COP27 climate summit considers new proposal for 'loss and damage' fund

Developing countries' call for a climate damage fund has dominated the U.N. negotiations over the last two weeks, pushing the summit past its scheduled Friday finish as countries struggled to strike a deal. The draft proposal would kick many of the most controversial decisions on the fund into next year, when a "transitional committee" would make recommendations for countries to then adopt at the COP28 climate summit in November 2023.

The United Nations climate agency on Saturday published the latest draft proposal for a deal to tackle the issue of "loss and damage" that said the summit would agree to launch a new fund to help countries cope with the cost of climate damage.

The draft, which would need approval from the nearly 200 countries at the COP27 summit in Egypt, would agree to "establish a fund for responding to loss and damage". Developing countries' call for a climate damage fund has dominated the U.N. negotiations over the last two weeks, pushing the summit past its scheduled Friday finish as countries struggled to strike a deal.

The draft proposal would kick many of the most controversial decisions on the fund into next year, when a "transitional committee" would make recommendations for countries to then adopt at the COP28 climate summit in November 2023. Those recommendations would cover "identifying and expanding sources of funding" - referring to the vexed question of which countries should pay into the new fund.

After years of rich countries resisting climate-vulnerable countries' calls for loss and damage funding, the European Union said on Thursday it would back a new fund if high-emitting emerging economies like China also paid into it - rather than just large historical emitters like the EU and United States.