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United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during a joint press conference with Pakistan's Prime Minister at the Pakistani pavilion at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh

The United Nations on Monday unveiled a five-year plan to build a global early warning system for deadly and costly extreme weather events amplified by climate change.

The price tag — a relatively modest $3.1 billion, or less than 50 cents per person — is a small price to pay for proven methods that can save thousands, if not millions, of lives, UN chief Antonio Guterres said at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

“I have called for every person on Earth to be protected by early warning systems within five years, with the priority to support the most vulnerable first,” he said as world leaders gathered in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for the 13-day talks.

Even as climate-enhanced extreme weather is multiplying, half the world’s countries lack advanced early warning systems that can save lives.

Countries with inadequate infrastructure see, on average, eight times greater mortality from disasters than countries with strong measures in place, according to the UN.

Proper early warning systems for floods, droughts, heatwaves, cyclones or other disasters allow for planning that minimises adverse impacts.

And it works: the number of people affected by disasters has nearly doubled over the last two decades, but the number of people killed or missing has fallen by half.

When Cyclone Bhola hit what is present-day Bangladesh in 1970, it claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, prompting the country founded the following year to invest in weather forecasting technology, shelters and a network of volunteers along the coast.

A similarly strong Cyclone Amphan made landfall in 2020 in the same area, but left a death toll of just 26.

“Early warnings save lives and provide vast economic benefits,” World Meteorological Organization chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

“Just 24 hours notice of an impending hazardous event can cut the ensuing damage by 30 percent.”

The Global Commission on Adaptation found that spending just $800 million on such systems in developing countries would avoid losses of $3 billion to $16 billion per year.

Starting with science-based observation networks and forecasting technology, a complete early warning infrastructure also requires national and community-based response capabilities, along with ways to rapidly communicate information to a population.

A Pakistani mother and child, who were forced to flee their home amid devastating floods, pictured here in September in Sindh province

The world needs to rethink the international financial system to provide debt relief to countries battered by devastating and costly climate impacts like Pakistan, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Monday.

The catastrophic flooding that put a third of Pakistan under water this year displaced millions of people, swamped swathes of key farmland, and destroyed homes, roads and bridges.

The disaster caused more than $30 billion of damages and economic losses, according to World Bank estimates, piling pressure on an already fragile economy.

“Pakistan deserves massive support directly from the international community,” Guterres said, at a packed meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the UN COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

Guterres renewed support for “loss and damage” funds to help vulnerable nations deal with the accelerating impacts of climate change.

But he said the world needs to go further and rewire how countries access finance, particularly from the multilateral development banks.

“It is important to review the way the international financial system works in order for Pakistan to have access to effective debt relief,” he said, as well as to access “concessional funding” needed for the “huge” levels of reconstruction.

– ‘Billions to trillions’ –

Pakistan, already facing a cost-of-living crisis, a nose-diving rupee and dwindling foreign exchange reserves, saw inflation surge after the floods.

Ratings agency Moody’s later downgraded its sovereign credit rating, saying the floods had exacerbated Pakistan’s liquidity and external credit weaknesses.

Guterres said Pakistan was a “victim of being a middle-income country”, which means it has not been able to access sufficient debt relief.

The UN chief called for arrangements in which the country could swap debt payments for investments in rehabilitation and recovery.

Guterres also said G20 rich nations, which hold sway over the boards of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and are meeting next week in Indonesia, should promote reforms.

His calls echo those of Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who said Monday that the “world looks still too much like it did when it was part of an imperialistic empire”.

Calling for a “new deal” for the post-World War II Bretton Woods financial system, Mottley said lending should be expanded “from billions to trillions”. 

While wealthy nations can borrow at rates of between one to four percent, nations in the global south are saddled with rates of 14 percent, severely hampering the abilities of emerging economies to meet their climate goals, she noted. 

What she called “fault lines” in the global industrial strategy dominated by wealthy nations, meanwhile, constrain the access of developing nations to renewable energy technology.

“The global south remains at the mercy of the global north on these issues,” she said. 

