The European Union has backed a loss and damage fund, one of the key demands of developing countries at the climate talks
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The low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu has been reacting to the EU’s proposal on “loss and damage”. Its finance minister, Seve Paeniu, called for support for phasing out all fossil fuels, language so far missing from the draft Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.
He described the EU position on loss and damage as a “breakthrough”.
Continue reading...China is responsible for more cumulative emissions than any country other than the US
Late on Thursday night in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Cop27 UN climate talks seemed stuck in an irretrievable logjam. Rich and poor countries had reached deadlock, a “breakdown between north and south”, according to the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
By Friday morning, the talks had been upended and the battleground dramatically redrawn, in a way it has not been in 30 years of these annual talks. At stake is the question of whether some of the world’s leading economies – countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf petrostates, Russia and countries with high per capita income such as South Korea and Singapore – should start contributing for the first time to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries with the impacts of climate disaster.
Continue reading...Police say drugs and gun also found at Johannesburg property where they detained wanted Abergil gang member and seven others
A man reputed to be one of Israel’s most wanted gang leaders has been arrested during a raid on a home in an affluent Johannesburg suburb where South African authorities said they also found guns, drugs and a van equipped for torture.
South African police said on Thursday that the 46-year-old Israeli was a member of the Abergil gang, which deals in drug trafficking and extortion, and that he was wanted in Israel for several attempted murders.
Continue reading...Hollywood actor criticised by South Africans after saying settler language ‘not very helpful’
Charlize Theron has prompted anger in her native South Africa after suggesting that Afrikaans, a language descended from Dutch colonial settlers, is heading for oblivion.
“There’s about 44 people still speaking it … it’s definitely a dying language, it’s not a very helpful language,” the 47-year-old Oscar-winning actor said this week on a US podcast, Smartless.
Continue reading...Egypt foreign minister Sameh Shoukry says delegates are shying away from taking ‘difficult political decisions’. This live blog is closed
As global politicians face difficult discussions on the draft over the coming hours, public opinion appears to be supportive of the idea that richer countries should pay loss and damage finances for climate action in poor countries.
Damian Carrington, our environment editor writes: A significant majority of people in the UK think the country has a responsibility to pay for climate action in poorer and vulnerable countries, an opinion poll conducted for the Guardian shows.
No details of a fund on loss and damage financing for poorer countries
“Welcomes” the fact that parties agreed for the first time to include “matters related to funding arrangements responding to loss and damage” on the summit agenda.
No call for a phase down on all fossil fuels
Stresses the importance of exerting all efforts to meet Paris Agreement goal of holding global average temperature to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 C
Germany latest to end peacekeeping mission as operations prove unable to stop Islamic extremist insurgency
Thousands of international troops are withdrawing from Mali amid surging violence, growing Russian influence and an acute humanitarian crisis.
On Wednesday Germany became the latest country to end its participation in the UN peacekeeping mission in the unstable west African country. Earlier this week, British officials said that 300 British soldiers sent in 2020 to join the United Nations force would be returning earlier than planned.
Continue reading...Stark findings add pressure on Cop27 negotiators to deliver meaningful funding to vulnerable countries
The heavy rain behind recent devastating flooding in Nigeria, Niger and Chad was made about 80 times more likely by the climate crisis, a study has found.
The finding is the latest stark example of the severe impacts that global heating is already wreaking on communities, even with just a 1C rise in global temperature to date. It adds pressure on the world’s nations at the UN Cop27 climate summit in Egypt to deliver meaningful action on protecting and compensating affected countries.
Continue reading...Brazil’s president elect beat Jair Bolsonaro, under whose watch deforestation had rocketed, in last month’s election
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A long-mooted deposit return scheme in the UK will not be in place for a further two years, the UK environment secretary said on Wednesday, writes Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment correspondent.
“It will be another couple of years at least,” Thérèse Coffey told journalists at Cop27. “Scotland has not started theirs yet. We are getting on with our environmental targets and a business plan and Elms. We are coming up to the fifth anniversary of the 25 year environment plan.”
Let’s talk to the secretary-general of the UN for the next op to be done in Brazil, in the Amazon. I think it is important that the people who defend the Amazon know the region and the concrete reality.
Continue reading...Doctors and aid workers describe race against time to keep patients alive in northern Ethiopian region
Convoys carrying desperately needed food aid have entered Tigray, as humanitarian groups gained access to the war-torn northern Ethiopian region for the first time since a ceasefire agreement was signed two-week ago.
Doctors and aid workers in Tigray have described a race against time to keep sick or malnourished patients alive as they wait for humanitarian assistance.
Continue reading...Leaders say December biodiversity summit in Montreal is ‘unprecedented’ chance to turn tide on nature loss
The architects of the Paris agreement have urged world leaders to reach an ambitious sister deal for nature at the Cop15 biodiversity conference this December while warning that limiting global heating to 1.5C is impossible without protecting and restoring ecosystems.
