World News: COP27 delivers climate fund breakthrough – Gulf Digital News

World News: COP27 delivers climate fund breakthrough – Gulf Digital News

Countries closed this year’s UN climate summit yesterday with a hard-fought deal to create a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters, even as many lamented its lack of ambition in tackling the emissions causing them.

The deal was widely lauded as a triumph for responding to the devastating impact that global warming is already having on vulnerable countries. But many countries said they felt pressured to give up on tougher commitments for limiting global warming to 1.5C in order for the landmark deal on the loss and damage fund to go through.

Delegates – worn out after intense, overnight negotiations – made no objections as Egypt’s COP27 President Sameh Shoukry rattled through the final agenda items and gavelled the deal through.

Despite having no agreement for a stronger commitment to the 1.5C goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, “we went with what the agreement was here because we want to stand with the most vulnerable,” Germany’s climate secretary Jennifer Morgan, visibly shaken, said.

When asked whether the goal of stronger climate-fighting ambition had been compromised for the deal, Mexico’s chief climate negotiator Camila Zepeda summed up the mood among exhausted negotiators.

“Probably. You take a win when you can.”

The deal