In recent weeks the IMF has announced financing deals with Barbados and Costa Rica under a new arrangement called the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST).   

The Washington-based lender aims to mobilise $45 billion for a new facility funded by member governments, and to provide 20-year loans to about 140 low- and middle-income eligible nations.

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Crops withered in European breadbaskets, as the historic dry spell drove record wildfire intensity

At least 15,000 people have died in Europe because of hot weather in 2022 so far, the World Health Organization said Monday, with Spain and Germany among the worst-affected countries.

The three months from June-August were the hottest in Europe since records began, and the exceptionally high temperatures led to the worst drought the continent has witnessed since the Middle Ages. 

“Based on country data submitted so far, it is estimated that at least 15,000 people died specifically due to the heat in 2022,” the WHO’s Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge said in a statement.

“Nearly 4,000 deaths in Spain, more than 1,000 in Portugal, more than 3,200 in the United Kingdom, and around 4,500 deaths in Germany were reported by health authorities during the 3 months of summer,” he added.

“This estimate is expected to increase as more countries report on excess deaths due to heat,” it said, highlighting the UN climate summit in Egypt and its calls for rapid action.

Crops withered in European breadbaskets, as the historic dry spell drove record wildfire intensity and placed severe pressure on the continent’s power grid. 

Successive heatwaves between June and July, which saw temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Britain for the first time, saw some 24,000 excess deaths in Europe.

“Heat stress, when the body cannot cool itself, is the leading cause of weather-related death in the European Region,” the WHO said. 

It added that extreme temperatures can be a danger to people who suffer from chronic heart disease, breathing problems and diabetes.

WHO said increasing heatwaves and other extreme weather will “lead to more diseases and deaths” in the next decades unless “drastic” action is taken.

Northern beaked whales are rarely seen this far south of the Arctic

A 7.6-metre (25-foot) whale died on a beach in northern France on Monday, hours after being discovered washed up and alive but wounded, authorities said.

Experts had hoped the rising tide would come in time to help the cetacean back on its way, but the animal died as it struggled to reach the water.

“It probably drowned” during its efforts, said Jacky Karpouzopoulos, head of CMNF, an association for the protection of wild mammals in northern France.

The appearance of this type of beaked whale, a northern bottlenose, this far south is rare.

“These animals usually swim deep in Arctic waters,” said Thierry Jauniaux, a sea mammal expert at Liege university in Belgium.

The female cetacean, weighing 3.5 tonnes, probably ended up on the beach “because it was disorientated”, Karpouzopoulos told AFP.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my 40 years on the job,” he said.

Experts had ruled out lifting the animal back into the water, hoping that the tide would allow the animal to refloat and swim away, he said.

Jauniaux said a number of whales belonging to the same species have washed up recently on the coast of Belgium and the Netherlands. 

This phenomenon could be due to “pollution, the appearance of new illnesses or increased sea traffic” leading to a change in the whales’ behaviour, he said.

In February, a 9.5-metre female humpback whale was found dead on a northern French beach — another “extraordinary” event, according to Karpouzopoulos.

In the spring of this year, an orca — named “Sedna” by marine life protection group NGO Sea Shepherd — was seen lost in the river Seine but died despite intense efforts to save it.

This summer, an ailing beluga whale that strayed into the Seine was put down by vets after a last-ditch rescue attempt failed because of its rapidly deteriorating health.

A child in Iraq, a country heavily impacted by climate change and water scarcity, in the dried-up bed of Iraq's receding southern marshes of Chibayish, on August 23, 2022

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned world leaders at a climate summit in Egypt on Monday that humanity faces a stark choice between working together or “collective suicide” in the battle against global warming.

Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting for two days in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, facing calls to deepen emissions cuts and financially back developing countries already devastated by the effects of rising temperatures.

“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told the UN COP27 summit. 

“It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” Guterres said, urging the world to ramp up the transition to renewable energy and for richer polluting nations to come to the aid of poorer countries least responsible for heat-trapping emissions.

