Introduction
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) opened on November 6th in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, with the main theme of loss and damage funding. At COP27, negotiators, led by Pakistan as chair of G77, produced an accord to set up a fund for loss and damage-remarkable given how controversial the issue is and it had never been on a formal agenda at a COP summit until this year. Vulnerable nations most affected by climate change have been pushing for discussions around climate compensation for years.[1]
UN secretary-general António Guterres praised the set-up of a fund for climate damage but also voiced his discontent with the failure of global warming targets. “Our planet is still in the emergency room. We need to drastically reduce emissions now — and this is an issue this COP did not address. John Kerry U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate agreed to discuss the idea of financing for loss and damage, a move that helped avoid a bitter fight over the summit’s agenda. German Federal Development Minister Svenja Schulze said Germany stood by its responsibility to support vulnerable people and states in dealing with loss and damage. The EU threatened to walk out of the talks if the global agreement was not enough to keep 1.5 alive, a phrase that became the mantra of last year’s COP26 talks. It refers to the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep global warming well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C, from pre-industrial times.[2]
