COP27 summit agrees on landmark climate ‘loss and damage’ fund, but does little to encourage rapid cuts to fossil fuel use, the head of the alliance of national emission reduction plans (NERPs) said on Friday.
Speaking at the first G8 meeting of the Alliance of Small Island States in Biarritz, Pascal Lamy said that “a significant progress” had been made as leaders of small island countries “agreed in principle” on a “historic agreement” on the future of the global fight against climate change.
But Lamy added that “no country or group of countries are going to immediately be able to put the transition on the right track” due to the “huge difference between the developed industrial countries” and small island states on the issue of climate change.
Lamy was speaking at a launch of the United States’ G-8 summit on the sidelines of the three-day meeting.
He said that while developing countries needed to make massive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to have any chance of avoiding the worst effects of global warming, rich countries were going “to have to decide that we need to reduce our emissions, whether we like it or not”.
“What is most important is that we start to reduce them,” according to Lamy.
“There are no easy solutions. This is why the G-8 countries agreed in principle to establish a fund to help developing countries deal with climate change which they can draw on to achieve the reductions they need. The US will give G-8 member states a financial commitment of $100bn over the next 10 years, which they can draw from,” he said.
But Lamy said that the G-8 was unable to offer “the kind of rapid action that we need and want, or that any country can accept” because the “G-8 will have to decide that they need to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, including the ones in the developing world”.
“We want them to reduce their use, but the US, Canada and France have to decide that they need to bring emissions down and put the economy on a completely different path,” he said.
Lamy said the G
