UN publishes draft climate deal

The United Nations’s climate agency on Thursday published a first-draft agreement for the COP27 climate summit, which includes keeping the average global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees but omits an India-backed phase-down of fossil fuels.

The 20-page draft will likely undergo major revisions during the negotiation process in the days ahead. It includes many of the same details as the agreement reached at last year’s Glasgow conference, including averting a threshold of 1.5 degrees. While the language says it “welcomes” the inclusion for the first time on “loss and damages” funds for nations on the front lines of climate change, it contains no details of how the funds would operate.

Countries in the global south already feeling the impacts of climate change have been calling for loss and damages for years, but it has never made it into draft language before and will be the subject of contentious debate among wealthier nations about specific financial responsibilities.

The draft calls for accelerating “measures towards the phase down of unabated coal power and phase out and rationalize inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.” However, it does not outright endorse a push to draw down the use of all unabated fossil fuels, including coal, gas and oil, which Indian delegates have lobbied for at the conference. Earlier this week, the U.S., United Kingdom and European Union announced their backing for the phase-down, but it is likely to face stiff opposition from nations like Saudi Arabia.

Greenpeace Asia slammed the draft in a statement, saying it largely reiterates the provisions of the 2021 agreement rather than expanding on it.

“After initially failing to even mention fossil fuels, the draft text is an abdication of responsibility to capture the urgency expressed by many countries to see all oil and gas added to coal for at least a phase down,” Yeb Saño, Greenpeace International’s COP27 head of delegation, said in a statement. “It is time to end the denial, the fossil fuel age must be brought to a rapid end.”