Nations worldwide are coping with increasingly intense natural disasters that have taken thousands of lives this year alone and cost billions of dollars — from devastating floods in Nigeria and Pakistan to droughts in the United States and Africa and unprecedented heatwaves across three continents.

“We have seen one catastrophe after another,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. “As soon as we tackle one catastrophe, another one arises — wave after wave of suffering and loss.

“Is it not high time to put an end to all this suffering?”

But a multitude of other crises, from Russia’s war in Ukraine to soaring inflation and the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic, has raised concerns that climate change will drop down the priority list of governments. 

Guterres, however, told world leaders climate change could not be put on the “back burner”.

He called for a “historic” deal between rich emitters and emerging economies that would see countries double down on emissions reductions, holding the rise in temperatures to the more ambitions Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era.   

Current trends would see carbon pollution increase 10 percent by the end of the decade and put the world on a path to heat up to 2.8C.

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” Guterres said.

– ‘Moral imperative’ –

The UN secretary general said the target should be to provide renewable and affordable energy for all, calling on the United States and China in particular to lead the way.

He also said it was a “moral imperative” for richer polluters to help vulnerable countries.

Earlier Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the United States, China and other non-European rich nations to “step up” their efforts to cut emissions and provide financial aid to other countries.

“Europeans are paying,” Macron told French and African climate campaigners on the sidelines of COP27. “We are the only ones paying.”

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose country is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, is not attending the summit.

US President Joe Biden, whose country ranks second on the top-polluters list, will join COP27 later this week after midterm elections on Tuesday that could put Republicans hostile to international action on climate change in charge of Congress.

– ‘Loss and damage’ –

On Sunday, the heads of developing nations won a small victory when delegates agreed to put the controversial issue of compensation for “loss and damage” on the summit agenda.

Pakistan, which chairs the powerful G77+China negotiating bloc of more than 130 developing nations, has made the issue a priority.

The United States and the European Union have dragged their feet for years on the proposal, fearing it would create an open-ended reparations framework.

Guterres said COP27 must agree on a “clear, time-bound roadmap” for loss and damage that delivers “effective institutional arrangements for financing”.

“Getting concrete results on loss and damage is a litmus test of the commitment of governments to the success of COP27,” he said.

Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa think tank, said there was no clearly-defined final outcome expected from the meeting on the issue of loss and damage.

“The historic polluters … must be made to pay for the harm they have caused,” he said. “We cannot have COP27 become a sham.”

Rich nations will also be expected to set a timetable for the delivery of $100 billion per year to help developing countries green their economies and build resilience against future climate change. 

The promise is already two years past due and remains $17 billion short, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

COP27 is scheduled to continue until November 18 with ministers joining the fray during the second week.

Security is tight at the meeting, with Human Rights Watch saying authorities have arrested dozens of people and restricted the right to demonstrate in the days leading up to COP27.

'I was so happy when they announced that COP would be in Africa,' said Ugandan youth activist Nyombi Morris

Ugandan youth activist Nyombi Morris arrived in Egypt for the UN’s COP27 climate summit with high hopes of being part of the campaign for environmental justice.

But it didn’t take long for Egypt’s stiff security measures to shatter his dreams, as rights groups warn the North African country has stifled protests with “dozens” of arrests.

“I was so happy when they announced that COP would be in Africa,” said Morris, who founded the Earth Volunteers youth organisation campaigning for “climate justice”.

“I thought maybe I would get a chance to be at the room where the negotiations are taking place.”

Instead, “with the questions we received at the airport, it will not be easy for us to continue with our plan”, the 24-year-old said.

In 2008, when Morris was 10, devastating flash floods hit Uganda’s eastern Butaleja district — an area where the illegal extraction of riverbank sand for construction was common. Some 400 people, including Morris’s family, lost their homes.

Morris, who has said the digging “exacerbated flooding already made worse by climate change”, said they had to move to the capital Kampala.

“I am here to represent my mother who lost a farm, who lost a home,” he said. “I am here to ask for compensation for my community.”

