World leaders must honour their pledge to help vulnerable countries pay for climate damage, Sameh Shoukry, Egyptian Foreign Minister and president of Cop27, has said.
Mr Shoukry said negotiations on the landmark Loss and Damage Fund, agreed in Sharm El Sheikh last year, were hard-fought.
Decision-makers had a collective responsibility to follow through when the matter returns to the negotiating table at Cop28 in Dubai in November, he said.
The fund would involve several wealthy nations sending billions in aid to poorer countries who disproportionately suffer the impact of climate change.
Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cop27 president
How the fund is managed and financed is yet to be hammered out and will be back on the agenda at Dubai Expo City in November.
“We are proud to have been able to deliver on a long waited — a 40 years in the making — loss and damage fund,” said Mr Shoukry at a panel discussion for Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week.
“And we look forward to the finalisation of the structure, the governance and the architecture of the fund.
“Hopefully, that it will be endorsed, but more importantly, that it will be financed at Cop28.”
Many low-income countries that contribute the least to climate change have faced its devastating effects.
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Back row, left to right: Siaosi Sovaleni, Prime Minister of Tonga, Aziz Akhannouch, Prime Minister of Morocco, Wavil Ramkalawan, President of Seychelles, Hakainde Hichilema, President of Zambia, Surangel Whipps, President of Palau, Nana Akufo-Addo, President of Ghana, Kasim-Jomart Tokayev, President of Kazakhstan, Yoon Suk Yeol, President of South Korea, President Sheikh Mohamed, Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, Joao Lourenco, President of Angola, Filipe Nyusi, President of Mozambique, Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, former president of Iceland and chairman of Arctic Circle, Tiemoko Meyliet Kone, Vice President of Ivory Coast, and Dr Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, pose for a photograph with 2023 Zayed Sustainability Prize winners during the opening ceremony of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. Photo: UAE Presidential Court -
President Sheikh Mohamed presents the 2023 Zayed Sustainability Prize for Sub-Saharan Africa Global High Schools to Arusha Campus (Tanzania). Photo: UAE Presidential Court -
Sheikh Mohamed presents the 2023 Zayed Sustainability Prize for South Asia Global High Schools to a representative from Dhaka Residential Model College (Bangladesh). Photo: UAE Presidential Court -
Sheikh Mohamed presents the 2023 Zayed Sustainability Prize for Europe & Central Asia Global High Schools to a representative from Germany's Romain-Rolland Gymnasium. Photo: UAE Presidential Court -
Sheikh Mohamed presents the 2023 Zayed Sustainability Prize for Food to a representative from Ynsect (France). Photo: UAE Presidential Court -
Sheikh Mohamed congratulates Abdulrahman Neshat, Zayed Sustainability Prize winner in the Global High Schools category. Photo: Twitter / MohamedBinZayed -
Nawaila Ali, Rinal Prasad and Aqeelah Ali from Dhaka Residential Model College, Bangladesh, winners in the Global High Schools category -
Sandy Bello and Linda Alarcon from Fundacion Bios Terrae ICAM Ubate, Colombia, winners in the Global High Schools category -
Ricardo Ferreira from Associacao Expedicionarios da Saude in Brazil, the Health category winner -
Abdulrahman Neshat and Mohammed Ali, both 16, from Gifted Students School in Iraq, winners in the Global High Schools category -
Heba Assad from Neurotech, the winner in the Energy category for supplying energy to Syrian refugees in Jordan -
Mohon Mandal from Bangladeshi non-profit Ledars, winners in the Water category for integrating resource management models in disaster-prone areas
Pakistan, for example, emits less than 1 per cent of global emissions, but is one of the worst hit countries by climate change, according to the UN.
Last year, the country suffered damage valued at $30 billion from severe flooding that was closely linked to climate change. The African continent also contributes the least to climate change yet is the most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the G20 group of the most developed nations represent around 75 per cent of global greenhouse emissions.
“Ambition and mitigation has to be coupled with delivery and in terms of finance,” said Mr Shoukry.
“Developing countries who have contributed the least cannot control the burden without providing them the tools to do so in terms of finance or obligations, whether at the governmental, private sector or financial institutions.”
US climate envoy John Kerry told The National in an interview on Sunday that the US would not accept an “imposed standard of liability” to help vulnerable countries overcome the effects of climate change.
The former secretary of state said the US could be relied upon for climate-related disaster relief — but “that's different from paying for a loss that hasn't been purely defined”.
“The United States will not accept … some imposed standard of liability,” said Mr Kerry, who was in Abu Dhabi for events under Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week.
Simon Stiell, executive secretary at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was also speaking at the panel on Monday.
He said that Cop28 offers an opportunity to “course correct”, so that countries can meet its climate goals.
A stocktake of the Paris Agreement, an assessment of the progress the world has made in limiting the warming of the planet to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, would be presented at the conference.
“We have two challenges in the lead-up to Cop28 — one is defining and making sure that we design this stocktake as impactfully as it needs to be and the Secretariat has an important role in doing it,” said Mr Stiell.
“But it has to be absorbed by parties and responded to by parties who are non (state) and state actors.
“The other element is once this is presented in a practical form, it is for us to shift our mindsets.
“This could be the last opportunity that we have to interfere with the process in order to get us on the path that we need to get to.”
