Tense negotiations at the final meeting on a climate-related loss and damages fund — an international fund to help poor countries hit hard by a warming planet — ended Saturday in Abu Dhabi, with participants agreeing that the World Bank would temporarily host the fund for the next four years.
The United States and several developing countries expressed disappointment in the draft agreement, which will be sent for global leaders to sign at the COP28 climate conference, which begins in Dubai later this month.
The U.S. State Department, whose officials joined the negotiations in Abu Dhabi, said in a statement it was “pleased with an agreement being reached” but regretted that the consensus reached among negotiators about donations to the fund being voluntary is not reflected in the final agreement.
The agreement lays out basic goals for the fund, including for its planned launch in 2024, and specifies how it will be administered and who will oversee it, including a requirement for developing countries to have a seat on the board, in addition to the World Bank’s role.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The United States and several developing countries expressed disappointment in the draft agreement, which will be sent for global leaders to sign at the COP28 climate conference, which begins in Dubai later this month.
Avinash Persaud, a special envoy to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on climate finance, said the agreement was “a challenging but critical outcome.
Mohamed Nasr, the lead negotiator from Egypt, last year’s climate conference host, said, “It falls short on some items, particularly the scale and the sources (of funding), and (an) acknowledgment of cost incurred by developing countries.”
Since then, a smaller group of negotiators representing both rich and developing countries have met multiple times to finalize the details of the fund.
The meetings delivered on that mandate but were “the furthest thing imaginable from a success,” said Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA who has followed the talks over the last year.
Sultan al-Jaber, a federal minister with the United Arab Emirates and CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company who will oversee COP28 next month, welcomed the outcome of the meetings.
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