in poor international locations.”
Monetary help, and wealthy international locations’ reluctance to supply it, has been the best supply of rigidity on the Glasgow summit.
Negotiations are ongoing over funding to assist creating international locations scale back their emissions and adapt to the results of world warming. Rich international locations promised to supply $100 billion a yr in local weather finance by 2020, however they missed the mark, and that focus on will solely be reached in 2023.
Shauna added that the Maldives can be involved about “incremental progress” on adaptation — cash to pay for all the things from constructing flood defenses to switching to drought-resistant crops to adapt to the worldwide enhance in temperatures.
“We’ve got heard a number of high-level statements affirming that the expertise is obtainable. And we all know by means of the trillions which are invested in fossil fuels yearly that cash will not be the query. The query once more is certainly one of political will,” she stated.
Zack Colman contributed reporting.
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