In a Q&A, the head of the apex body of chartered accountants in the UK discusses the challenge of sustainability and other issues her tribe faces across the globe
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India's call to end all fossil fuels not acknowledged in final draft
COP27 does not push forward India's agenda significantly
The UN published an updated draft of the proposed deal of the climate summit in Egypt on Saturday. It makes no mention of the need to phase down all fossil fuels, one of the key demands this year, and reiterates the Glasgow Pact language on coal. Negotiators, however, said they have reached a tentative deal on the creation of a fund to address loss and damage, a term used for irreparable destruction caused by climate change-fuelled disasters. The success of the talks hinges on a separate loss and damage fund, the primary demand for COP27 from developing nations. The deal, however, is part of the larger agreement and has to be voted on by negotiators from nearly 200 countries. The Presidency consultations on the tentative deal were scheduled for 6:30pm (Egypt time), which means the closing plenary is now likely to take place on Sunday morning. Experts said no reference to oil and natural gas -- on which developed countries depend -- in the text is not in the interest of climate acti
Negotiators say they have struck a potential breakthrough deal on the thorniest issue of United Nations climate talks, the creation of a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich nations' carbon pollution. There is an agreement on loss and damage, which is what negotiators call the concept, Maldives Environment Minister Aminath Shauna told The Associated Press on Saturday. It still needs to be approved unanimously in a vote later today. That means for countries like ours we will have the mosaic of solutions that we have been advocating for. We proposed a text and this actually just has just been accepted, so we now have a fund, Norway Climate and Environment minister Espen Barth Eide told the AP. New Zealand Climate Minister James Shaw said both the poor countries that would get the money and the rich ones that would give it are on board with the proposed deal. If approved, it's a big win for poorer nations which have been calling for
A last minute fight over emissions cutting and the overall climate change goal keeps delaying a potentially historic deal that would create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries' carbon pollution. Final discussions were put off for several hours late Saturday and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. Delegates, activists and others tried to grab catnaps on couches and chairs as negotiators kept looking for solutions. Promised documents outlining potential agreements kept being more wishes than reality. Bleary-eyed rumpled delegations began to fill the plenary room 4 am local time Sunday but so far few if any of them had seen the key document they were scheduled to soon decide upon. The international meeting run by the Egyptian presidency amid a lot of criticism had gone into extended extra time and threatened to be overshadowed by the beginning of the World Cup, where the United Nations Secretary-General had already fled .
The UN climate talks in Egypt dragged on into overtime on Saturday, with no sign of parties arriving at a consensus on several key issues, including loss and damage, mitigation work programme and adaptation. COP27 president Sameh Shoukry said deliberations continued through the night, but did not result in a clear direction towards a consensus. The success of the talks hinges on a fund to address loss and damage, which refers to the consequences of climate change that go beyond what people can adapt to or when options exist, but a community doesn't have the resources to access or utilise them. Financing or a new fund for addressing loss and damage -- for example money needed for relocating people displaced by floods -- has been a long-pending demand of poor and developing countries, including India. Developed nations, particularly the US, have opposed this new fund over fears that it would hold them legally liable for massive damages caused by climate change. "Need more time to ag
It's a desert, where little grows. It's a climate conference, where water is scarce inside buildings and out, lines are long, tempers are short, meetings go late and above all progress comes in one-drop drips. Yet hope springs forth in the strangest places. Not in the naive new face, but in the hearts and minds of veteran activists and officials, who have gone through this frustrating sleep-depriving exercise, not once or twice but numerous times. And it blooms in a odd metal tree sculpture in a centre square here at the United Nations climate summit in Egypt. People write their hopes on green paper leaves. Hope is the only meaning (sic) that makes us ALIVE! Mohamed Ageez, an Egyptian youth activist wrote. Former US Vice President Al Gore looks at more than 30 years of climate change efforts and sees hope in progress and change. United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen and The Nature Conservancy Chief Scientist Katharine Hayhoe see it in all the people in the
The UN climate talks have been extended by a day in an effort to break the deadlock over key issues, including mitigation work programme, loss and damage and climate finance. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said COP27 was supposed to wrap up on Friday but has been "extended by a day to attempt to take the ongoing negotiations to a logical end". Providing an update on the negotiations in a blog post, he said a lot of issues, including the mitigation work program, the global goal on adaptation, loss and damage, and climate finance are being negotiated as they remain contentious. "COP is a party-driven process and hence consensus on key issues is vital to the process. The extension is an attempt towards achieving just that," he said. In an effort to break the deadlock, the European Union's chief negotiator Frans Timmermans proposed a plan that tied loss and damage with emission cuts. The success of the talks hinges on a fund to address loss and damage, a term used for ...
27-country EU said it would back one of the toughest agenda items financing for countries wracked by climate-fuelled disasters
A formal draft of an UN summit's climate deal that came out on Friday makes no mention of India's call for phase down of all fossil fuels. The draft showed little progress on key issues like loss and damage funding, adaptation fund replenishment and a new collective quantified goal on climate finance. It also omits references to the need for rich nations to attain "net-negative carbon emissions by 2030" and their disproportionate consumption of the global carbon budget, something that India and other poor and developing countries have stressed during the summit in Egypt. The 10-page draft document is a refined version of the 20-page "non-paper" or an informal draft published by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the climate change conference COP27 on Thursday. The "draft text on COP 27's overarching decision" reaffirmed that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires rapid and deep emission cuts. It puts a "placeholder" for funding arrangements
To this end, the COP27 Presidency, with the support of UN-Habitat, convened the first-ever Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change at a UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP)
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And India's progress towards net zero by 2070 will depend on how successful it is in facilitating an orderly transition to a clean economy
The UN chief asked nations countries to deliver the kind of meaningful action that people and the planet desperately need. "The world is watching and has a simple message: stand and deliver," he said.
There would be no climate crisis if emissions of the entire world were at the same per capita level as India, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said at the ongoing UN climate summit in Egypt on Thursday. Participating in a session on "Accelerating Resilient Infrastructure in Small Island Developing States" (SIDS) on the sidelines of COP27, Yadav said the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states clearly that the responsibility for warming is directly proportional to the contribution to cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. All CO2 emissions, whenever they take place, contribute equally to warming, he said. "Considering per capita emissions, for an objective scale for comparison, India's emissions are, even today, about one-third of the global average. If the entire world were to emit at the same per capita level as India, the best available science tells that there would be no climate crisis," he added. At 2.4 tCO2e (tonne car
India has opposed the developed world's efforts to extend the scope of mitigation to agriculture at the ongoing UN climate summit in Egypt, saying rich nations do not want to reduce emissions by changing their lifestyles and are "searching for cheaper solutions abroad", sources said on Thursday. Expressing concern over the draft decision text on the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture, India said the developed countries are blocking a pro-poor and pro-farmer decision by insisting on expanding the scope for mitigation to agriculture, thereby compromising the very foundation of food security in the world, a source in the Indian delegation said. "At every climate summit, the developed countries wish to change the goalposts of the international climate regime using diversionary means to dilute their responsibilities arising from their historical emissions. "Annex-I countries, it may be recalled, owe the world a carbon debt of 790 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2), which is worth USD
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Sticks to coal phase-down, seeks 'phase out and rationalisation' of fossil fuel subsidies