It’s Saturday morning in Glasgow and the third edition of the COP26 cover decision is out. The latest amendments can be tracked here.
Loss and Damage
A previously proposed “Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility” is absent from the latest draft. Facility appears to have been replaced with “dialogue”. Responses on social media from civil society shows a “deep concern“. First Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership, Doreen Stabinsky, considers these talks to have now essentially collapsed, with pushback reportedly coming from both EU and USA:
Changed Language on Fossil Fuels
Language on fossil fuels remains in this draft, but language surrounding them appears to be less ambitious (bold emphasis our own):
Calls upon Parties to accelerate the development, deployment and dissemination of
technologies, and the adoption of policies, to transition towards low emission energy systems,
including by rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy
efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phase-out of unabated coal
power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, recognizing the need for support towards a just
transition;
On top of the changes in the second draft that qualified coal phase out with ‘unabated,’ and fossil fuel subsidies with ‘inefficient’ subsidies, the third draft has changed ‘accelerating the phaseout’ to ‘including accelerating efforts towards the phase-out’.