– ‘Abusive security measures’ –

Activists wanting to demonstrate at COP27, held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, must request accreditation 36 hours in advance, providing information such as the names of the protest organisers and details of the proposed march.

Approved demonstrations are only allowed during working hours, and in a specific purpose-built area. 

That accreditation process is risky, Morris fears.

“When they started asking about our locations, where we will be staying, our passports, our names, we were worried,” he said.

“What if they follow one of us and (we) get arrested?”

He cited the case of Indian climate activist Ajit Rajagopal, who was arrested after setting off to march from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh. He was later released after an international outcry.

Human Rights Watch on Sunday warned that “dozens of people” calling for protests had been detained.

“Egypt’s government has no intention of easing its abusive security measures and allowing for free speech and assembly,” the watchdog said.

Rights groups say at least 151 people have been arrested ahead of a rally slated for November 11 — planned nationwide but not in Sharm el-Sheikh — against what they decry as repression and sharp increases in the cost of living.

“Everyone must be able to participate meaningfully at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh. That includes civil society,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said Monday.

– ‘Watching online’ –

On top of security restrictions, Morris lamented that activists like him were excluded from the talks.

“I am watching online because our ‘observers’ badges don’t allow us to enter,” he said.

“I’m like ‘so, why are we here?'”

He said his hopes have faded that having the summit in Africa might make a difference — including in demanding wealthy nations responsible for emissions pay their dues.

Africa is home to some of the countries least responsible for planet-heating emissions but hardest hit by an onslaught of weather extremes.

“It is not an African COP, it is a polluters’ COP — because it is polluters dominating,” he said. 

“Haven’t you seen Coca-Cola here?” he added, referring to one of this year’s official sponsors.

Campaign group Greenpeace has called Egypt’s choice of the soft drink giant “appalling”, blaming the company for much of the “plastic pollution in the world”.

Last year, at the COP26 in Glasgow, tens of thousands of demonstrators from all over the world marched to demand “climate justice”.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is skipping COP27, slamming it as a forum for “greenwashing” and saying the “space for civil society this year is extremely limited”.

Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network International, told reporters at the COP27 centre that the right to protest has been “seriously challenged”, and that there was “immense repression” in Egypt.

On Sunday, ignoring the restrictions, a handful of activists waved banners at the entrance to the summit hall.

“We are trying to promote the veganism to help save the planet from the greenhouse gases”, said Tom Modgmah, a follower of Vietnamese “Supreme Master Ching Hai”, alongside colleagues waving banners.

“Be vegan, make peace,” they read.

Northern beaked whales are rarely seen this far south of the Arctic

A 7.6-metre (25-foot) whale, wounded but alive, was discovered stranded on a beach in northern France on Monday, authorities said, with experts hoping the rising tide will help the cetacean back on its way.

The appearance of the animal this far south is rare given that this particular species of beaked whale usually swims in deep Arctic waters, they said.

The female cetacean, which had suffered non-life threatening injuries, probably ended up on the beach “because it was disorientated”, said Jacky Karpouzopoulos, head of CMNF, an association for the protection of wild mammals in northern France.

He said it was “exceptional” to see this northern whale species this far south.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my 40 years on the job,” he said.

It was not possible to lift the animal back into the water, he said. Helpers hoped instead that the rising tide would allow the animal to refloat and swim away, he said.

The whale has a bleeding head wound, an AFP journalist saw, but local mayor Guy Allemand said the injury was superficial and not the reason why it had washed up on the shore.

He said there would be an autopsy if the whale failed to survive.

In February, a 9.5-metre female humpback whale was found dead on a northern French beach — another “extraordinary” event, according to Karpouzopoulos.

In the spring of this year, an orca — named “Sedna” by marine life protection group NGO Sea Shepherd — was seen lost in the river Seine but died despite intense efforts to save it.

This summer, an ailing beluga whale that strayed into the Seine was put down by vets after a last-ditch rescue attempt failed because of its rapidly deteriorating health.

A devastated area in Matlacha, Florida seen on October 1, 2022 after it was hit by Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the United States

UN chief Antonio Guterres warned world leaders at a climate summit in Egypt on Monday that humanity faces a stark choice between working together or “collective suicide” in the battle against global warming.

