The UN's transitional committee has agreed on recommendations for the set-up of a fund to address loss and damage — the irreversible and unavoidable effects of climate change. Cop 28 president-designate Sultan al-Jaber said that "deadlocks" were "broken" and "common ground" found, but several committee members expressed reservations on the final text.
The committee released its recommendations after a fifth meeting on 3-4 November in Abu Dhabi — which was added after a previous and supposedly final meeting failed to reach consensus. The recommendations will inform political discussions at the upcoming UN Cop 28 climate summit.
Committee members struggled to reach agreement at the fifth meeting, resulting in what committee co-chair, Finland's Outi Honkatukia described as "a take it or leave it text", with no further room for edits.
Developing country representatives noted that discussions would reopen at Cop 28. The unhappy consensus could result in further issues at Cop 28, potentially holding up talks on other key areas — such as the phase out of fossil fuels.
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said the agreement was a "crucial step forward", but that it needed to be followed by the "highest possible ambition on climate mitigation".
Developing countries accepted the final text, in order to move forward with a starting point for Cop 28, several said at the meeting. "We can live with it, in the spirit of compromise and trying to move forward", Colombian representative Angela Rivera Galvis said. Egyptian representative Mohamed Nasr accepted the text, but said that he had "a long list of concerns and questions".
There was no mention of an amount of finance that the fund hopes to raise, while the text only urged voluntary contributions. "There are no mandatory financing obligations", Honkatukia said. Germany's special envoy for climate policy, Jennifer Morgan, said that Germany "stands ready to fulfill its responsibility". "We are actively working towards contributing to the new fund and assessing options for more structural sources of financing, and call on all other countries able to contribute to do the same," she said.
The recommendations also set out that the World Bank will be the interim host of the loss and damage fund — something that developing countries had fought against, calling instead for it to sit within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A UNFCCC-hosted loss and damage fund would reflect the body's principles, including common but differentiated responsibility — which refers to the duty of all countries to address climate change, but recognises different national circumstances.
The text also set out a recommended board structure, made up of 12 members from developed countries and 14 from developing countries. And the fund "will provide financing in the form of grants and highly concessional lending", according to the recommendations.
The meeting's outcome "paves the way for agreement at Cop 28", Cop president-designate Sultan al-Jaber said.
Parties to the UNFCCC agreed at last year's Cop 27 to establish a fund for loss and damage, but no further details were set out. The topic dominated the summit in 2022, overshadowing progress on mitigation, or cutting emissions. Loss and damage also falls under the wider theme of climate finance, which has illustrated a widening rift between developing and developed countries, as developing nations call for wealthy, industrialised countries to meet climate finance commitments.
