The Future Of Climate Talks

After three decades of efforts, the world has finally agreed to create a loss and damage fund at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Egypt. Devising a mechanism to manage the fund and delivering aid to deserving countries is likely to keep the negotiators engaged in the coming months, even years. AVANTIKA GOSWAMI, ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY, AKSHIT SANGOMLA and PARTH KUMAR report from Sharm el-Sheikh on how the agreement on the fund was forged, the parleys between the Parties and the market mechanisms that will be the future of climate talks

- Avantika Goswami, Rohini Krishnamurthy, Akshit Sangomla And Parth Kumar

The over 40,000-participant-strong congregation of intergovernmental bureaucracy, government representatives, environmentalists and activists at Sharm el-Sheikh, a coastal town facing the Red Sea in the southeastern part of Egypt, has ended with more than just verbal acrobatics this time. The global consensus on creation of a fund that pays for the loss and damage faced by the most vulnerable countries due to humanmade climate change, makes the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the most significant one since COP21 of 2015 that resulted in the Paris Agreement.

The decision can make COP27, held on November 6-20, the most critical one till date for the "particularly vulnerable" nations-a category that awaits definition-if the fund materialises and is disbursed accurately. But the reluctance with which developed nations agreed to the decision and have avoided financial commitments makes one doubt.

Referring to what ended up becoming the "thorniest issue" at this cor, to borrow a phrase from the UN's official news website, Secretary-General António Guterres said that though a fund for loss and damage is needed, it is not a solution if climate change wipes out a small island state off the map or desertifies an entire African country.

Still, it is a start. "It is a historical day in climate change negotiations, when it has been acknowledged after 30 years that increasing disasters causing loss and damage (both economic and non-economic) are affecting communities and countries which are least responsible for it. And these are caused due to historical cumulative emissions," Kunal Satyarthi, joint secretary of India's National Disaster Management Authority and the country's negotiator for loss and damage at COP27 told Down To Earth (DTE).