Participants at the COP27 summit in Egypt on Saturday reached an agreement on financing poor countries affected by climate change disasters, one of the main sticking points in the complex negotiations at the international climate conference, a European source told AFP. , quoted by Agerpres. .

“An agreement was reached” on the creation of a special fund intended to finance these “damages and losses”, which “directs” financial resources to the most vulnerable countries, the quoted source said.

The announcement offers a glimmer of hope that the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), which seemed on the brink of collapse on Saturday morning, will be saved.

“No deal is better than a bad deal,” European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told the press.

“We are concerned about some of the things we have seen and heard in the last 12 hours,” he said, adding that the Europeans’ aim was to keep alive the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement.

Egypt, which chairs the conference and has been criticized for the slow pace of negotiations, released an updated draft of the final agreement for the COP27 summit on Saturday afternoon.

This proposal was to be discussed by negotiators from nearly 200 countries who gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh for talks, which have already been extended for one day.

The document reaffirms the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to “well below 2 degrees Celsius” compared to pre-industrial levels.

“The ambiguity regarding the beneficiaries of the fund has been removed”

The text of a proposal for compensation payments to countries affected by climate disasters, one of the most difficult negotiations in the two weeks of the summit, was also presented on Saturday by Egypt’s president with hopes of reaching a consensus.

The document proposes creating “new financing mechanisms to help developing countries” to “mobilize new and additional resources.”

The document also contains a landmark demand by poor countries that are extremely vulnerable to climate disasters to “create a loss and damage response fund”, the functioning and financing of which is to be developed by a “transition committee” before the next COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, from the end of 2023.

Ambiguity regarding the beneficiaries of this fund, which was the main problem of the last days, has been eliminated, assured the European source.

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