"Cop27: EU agrees to loss and damage fund to help poor countries recover from climate disasters", 18 November 2022

A breakthrough looked possible in the deadlocked global climate talks on Friday as the European Union made a dramatic intervention to agree to key developing world demands on financial help for poor countries.

In the early hours of Friday at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt, the European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans launched a proposal on behalf of the EU that would see it agree to establishing a loss and damage fund.

Rich countries had been holding out against this key demand, arguing it would take time to establish whether such a fund was needed, and how it would operate...

Timmermans added that “clear conditions” would be attached to any fund. It would be geared towards supporting the most vulnerable, with a broad financial donor base contributing to the fund.

The fund would not operate in isolation, but as part of a mosaic of solutions that includes reform of multilateral development banks, for example.

In parallel, the EU wants more ambition on cutting emissions, with stronger provisions on updated national plans for emissions cuts in line with the 1.5-degree target in the Paris Agreement and peaking global emissions by 2025. “This would have to be a package deal,” Timmermans said.

Developing countries are mulling the proposal.

The EU’s move throws the spotlight on the US, which has also objected to a fund.

It also places much greater pressure on China, which has up to now avoided any obligation to provide climate finance to the poorest countries, despite being the world’s biggest emitter and second biggest cumulative emitter, and the world’s second-biggest economy...