Nearly 100 heads of state and government are meeting for two days in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, facing calls to deepen emissions cuts and financially back developing countries already devastated by the effects of rising temperatures.

“Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” Guterres told the UN COP27 summit. 

“It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact,” Guterres said, urging richer polluting nations to come to the aid of poorer countries least responsible for the emission of heat-trapping gases.

Nations worldwide are coping with increasingly intense natural disasters that have taken thousands of lives this year alone and cost billions of dollars — from devastating floods in Nigeria and Pakistan to droughts in the United States and Africa and unprecedented heatwaves across three continents.

“We have seen one catastrophe after another,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. “As soon as we tackle one catastrophe another one arises — wave after wave of suffering and loss.

“Is it not high time to put an end to all this suffering?”

But a multitude of other crises, from Russia’s war in Ukraine to soaring inflation and the lingering effects of the Covid pandemic, has raised concerns that climate change will drop on the priority list of governments. 

Guterres however told world leaders climate change could not be put on the “back burner”.

He called for a “historic” deal between rich emitters and emerging economies that would see countries double down on emissions, holding the rise in temperatures to the more ambitions Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era.   

Current trends would see carbon pollution increase 10 percent by the end of the decade and Earth’s surface heat up 2.8C.

“We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator,” Guterres said.

– ‘Moral imperative’ –

The UN secretary general said the target should be to provide renewable and affordable energy for all, calling on the United States and China in particular to lead the way.

He also said it was a “moral imperative” for richer polluters to help vulnerable countries.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose country is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases, is not attending the summit.

US President Joe Biden, whose country ranks second on the top-polluters list, will join COP27 later this week after midterm elections on Tuesday that could put Republicans hostile to international action on climate change in charge of Congress.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged the United States, China and other non-European rich nations to “step up” their efforts to cut emissions and provide financial aid to other countries.

“Europeans are paying,” Macron told French and African climate campaigners on the sidelines of COP27. “We are the only ones paying.”

– ‘Loss and damage’ –

On Sunday, the heads of developing nations won a small victory when delegates agreed to put the controversial issue of compensation for “loss and damage” on the summit agenda.

Pakistan, which chairs the powerful G77+China negotiating bloc of more than 130 developing nations, has made the issue a priority.

The United States and the European Union have dragged their feet for years on the proposal, fearing it would create an open-ended reparations framework.

Guterres said COP27 must agree on a “clear, time-bound roadmap” for loss and damage that delivers “effective institutional arrangements for financing”.

“Getting concrete results on loss and damage is a litmus test of the commitment of governments to the success of COP27,” he said.

Rich nations will also be expected to set a timetable for the delivery of $100 billion per year to help developing countries green their economies and build resilience against future climate change. 

The promise is already two years past due and remains $17 billion short, according to the OECD.

COP27 is scheduled to continue until November 18 with ministerial joining the fray during Week Two.

Security is tight at the meeting, with Human Rights Watch saying authorities have arrested dozens of people and restricted the right to demonstrate in the days leading up to COP27.

Greta Thunberg's one-person strike outside the Swedish parliament four years ago has evolved into to a massive global movement engaging millions of youths and unleashing a torrent of debate on the dangers of climate change

Four years after launching her “School Strike for the Climate”, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg is ready to pass the baton to those on the front lines of climate change, she said in an interview on Monday.

“We should also listen to reports and experiences from people who are most affected by the climate crisis. It’s time to hand over the megaphone to those who actually have stories to tell,” the 19-year-old told Swedish news agency TT.

After urging the public in recent years to “listen to the science”, Thunberg said the world now needed “new perspectives”.

In the past four years, Thunberg’s one-person strike outside the Swedish parliament has evolved into to a massive global movement engaging millions of youths and unleashing a torrent of debate on the dangers of climate change.

Thunberg said she initially believed an urgent debate on the climate was needed to save the world for future generations.

But over time, she said, she has come to understand that the climate crisis is already having devastating consequences on people’s lives.

