US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry on Tuesday said that the US was open to seeking middle ground on a controversy that threatens to overtake an upcoming world climate summit: A growing demand from poorer countries that the US and other richer countries pay compensation as the culprits most responsible for wrecking the Earth’s climate.
“We believe we have to step up and we have a responsibility. We accept that,” Kerry told reporters after an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, two weeks ahead of an annual UN climate conference, this time in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh.
With emissions from coal, oil and natural gas threatening to break through the threshold set in the Paris climate accord, the administration of US President Joe Biden and others are eager to keep summit negotiations on track for deeper emission cuts.
Photo: AP
Flooding in Pakistan that has killed more than 1,000, displaced a half-million and caused an estimated US$40 billion in damage has helped bring the compensation demands to the forefront ahead of the climate summit.
Experts say economically struggling Pakistan historically has contributed just 0.4 percent of the fossil-fuel pollution responsible for climate damage, compared with 21.5 percent for the US, 16.5 percent for China and 15 percent for the EU.
As with Pacific island nations being swallowed by rising seas, sub-Saharan nations facing a future of droughts and arctic communities struggling with heat waves, Pakistan’s leaders say they need financial help to deal with climate damage, rather than loans that put them further in debt.
The US and the EU for years have slow-walked proposals for formal summit negotiations on compensation, known as “loss and damage.”
Kerry has been increasingly direct on the problems of that demand as the summit in Egypt nears, saying the idea of the US or any other country coming up with a trillion dollars for it is a nonstarter, politically and otherwise.
Any move that threatens to put richer nations on the hook for legal liability is “going to be a problem for everybody, not just for us,” Kerry said. “So how do you do this in a way that actually produces money, gets a system in place? We’re totally in favor of that.”
“We are working toward it and we will in Sharm,” he said. “We will not be, you know, obstructing.”
Faten Aggad, senior climate diplomacy adviser for the African Climate Foundation, said in a briefing this month that past statements by Kerry and European leaders make “people doubt the EU and the US commitment to move on loss and damage.”
She said her expectations are low for progress in Egypt on the issue.
Dealing with how rich nations pay for past pollution’s harms would be the central issue of next month’s negotiations, said David Waskow, international climate initiative director of the World Resources Institute, a think tank.
“Loss and damage are happening now, hurting people and economies now, and must be addressed now,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last month as he amped up his rhetoric on the issue.
“This is a fundamental question of climate justice, international solidarity and trust,” Guterres said.
In 2009 negotiations in Copenhagen, developed countries promised US$100 billion a year in aid by 2020 for developing countries, both to help develop green energy and adapt to future warming. They have not yet fulfilled the pledge, but UN officials say it would happen soon.
Senior US officials have suggested that negotiators at the Egypt summit could set up a framework for discussion on any special financing mechanisms for reparations and put off negotiations for an actual deal for two years.
Kerry emphasized a need to “reimagine” the role and function of multilateral development banks, organizations of donor nations and borrowing ones that provide development finance.
China, where Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) continued reliance on coal-fired power plants and building of new ones is putting the country on track to overtake the US as the worst wrecker of the climate in history, “of course” should contribute to any such fund, Kerry said.
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