Climate summit achieved new unity. Now there are pledges to fulfill.

For Salote Nasalo, from the island nation of Fiji, newly promised climate aid for developing nations can’t come quickly enough.

As a specialist on so-called loss and damage from climate change, she came here to this year’s United Nations climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and was among those who tirelessly pushed for the cause of a relief fund. 

Those efforts paid off, as the world’s governments agreed to establish a fund for countries hardest hit by climate disasters – hailed as a win for diplomacy after marathon negotiations went 40 hours overtime and nearly collapsed. 

But in Ms. Nasalo’s home country, 50 hours and multiple plane rides away, family and friends were preparing for cyclones and historic flooding. 

“Often the poorest communities are the ones that need the help the most, and they have not been given the tools or the funds to either rebuild or prepare for the next extreme event,” Ms. Nasalo says. “We now need to find ways to make sure funds get to these communities so they can rebuild and better prepare for the next crisis.” 

The promises made here at the COP27 climate summit represent a start. The next step will be follow-through on what many see as a vital issue of global fairness and responsibility.

Experts and governments called the fund for vulnerable countries a “win for multilateralism” that has gone a long way toward rebuilding the trust of developing countries, affected communities, and young people, in a climate process they viewed as favoring rich nations and failing to factor in their views and increasingly urgent needs. 

Developing nations, particularly the group G77, stood their ground the entire two weeks of arduous talks, insisting on a separate fund for communities hit hardest by climate disasters – in the face of stiff resistance from the U.S. and other Western countries, who finally relented. 

“This certainly demonstrates that a just and fair cause backed by science and with enough interest groups supporting it, eventually will gain traction and progress will be made,” says Emily Wilkinson, senior research fellow at the London-based ODI think tank.

“If developing countries reach a united position and can speak both to hearts and minds, this process shows that they can be successful,” adds the loss and damage expert, who was present at negotiations. “It is a good example of how small states collectively can have a huge influence in a multilateral arena.”

The agreement here was a rare triumph for developing countries in the face of wealthy nations which had long resisted establishing such a fund out of fear that it may open the door to discussions of historical liability for climate change and reparations. 

“This loss and damage fund will be a lifeline for poor families whose houses are destroyed, farmers whose fields are ruined, and islanders forced from their ancestral homes,” Ani Dasgupta, CEO of World Resources Institute, said in a statement.  “This positive outcome from COP27 is an important step toward rebuilding trust with vulnerable countries.”

Yet as Sunday’s agreement was hailed as a recognition of the outsized impact of climate change on poorer nations and an expression of collective responsibility, many criticized the world’s governments for walking away from the conference without securing commitments to further cut emissions needed to avert rapid warming. 

It raises questions about whether this improved sense of trust and cooperation can truly be called climate justice without a clear plan to reduce fossil fuel reliance.

Loss and damage fund

This is the 27th COP or Conference of Parties on climate, and the issue of loss and damage isn’t a new one. But this year it was the top priority for the majority of COP27 attendees, a rallying cry for those seeking relief from intense climate events – with the devastating flooding in Pakistan, drought and famine in Africa, and rising sea levels in Pacific Islands fresh on minds.

As part of the decision reached over the weekend, a transitional committee will be formed to make recommendations on how to operate the fund to present at next year’s COP, with the first meeting of the fund committee to meet by March 2023. 

In the text agreement, there are no commitments to the amount of finance to be placed in the fund or who should pay into it, with the text vaguely referring to a “variety of sources.”

The agreement also calls for the reform of multilateral banks and international financial institutions to ease access to climate finance and funds to developing countries – another key demand.

Until now, affected communities and developing countries have had to pay from their own limited budgets to rebuild from climate disasters or adapt to severe weather changes, pushing poorer nations further and further into debt.  

“It’s a relief,” teenage Kenyan activist Rahmina Paulette and conference attendee says of the agreement.

“My own people are affected by floods and poor disposal of plastics, waste, and sewage. Across Africa we have high cases of debt, malnutrition, hunger, and poverty because of the effects of the climate crisis. We hope this leads to immediate relief.”

Critically, negotiators also decided to activate the Santiago Network, a previously agreed network designed to provide technical assistance, knowledge, and solutions to communities and developing countries most affected by climate change.

Experts hope that affected countries will now be able to get both the expertise to adapt and prepare for extreme climate events and the funds to do so. 

Job Half Done?

Yet while the conference made ground-breaking progress on climate financing and damages, it failed to advance on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. 

The COP27 agreement text does not mention once the words “phasing out” or “phasing down” fossil fuels, critical language that would hold countries to account to meet emissions cuts as laid out in the landmark 2015 Paris Accords.

Likewise, a follow-through on last year’s pledge at COP26 to phase down coal use was also absent. 

“We need to drastically reduce emissions now – and this is an issue this Cop did not address,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, whose intervention on Thursday helped save the talks from breaking down, warned in a statement. “The world still needs a giant leap on climate ambition ... our planet is still in the emergency room.”

Climate campaigners at Sharm el-Sheikh consistently expressed their concern that energy companies and petrostates were actively watering down language from “phasing out” fossil fuels to “phasing down.” Activists held impromptu protests at the tightly-controlled and restrictive conference.  

In the end, most language on transitioning away from fossil fuels was excised completely from the final text.

In a conference described by some as a last chance to keep the 2015 Paris Agreement goal “alive,” the final deal barely mentioned the Paris target of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees C beyond pre-industrial levels.

Some Western delegates privately accused COP27 host Egypt – which has been reliant on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for financial support since current president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ascension to power in 2013 – of watering down language on fossil fuels at the behest of its allies. 

“It is mind boggling that countries did not muster the courage to call for phasing down fossil fuels, which are the biggest driver of climate change,” Mr. Dasgupta said.  

“We need action ... now”

The lack of action on carbon emissions has placed a spotlight on the outsized presence of energy firms and fossil fuel-producing countries at this year’s conference. 

Fossil fuel firms sent 680 delegates to COP27, more than some entire regions of the world. 

In addition to a large pavilion, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, was given a separate dome and zone to show off its climate initiatives and pitch a large-scale “carbon-catch” technology it claims can offset carbon emissions without the need to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Oil- and gas-producing UAE, host of next year’s COP, sent more than 1,000 delegates, by far the largest of any country, from an emirate of 1.5 million citizens. 

While the establishment of a loss and damage fund has revived a sense of fairness and trust in the COP process, those on the frontlines of climate change say world governments still have a long way to go and rapidly diminishing time to avert a wider crisis – with a growing number of lives at stake.

“COP has been going on as long as I have been alive. We don’t need a COP 28 and 29 to cut fossil fuels emissions, we need action on mitigation now,” says Ms. Nasalo from Fiji.

“We have less than 27 years before our communities and villages in the South Pacific disappear under the sea, and the process of COP is too slow to accommodate that. We have made progress on trust, but we also need to consider the survival of humankind.”