“So it becomes even more hypocritical when people in Sweden for example say that we have time to adapt and shouldn’t fear what will happen in the future”, she said.

Thunberg has previously said she would skip the COP27 talks starting Monday in Sharm El-Sheik, slamming it as a forum for “greenwashing”.

She told TT her talks with world leaders have left her pessimistic about their ability to make progress on the issue.

“Some of the things world leaders and heads of state have said when the microphone is off are hard to believe when you tell people”, she said.

“Like, ‘If I had known what we were agreeing to when we signed the Paris Agreement I would never have signed’, or “You kids are more knowledgeable in this area than I am'”, she said.

“The lack of knowledge among the world’s most powerful people is shocking”.

Thunberg, who is in her final year of high school in Stockholm, said meanwhile she hasn’t yet decided what she will do after she graduates.

“We’ll see. If I had to choose today, I would choose to continue my studies. Preferably something that has to do with social issues”, she said.

A devastated area in Matlacha, Florida seen on October 1, 2022 after it was hit by Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the United States

World leaders gathered Monday for climate talks in Egypt facing pressure to deepen cuts in emissions and financially back developing countries already devastated by the effects of rising temperatures.

The UN’s COP27 climate summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh comes as nations worldwide are facing increasingly intense natural disasters that have taken thousands of lives this year alone and cost billions of dollars.

At the opening ceremony on Sunday, COP27 officials urged governments to keep up efforts to combat climate change despite soaring inflation, the energy crunch linked to Russia’s war on Ukraine and the persistent Covid-19 pandemic.

“The fear is other priorities take precedence,” top United Nations climate change official Simon Stiell told a news conference.

The “fear is that we lose another day, another week, another month, another year — because we can’t”, he said.

The world must slash greenhouse emissions by 45 percent by 2030 to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above late-19th-century levels.

But current trends would see carbon pollution increase 10 percent by the end of the decade and Earth’s surface heat up 2.8C, according to findings unveiled in recent days.

Only 29 of 194 countries have presented improved climate plans, as called for at the UN talks in Glasgow last year, Stiell noted.

Nearly 100 heads of state and government began to arrive for two days of talks, with the notable absence of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whose country is the world’s top emitter of greenhouse gases.

US President Joe Biden, whose country ranks second on the top-polluters list, will join COP27 later this week after midterm elections on Tuesday that could put Republicans hostile to international action on climate change in charge of Congress.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged the United States, China and other non-European rich nations to “step up” their efforts to cut emissions and provide financial aid to other countries.

“Europeans are paying,” Macron told French and African climate campaigners on the sidelines of COP27. “We are the only ones paying.”

– ‘Loss and damage’ –

Fresh from his own election victory, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is expected to attend the summit later on, with hopes high that he will protect the Amazon from deforestation after defeating climate-sceptic President Jair Bolsonaro.

Another new leader, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, reversed a decision not to attend the talks and is due to urge countries to move “further and faster” in transitioning away from fossil fuels.

On Sunday, the heads of developing nations won a small victory when delegates agreed to put the controversial issue of money for “loss and damage” on the summit agenda.

Pakistan, which chairs the powerful G77+China negotiating bloc of more than 130 developing nations, has made the issue a priority.

“We definitely regard this as a success for the parties,” said Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry, who chairs the COP27.

The United States and the European Union have dragged their feet on the issue for years, fearing it would create an open-ended reparations framework.

But European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans welcomed the inclusion of loss and damage, tweeting that the “climate crisis has impacts beyond what vulnerable countries can shoulder alone”.

– Protests restricted –

Rich nations will also be expected to set a timetable for the delivery of $100 billion per year to help developing countries green their economies and build resilience against future climate change. 

The promise is already two years past due and remains $17 billion short, according to the OECD.

COP27 is scheduled to continue until November 18 with ministerial meetings.

Security is tight at the meeting, with Human Rights Watch saying authorities have arrested dozens of people for calling for protests and restricted the right to demonstrate in the days leading up to COP27.