COP26 talks stumble on climate cash ‘cliffhanger’

Nations were trying to rebuild bridges at the COP26 summit on Saturday after talks faltered overnight, when rich emitters refused a request to help developing economies meet mounting financial losses from climate change.

Delegates from some 200 countries are in Glasgow to try to hammer out how to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement goals to limit temperature rises to 1.5-2.0 degrees Celsius.

But the issue of finance -- how vulnerable nations are supported to green their grids and brace against climate impacts -- has stalked the two-week negotiations, after wealthy nations failed to stump up the $100 billion annually they promised over a decade ago.

The deadlock pushed COP26 past its scheduled end on Friday evening, with the summit’s UK presidency confirming that a new draft text would only be published for scrutiny on Saturday.

Countries already battered by climate disasters such as record-breaking drought, flooding and storms are demanding they be compensated separately for “loss and damage”, and have made it a red line.

However, a proposal to include the creation of a dedicated facility to administer loss and damage support was quashed by historic emitters, led by the United States, delegates said.

Amadou Sebory Toure, head of the G77+China negotiating bloc, told AFP the proposal was “put forward by the entire developing world, representing six of every seven people on Earth”.

He said separate finance was needed “to effectively respond to our needs to address the loss and damage being inflicted on our peoples, our communities, our economies, by the impacts of climate change”.

Alden Meyer, a senior associate at climate policy think tank E3G, said loss and damage talks were a “cliffhanger moment” for the entire summit.

“The people on the frontlines are not the ones who caused the problem, we have an ethical responsibility to help in a problem they didn’t create,” he said.

Developing nations say it is unfair for the summit to produce an unbalanced agreement on “mitigation” -- how economies can ditch fossil fuels by 2050.