Governments meeting for vital climate talks have been accused of making positive commitments in public but reneging on them later in the privacy of the negotiating rooms by the summit’s Egyptian hosts.
Wael Aboulmagd, the Egyptian diplomat in charge of negotiating the Cop27 UN climate summit, said: “Political statements and promises are made in front of the cameras, but in the negotiation rooms it is back to a competitive approach. These [publicly positive positions] it will have no value until it is translated into the negotiating rooms, and that has not been the case so far.
Egypt has been disappointed by countries making positive public statements that do not reflect the blocs that have emerged in negotiations on vital issues such as climate finance, loss and damage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“We cannot continue on this adversarial path,” Abulmagd said. “The division between what happens in the public sphere and what happens in the negotiation rooms cannot continue. We must all show a spirit of compromise.”
The talks officially begin on Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh, but many delegations have already arrived and the parties have been meeting online and in person for various combinations of months.
On Monday, at least 120 heads of state and government will gather for two days of intensive discussions to discuss the positions to be taken by their negotiators in the next two weeks of talks.
Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is expected to attend, having previously rejected the conference. On Friday, Sunak spoke about the importance of the conference. “As recent events have shown, delivering on Glasgow’s promise is more important than ever,” he said. “More importantly, every moment we allow climate change to ravage our planet, we will see more human suffering like the devastating floods in Pakistan.” And even more important, because if we don’t act today, we risk leaving an even more desperate legacy to our children.
US President Joe Biden will attend, but not for the leaders’ summit in the first two days, due to the US midterm elections. He is expected to make a major intervention around the middle of the talks.
French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also attend, along with a host of African leaders, as this is the first Cop to be held in Africa in six years.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to stay away, as are India’s Narendra Modi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The talks are taking place in the shadow of global upheaval due to the war in Ukraine and the energy, food and livelihood crises around the world. Few rich-country governments plan to set big new targets to cut carbon emissions or to provide new financial aid to developing countries struggling with the impacts of the climate emergency.
Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister who will chair the talks, said in an interview with the Guardian that the prospect of limiting global temperatures to 1.5C was slimmer than ever.
Climate finance will be a key bone of contention in the negotiations, along with the contentious issue of loss and damage, which refers to aid for the severe impacts vulnerable countries increasingly face from extreme weather.
Many countries want loss and damage to feature prominently on the Cop27 agenda, but this cannot be formalized until Sunday, when negotiations begin.
Aboulmagd said showing progress on climate finance was key. Developing countries have been promised $100 billion a year from 2020 to help them reduce emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather, but that promise has yet to be fulfilled.
“$100 billion won’t even come close to a fraction of what is needed, those numbers are in the trillions,” Abulmagd said. “But it’s a very important gesture of a symbolic nature, showing confidence and building trust.”
He said fossil fuel companies would only be allowed to take part in key discussions at Cop27 if they could demonstrate they were taking the lead on decarbonisation.
Civil society actors were concerned ahead of the talks that their activities would be limited because Egypt is an authoritarian state that suppresses protests.
Abulmagd said a public demonstration would be allowed in Sharm el-Sheikh, but protesters would have to register and be admitted before joining the march.
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