SHARM
EL-SHEIKH , Egypt —
Almost from the start,
Egypt came under fire over its handling of the UN COP27
climate talks tasked with responding to the growing threat of global warming.
اضافة اعلان
As the negotiations drew to a close nearly
two days late with a historic win for vulnerable countries on funding for
climate “loss and damage”, exhausted delegates lined up to voice hope — and
frustration at the lack of progress on tackling emissions.
Historically, nations hosting the annual
gathering of up to 35,000 leaders, diplomats, observers, campaigners and
journalists are expected to rise above national interests enough to work
hand-in-glove with the UN’s climate bureaucracy to shepherd the consensus-based
process to a more or less happy ending.
The two-week marathon in the Red Sea resort
of
Sharm El-Sheikh, however, kicked off with dueling press conferences,
suggesting diverging agendas, and posing something of a quandary for
journalists.
In his final address to the plenary, the
COP27 President and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry began his address
on the back foot.
“We are fair, balanced, and transparent in
our approach,” he told delegates, many of whom had complained of a lack of
clarity in the difficult negotiating process.
“Any missteps that might have occurred were
certainly not intentional, and were done with the best interests of the process
in mind.”
Fossil
fuel lobbyists
Far
more serious, some observers alleged that Egypt failed to act as a neutral
broker in the complicated, multitiered talks.
“The influence of the fossil fuel industry
was found across the board,” said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the
European Climate Foundation and — as France’s top negotiator — a main architect of the 2015
Paris Agreement.
“The Egyptian presidency has produced a text
that clearly protects oil and gas petro-states and the fossil fuel industry,”
with no mention of phasing out fossil fuels so that the issue might be more
widely debated.
Concerns over the role of oil and gas
interests have long dogged the talks.
But this year more than 600 fossil fuel
lobbyists attended COP27 as “observers”, up 25 percent from last year’s climate
summit and more than the number of delegates from all Pacific island nations
combined, according to one research NGO.
Alden Meyer, a policy expert at think tank
E3G who has been to all but one COP over the last 27 years, said there were
concerns that the presidency had been reluctant to include ambitious language
on emissions and fossil fuels.
“Clearly, they’re acting in their own
national interests, rather than serving as an honest broker in the presidency,”
he told AFP, adding that they had been hosting a “gas industry trade fair” in
Sharm El-Sheikh.
In a scathing speech as the talks wrapped up
Sunday, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said the EU was
disappointed that the meeting had not pushed for stronger commitments to
achieve the aspirational goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C from
pre-industrial levels.
He also expressed frustration that despites
the support of “more than 80 countries” calling for emissions to peak by 2025,
“we don’t see this reflected here”.
Meanwhile, Alok Sharma, who held the
presidency at
COP26 in Glasgow last year, listed an array of ambitious
proposals on phasing out fossil fuels and slashing emissions that never even
got an airing in draft texts, much less the final version.
Transparency
During
the first week, Egypt came in for a drubbing in the international media for a
array of logistical snafus ranging from scarce drinking water and price gouging
to poor access for the disabled and overbearing security surveillance.
Organizers quickly rectified all but the last
of these issues, not uncommon among the 27 climate conferences convened since
1995.
More troubling, however, was the way in which
the Egyptian presidency guided the high-stakes talks at times, taking them to
the wire, delegates said.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this —
untransparent, unpredictable, and chaotic,” said one delegate with deep COP
experience.
When Egypt finally pieced together the first
draft text on the lynchpin issue of how to compensate developing nations
already devastated by climate impacts — “loss and damage” in UN speak — they
didn’t distribute it for all to see, which is the usual practice.
For the EU, they called Timmermans alone in
the middle of the night, showing but not giving him the text so that he could
convey report back to the bloc’s 27 nations, EU sources said.
At least one voice at the conference,
however, praised Egypt’s stewardship of COP27.
“(Shoukry) is working under the principles of
transparent, open, and party-driven consensus,” China’s veteran climate envoy
Xie Zhenhua said.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
