Countries adopt COP27 deal with 'loss and damage' fund

SHARM EL-SHEIKH: Countries adopted a hard-fought final agreement at the COP27 climate summit early on Sunday that sets up a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters – but does not boost efforts to tackle the emissions causing them.

The Egyptian COP27 presidency released the final text for a deal after tense negotiations that ran through the night. The presidency simultaneously called a plenary session to quickly gavel it through.

The session first swiftly approved the text’s provision to set up a “loss and damage” fund to help developing countries bear the immediate costs of climate-fuelled events such as storms and floods.

But it kicked many of the most controversial decisions on the fund into next year, when a “transitional committee” would make recommendations for countries to then adopt at the COP28 climate summit in November 2023.

Those recommendations would cover “identifying and expanding sources of funding” – referring to the vexed question of which countries should pay into the new fund.

Calls by developing countries for such a fund have dominated the two-week summit, pushing the talks past their scheduled Friday finish.

And after a pause requested by Switzerland to review the final text, negotiators gave no objections as COP27 President Sameh Shoukry rattled through the final agenda items.

By the time dawn broke over the summit venue in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the deal was done.

Pakistan welcomes

Pakistan had proactively raised the issue of the losses by the climate change after unprecedented floods that inflicted billions of the dollars losses to the country’s economy and made hundreds of thousands of people homeless.

Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman while welcoming the agreement has hoped that the deal will help developing countries to tackle devastation inflicted by the climate change and rehabilitation of the affected persons.