On biodiversity day at the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt, Christiana Figueres, Laurence Tubiana, Laurent Fabius and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who helped design the Paris agreement, said that Cop15 would be an “unprecedented” opportunity to turn the tide on nature loss.
Continue reading...British-Egyptian political prisoner had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories or less a day for six months
Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian democracy activist jailed in Egypt, has told his family in a letter that he has ended his six-month-long hunger strike, which he began in protest against his detention conditions.
“I’ve broken my strike. I’ll explain everything on Thursday,” he told them, in reference to his monthly family prison visits to the Wadi el-Natrun desert prison where he is being held. The democracy activist was sentenced to a further five years in prison last year for sharing a social media post about torture, shortly after gaining British citizenship through his mother.
Continue reading...Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh follows decade-long crackdown on civil society in Egypt
“Honestly, what I want is to be in Sharm el-Sheikh and just scream,” said Amr Magdi of Human Rights Watch. Like dozens of other prominent human rights defenders, researchers and environmentalists, Magdi has been unable to attend Cop27 as he is exiled from Egypt because of his work.
“I just want to tell everyone about the injustice happening in Egypt. I can’t do it personally and I’m trying to do it with my work. I’m even helping others who are able to travel there to do this,” he said.
Continue reading...Former US vice-president says bank should refocus its spending and end its role in ‘fossil fuel colonialism’
Fundamental reform of the World Bank could be completed within a year, to refocus its spending on the climate crisis and end its contribution to “fossil fuel colonialism”, according to the former US vice-president Al Gore.
“I don’t know why it need take longer than a year,” said Gore, a longtime campaigner on the climate crisis since leaving politics, in an interview with the Guardian at the Cop27 UN climate summit. “We have an emergency on our hands.”
Continue reading...As negotiations develop, some countries pushed to weaken the goal of keeping a global temperature increase to 1.5C
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We’ve been reporting a lot on the lack of food at Cop (it’s been on our reporters’ minds for obvious reasons).
But my colleague Damian Carrington has found that vegan campaigners have capitalised on the burger shortage.
Continue reading...‘Proof of life’ note says writer, who has been on hunger strike, is drinking water again
The family of the jailed British-Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah say they have received proof of life, in the form of a letter in which he says he has ended his water strike after six days but will continue his hunger strike.
“I’m sure you’re really worried about me,” Abd el-Fattah wrote to his mother, in a cautiously worded letter as his communications are heavily monitored by the Egyptian authorities.
Continue reading...Carbon Tracker thinktank says investors in fossil fuels on the continent would be left with stranded assets
Expanding oil and gas exports would threaten the economic stability of many African countries, new analysis has found, despite soaring fossil fuel prices.
Demand for fossil fuels is likely to fall sharply in the medium term, according to a report published on Monday by the Carbon Tracker thinktank. That makes relying on gas exports to fuel economic growth a short-term, risky strategy, while boosting solar power would prove a better long-term bet, the analysis found.
Continue reading...Region is in the grip of a severe crisis due to a lack of food and medicine after a two-year conflict
Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels have agreed to facilitate immediate humanitarian access to “all in need” in war-ravaged Tigray and neighbouring regions.
The agreement followed talks in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi this week on the full implementation of a deal signed between the warring sides 10 days ago to end the brutal two-year conflict in northern Ethiopia.
Continue reading...US climate envoy John Kerry has said his country is ready to discuss the loss and damage at Cop27
After six years as the big cheese of UN climate negotiations, Patricia Espinosa has been enjoying walking the halls of power not quite as an ordinary Joe and apparently isn’t closely following the negotiations. “It has felt just amazing. I knew that as the [UNFCCC] executive secretary that I was missing so much, and it’s been a really wonderful experience.”
Espinosa might not be paying close attention, but we’re starting to see developed countries push back against this year’s hot topic, loss and damage, after developing nations laid out a unified case for why a funding mechanism separate to climate adaptation and mitigation is needed to address the climate catastrophes that can’t be averted. The US in particular has been accused of being a “bad faith actor” due to its long track record of disrupting and delaying progress on the issue.
Continue reading...The heavy presence of lobbyists from Moscow suggests Russia is using the climate talks to drum up business
Russian oligarchs and executives from multiple companies under international sanctions are among the lobbyists currently attending Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Among those at the pivotal climate talks are the billionaire and former aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska, who is under UK sanctions, and the billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, the former head of the Russian fertiliser company the EuroChem group, who has been targeted with individual sanctions by the European Union which he disputed, calling them “absurd and nonsensical”.
Continue reading...Vehicle carrying 35 people came off road and fell into canal in Aga, 70 miles north of Cairo
Nineteen people were killed and six others injured when a bus drove into a canal in northern Egypt on Saturday, the country’s health ministry said.
The bus was carrying 35 people when it came off a highway and fell into the Mansoura canal in Aga, in the northern Dakahlia region, according to security sources.
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