COP27 facing the thorny issue of climate debt

• Some 110 heads of state and government are due to speak Monday and Tuesday to delegates gathered in Sharm e-Sheikh for the 27th UN World Climate Conference.

• COP27 delegates decided on Sunday to put on the conference's official agenda for the first time the thorny issue of financing the damage already caused by global warming.

• 20 Minutes

  examines the issue of climate debt, thanks to the insight of François Gemenne, climate expert and professor at the University of Liège.

Nearly 200 countries are gathered in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt for the 27th UN climate conference on Monday.

COP27 brings together more than 40,000 people from November 6 to 18, for consequences that are almost impossible to quantify as climate change has upset the blue planet.

On the occasion of this new edition of the “factory of slowness”, a critical qualification of these international meetings, developing countries hope to finally impose the subject of climate debt.

But what is climate debt?

Why is this issue so crucial?

is interested in this issue, thanks to the insight of climate expert François Gemenne.

What is climate debt?

If global warming affects the whole world, the countries of the South are the first victims.

And, paradoxically, the last responsible.

“Africa accounts for 17% of the world's population but only 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and 0.5% of historical emissions.

The continent emits less than one tonne of CO2 per year per person, compared to seven in Europe or China, 15 in the United States,” explained the director of the NGO PowerShift Africa, Mohamed Adow last June.

“It is the very great inequality of climate change, the most affected are also the least responsible, it is true on a global scale as well as on the scale of our society”, abounds François Gemenne, climate expert and professor. 'university of Liege.

The "loss and damage" of the countries of the South was recognized by the Paris agreement in 2015 and concerns violent climatic events, such as hurricanes or floods, as well as slower damage, caused by rising waters or soil degradation.

"The countries of the South insist on a lasting mechanism, cast in stone, so as not to complain any more at each climatic disaster", explains François Gemenne, member of the IPCC.

Emmanuel Macron promised to defend financial solidarity with the poorest countries, which are particularly exposed, during COP27.

But the French leader wants to promote "concrete solutions" like the Great Green Wall in the Sahel, rather than the creation of funding.

Why is this question burning?

At the opening of the climate summit, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for more to be done to help the most vulnerable countries cope with the "loss and damage" already suffered due to storms, floods, droughts and other extreme events that multiply.

“Achieving concrete results on loss and damage will be the test of governments' commitments for a success of COP27,” he said.

And the situation is getting hotter with every climate conference.

“Reality is catching up with promises.

The impacts of climate change are increasingly present and, in several places, we are reaching the limits of adaptation, so there is an imperative to compensate financially.

In addition, the resentment of the countries of the South towards the countries of the North increases each year”, deciphers François Gemenne.

Indeed, the rich countries have not kept their promise to pay 100 billion dollars a year to developing countries by 2020, as they promised in Copenhagen thirteen years ago.

“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish.

It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” Antonio Guterres warned on Monday.

However, the countries' current commitments are far from meeting the objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement. The latest "national contributions", if for once fully respected, would at best leave the world on a trajectory +2.4°C by the end of the century, according to the UN.

And with the policies currently being implemented, a catastrophic +2.8°C is even looming.

To the detriment of the countries of the South, on the climate front line, and which are asked not to “explode their greenhouse gas emissions” by industrializing, recalls François Gemenne. 

What is blocking?

Northern countries are reluctant to accept climate debt.

"They absolutely do not want it to be possible to link an impact level to an emission level because they are afraid [that this will lead to] compensation lawsuits, so we have to find some kind of mechanism that avoids a legal form of acknowledgment of responsibility”, explains François Gemenne who adds that this is one of the “challenges of the negotiation”.

It is also difficult to measure the extent of the bill.

“We are still quantifying the amount.

Some damage is difficult to assess,” underlines François Gemenne, citing in particular climatic migrations.

However, it is certain that these are “dizzying figures”, adds the climate expert.

Just for the floods in Pakistan,

In September, the Secretary General of the United Nations invited the countries of the North to tax the superprofits of the fossil fuel industry which “revels in hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies and windfall profits”.

The NGO Oxfam, for its part, assures that in the first half of 2022 alone “six fossil fuel companies combined have earned enough money to cover the cost of major extreme weather and climate events in developing countries”.

"This is not a really promising track because it is not sustainable, the benefits are cyclical", however tempers François Gemenne.

Our file on the cop27

Northern countries also have difficulty sharing the bill.

“The Europeans pay” but “we are the only ones to pay”, lambasted the French president on Monday.

"There is an inequality in the funding but it is not true that only the countries of the European Union participate in the effort", nuances the member of the IPCC, who cites the funding of the Nordic countries and Japan.

“Australia, the United States and Russia, of course, are behind.

Europe is the most generous at the moment,” he stresses, however.

However, COP27 will not result in a decision on the financing of climate debt.

The organizers have already warned that discussions on this subject will continue in 2024, despite the urgency of the situation for many countries in the South.

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