COP27 begins in Egypt with an agreement to open the negotiation of compensation for climate damage

Sharm el Sheikh will receive about 130 presidential planes

MADRID, 6 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The 27th Conference on Climate Change of the United Nations (COP27) that begins this Sunday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, has already provided the first good news after an agreement reached to officially open the negotiation on economic compensation for crises caused by meteorological events extraordinary, according to a document to which Bloomberg has had access.

The pact will allow diplomats and leaders displaced to Egypt to discuss this matter for the first time in an official way. The Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Samé Shukri, president of the COP27, has highlighted that this progress has been achieved after 48 hours of intense negotiations and has underlined that he expects a final decision to be made "no later than 2024".

"This creates for the first time an institutionally stable space for the formal agenda of the COP and the Paris Agreement to discuss the pressing issue of financing the necessary response to the currently existing gaps in the response to loss and damage," said Shukri. .

"The inclusion of this agenda reflects the sense of solidarity and empathy with the suffering of the victims of climate-driven disasters," he added.

Developing countries and island states that have barely contributed to greenhouse gas emissions are the ones that suffer most directly from the effects of climate change and are the ones that have pushed the most in recent weeks to address this issue. .

The demand is old, having been around when the COPs began in the early 1990s, but industrialized countries have repeatedly blocked efforts to put the issue on the agenda for fear it could generate billions of dollars in demand. dollars (euros) in compensation. The recent floods in Pakistan and other recent crises have served to give a new push to the claim.

The negotiation on the final text of the agreement has caused the delay of more than an hour of the opening session of the conference to avoid an uncomfortable confrontation as soon as COP27 begins.

Shukri has stressed that the agreement is based on "cooperation and facilitation" and not on "responsibility and compensation". The final text includes a point entitled "Issues related to financing arrangements to respond to loss and damage linked to the adverse effects of climate change, including loss and damage."

"This is a historic step to ensure that vulnerable countries have the financial resources to deal with the increasingly severe climate impacts they face," said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute.

Already at the opening session, Shukri stressed that Egypt will spare no effort to lead international action to address climate change.

"We hope that the Climate Summit will be a milestone in collective and multilateral action. The Climate Summit will provide the best conditions to face climate change," he said, according to Sky News Arabia.

The head of the Egyptian Diplomacy has stressed that "the pattern that humanity has followed since the beginning of the industrial revolution until today is no longer sustainable." "Everyone will lose if someone thinks they can win at someone else's expense in terms of climate," he has warned.

For his part, the Egyptian president, Abdelfatá al Sisi, highlighted in a message on Facebook that "With pride and honor, I look forward to opening the activities of the 27th session of the United Nations Conference of Parties, the Convention on Sharm el Sheikh (COP27) on climate change".

Al Sisi stressed that this summit "comes at a very sensitive time, in which our world is exposed to existential dangers and unprecedented challenges that affect the very survival of our planet and our ability to live on it."

For this reason, he has defended "rapid action by all countries to develop a roadmap to rescue and protect the world from the effects of climate change."

Egypt "hopes that the conference will move out of the promise stage and into the implementation stage with concrete steps, building on the above, especially the results of the Glasgow Summit and the Paris Agreement."

COP27 will last two weeks and 40,000 delegates will participate, including more than a hundred heads of state and government who will arrive in 130 presidential planes.