U.N. Climate Talks End With a Deal to Pay Poor Nations for Damage

The two weeks of climate talks ended on Sunday with diplomats from nearly 200 countries agreeing to set up a fund to help poor countries deal with climate disasters.

The decision on payments for loss and damage caused by global warming was a breakthrough at the UN climate negotiations. For more than three decades, developing nations have pressed rich, industrialized countries to provide compensation for the costs of destructive storms.

The United States and other wealthy countries were afraid that they could be held responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.

Payments are not seen as an admission of liability according to the loss and damage agreement in this Red Sea resort town. A committee made up of representatives from 24 countries will work over the next year to figure out what form the fund should take, which countries and financial institutions should contribute, and where the money should go. The other details are still being worked out.

The deal was hailed as a victory by developing countries.

The climate minister of Pakistan, which suffered catastrophic flooding this summer that left one-third of the country underwater and caused $30 billion in damages, said the announcement offered hope to vulnerable communities all over the world. Global warming made the deluges worse.

The greenhouse gas emissions that are the root cause of the crisis were not addressed in the new Climate Agreement. It is important for all nations to slash their emissions much more rapidly in order to keep warming at a safe level. The deal didn't go far beyond what countries agreed to last year.

The loss and damage deal is a step in the right direction, but it risks becoming a fund for the end of the world if countries don't move faster to slash emissions. We can't afford another climate summit.

According to the new agreement, countries should try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Scientists say the risk of climate catastrophes goes beyond that threshold. Many vulnerable nations, such as low-lying islands in the Pacific, fear that the talks will abandon a focus on that target, which they say is essential to their survival.

Current policies by national governments would put the world on a path for a much hotter 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming this century. It would take countries half a decade to slash fossil-fuel emissions if they stayed at 1.5 degrees.

More than 80 countries wanted language that called for a phase-down of fossil fuels, not just coal, but also oil and gas. The agreement at Glasgow called for a phase-down of coal only. According to people close to the negotiations, major oil producers like Canada and Saudi Arabia prevented that effort from happening.

Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said that it was more than frustrating to see the phaseout of fossil energies being stonewalled.

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Frans Timmermans, the European Union's top climate official, said the deal was a sign of the growing gap between climate science and national climate policies. He said that a lot of countries blocked measures to address global warming.

Mr. Timmermans said that friends are only friends if they also tell you things. This is the make-or-break decade, but what we have in front of us isn't enough to make a difference.

The two-week summit stretched until dawn on Sunday as exhausted negotiators from nearly 200 nations clashed over fine print. At the time of the talks, there were many crises. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has wreaked havoc on global food supply and energy markets, caused inflation and spurred some countries to burn more coal and other alternatives to Russian gas, threatening to undermine climate goals.

In places like Pakistan and Nigeria, as well as in Europe and Asia, record heat has been caused by rising global temperatures. Millions of people in the Horn of Africa are at risk of famine.

Loss and damage were the focus over the past fortnight.

Developing nations from Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and South Pacific banded together to place the debate over a loss and damage fund on the formal agenda of the two week summit. They were relentless in their campaign and argued that it was a matter of justice because they did not contribute to the crisis. A summit that ended without addressing loss and damage would be seen as a moral failure.

As the summit neared its end, the European Union consented to the idea of a loss and damage fund, though it insisted that any aid should be focused on the most vulnerable nations, and that aid might include a wide variety of options.

The United States has pumped more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any nation in history. American officials said that they would accept a loss and damage fund, breaking the log jam.

Major hurdles still exist.

There is no guarantee that rich countries will put money into the fund. A decade ago, the United States, the European Union and other wealthy countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020 to help poorer countries shift to clean energy and adapt to future climate risks. They fall short by tens of billions of dollars every year.

Money must be appropriated by Congress in order to establish a fund. When Democrats were in control of both chambers, the Biden administration secured just $1 billion in climate finance. With Republicans set to take over the House in January, the chances of Congress approving a new pot of money for loss and damage seem dim.

John Barrasso is a Republican from Wyoming. Reducing spending at home should be the priority of the Biden administration. It's important to fight climate change with innovation and not with compensation.

Major emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could be included in the donor base after the United States and the EU secured language in the deal. China has traditionally been exempt from obligations to provide climate aid, even though it is now the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, because it is classified as a Developing Country by the United Nations. China is likely to fight in the future since it has resisted being treated as a developed nation in global climate talks.

A variety of European nations have pledged more than $300 million to address loss and damage so far, with most of that money going towards a new insurance program to help countries recover from disasters. Poorer countries have praised those early efforts and warned that they may face hundreds of billions of dollars in climate damages.

The executive director of Power Shift Africa said that they need money to make it worthwhile. A bucket is what we have. We need to fill it so that we can give support to those who are most affected by the climate crisis.