Seemingly Unattainable Unanimity in COP27

In the first Committee Session on Sunday morning the COP 27 is debating about a draft resolution called “Sharm-el-Sheikh-Agreement”. The delegates were able to agree on a “bare minimum of consensus”, as Maldives put it, for numerous aspects regarding energy dependency and green energy development. Nevertheless, there still seem to be upcoming issues.

For instance, the agreement contains an article on a Global Green Transition Fund with the purpose of subsidising transition to sustainability by investing in research, education, innovative technologies etc. The payment into the fund is supposed to be proportional to the countries´ share of historical emissions. The corresponding clause aims to distribute the financial burden among the participating countries in a just way. The United States, India, Brazil, China, and Japan are concerned. Understandably so, as all of them belong to the group of countries with the largest cumulative emissions since 1850, the USA and China being at the top. Gabon does not want to compromise any further claiming that historical emissions have already been sufficiently discussed and the other countries will not give in even more.

Amendments to the draft are currently being made. Generally, the discourse among the delegates is marked by willingness to come to an agreement that will be ratified by all countries. The debate is mainly calm and constructive apart from the fact that Greenpeace is stirring up the pot now and then. Its delegate Greta Thunberg repeatedly tries to yield remaining time to minutes of silence for victims of climate change, claims that South Korea is as undemocratic as North Korea trying to strike down her amendment and calls the other delegates “climate change deniers”. The suspense remains. It is unclear whether “Sharm-el-Sheikh-Agreement” will be passed.