A European Union proposal buoyed hopes of progress at the COP27 climate summit on Friday, its final scheduled day, as the 27-country EU said it would back one of the toughest agenda items – financing for countries wracked by climate-fuelled disasters.
But it was unclear Friday if all of those countries would accept the EU's offer of a fund to aid only "the most vulnerable countries", rather than all developing countries as they had requested.
EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans stipulated that the bloc would only back the fund if countries agreed to other measures to slow climate change - specifically, phasing down all fossil fuels along with unabated coal-fuelled power generation, while submitting progress reports to make sure this gets done.
Other elements of the document repeated commitments from last year's climate summit, for example reiterating the 2015 Paris Agreement's goals of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2C, while aiming for 1.5C - the limit that would avoid its worst impacts, and on which small island states say their future depends.
"It's important that we get a strong cover text," he told Reuters. "The responsibility very much will lie now with the Egyptian presidency in trying to get something that we can rally behind." Some delegates expressed irritation over an alleged lack of focus in the proceedings as well as an inconsistent supply of refreshments and wi-fi connectivity.
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