COP26 Climate Change Summit: Live Updates

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As international climate talks in Glasgow dragged into deep overtime, organizers released a new draft agreement on Saturday morning that they hope could be the basis for a new global deal to tackle climate change.

The latest draft, which is broadly similar to one released on Friday, calls on nations to return next year with stronger pledges to cut planet-warming emissions in this decade. Recognizing that countries are not doing enough to prevent a significant rise in temperatures, it urges wealthy nations to “at least double” by 2025 the financial aid that they provide to developing countries to help adapt to heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires.

The latest draft retains language calling on countries to accelerate efforts “towards the phaseout of unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, recognizing the need for support towards a just transition.” Behind closed doors, negotiators said, that language faces opposition from oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

If it stays in, it would be the first time an international climate agreement explicitly mentions fossil fuels, which are the root cause of global warming.

That does not mean all of the haggling is over, however. Talks on whether to provide support to vulnerable countries that are experiencing serious climate effects now — a policy known in United Nations parlance as “loss and damage” — went into the early hours of Saturday.

Activists said the newest text appeared to have eliminated an earlier plan to create a “facility” to direct funds to poor countries, and that it does not commit countries to provide funding. The United States and Europe both opposed the loss-and-damage mechanism, several negotiators said.

“It looks like we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us today,” a group of researchers who work on loss and damage wrote on Twitter.

Later on Saturday, countries will weigh in publicly on the draft and whether they want changes. By tradition, a final agreement requires all of the nearly 200 nations here to sign on. If any one objects, talks can deadlock.

Activists said they were broadly disappointed with the latest language on funding for poor and vulnerable countries.

More than 10 years ago, countries promised to mobilize $100 billion annually by 2020 to help developing countries pivot to renewable energy and prepare for the effects of climate change. That promise was not fulfilled, and the latest draft notes “with serious concern” the gap between what was pledged and what was delivered.

It “urges” wealthy countries to increase the amount of money they give now and in the future. It also “requests” that developed countries to consider a “significantly increase” in the amount of money they give to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change.

Currently, money to help develop wind, solar and other renewable energy far outpaces funding for things like building sea walls or planting mangroves to protect against storm surges.

Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies at Brown University, called the language “wiggle words,” because it could allow wealthy countries to wiggle out of their promises.

“I’m a college professor,” he said. “If I request my students to consider doing the reading for class, how many do I expect to actually do it? Very few.”

Climate activists said on Saturday that they were furious to see that the latest draft of a potential United Nations climate agreement had weakened provisions aimed at helping the world’s most vulnerable countries cope with today’s climate-fueled disasters.

The third and latest draft, released early Saturday by organizers in Glasgow, is the clearest signal yet of what diplomats from nearly 200 countries are likely to agree on at the close of the two-week summit.

But as ministers and others prepared to discuss the draft on Saturday afternoon, a major flash point was expected over “loss and damage” — one of the most politically contentious issues in the negotiations.

“I expect some drama,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International.

The new text eliminates a reference to the creation of a facility that would have provided financial support for technical assistance to cope with losses and damages from ever fiercer storms, floods and droughts brought about by greenhouse gas emissions that wealthy countries have spewed into the atmosphere for decades. That already did not go as far as vulnerable countries wanted.

The new version calls only for dialogue to “discuss the arrangements for the funding of activities” to address poor countries’ needs.

Saleemul Huq, an adviser to the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a coalition of 48 countries, said in a tweet that the language on loss and damage “has in fact gone BACKWARDS from yesterday’s text!”

Several negotiators and observers watching the talks said the United States had been instrumental in blocking a clear mention of a new stream of funding for poor countries to address losses and damages from climate change.

Farhana Yamin, an environmental lawyer who is working closely with vulnerable countries in the climate talks, called the new text “appalling” and said that unless it changed, the agreement would “go down in history as having failed all tests of moral and political credibility.”

Whatever the outcome of the down-to-the-wire negotiations in Glasgow over an agreement to slow the rise in global temperatures, the United Nations climate conference known as COP26 has made some progress on key issues.

Here are some of the deals already announced at the two-week talks:

U.S. and China

The United States and China announced a joint agreement to do more to cut emissions this decade, and China committed for the first time to develop a plan to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The pact between the rivals, which are the world’s two biggest polluters, surprised delegates to the summit.

But the agreement was short on specifics. China did not commit to a new timetable for reducing emissions, nor did it set a ceiling for how much its emissions would rise before they started to fall. And while China agreed to “phase down” coal starting in 2026, it did not specify by how much or over what period of time.

Deforestation

Leaders of more than 100 countries, including Brazil, China, Russia and the United States, vowed to end deforestation by 2030. The landmark agreement covers about 85 percent of the world’s forests, which are crucial to absorbing carbon dioxide and slowing the pace of global warming.

Twelve governments committed $12 billion, and private companies pledged $7 billion, to protect and restore forests in a variety of ways, including $1.7 billion for Indigenous peoples. But some advocacy groups criticized the agreement as lacking teeth, noting that similar efforts have failed in the past.

Methane

More than 100 countries agreed to cut emissions of methane, a potent planet-warming gas, 30 percent by the end of this decade. The pledge was part of a push by the Biden administration, which also announced that the Environmental Protection Agency would limit the methane coming from about one million oil and gas rigs across the United States.

The countries that signed the Global Methane Pledge include half of the world’s top 30 methane-emitting countries, and U.S. officials said they expected the list to grow.

India

For the first time, India joined the growing chorus of nations pledging to reach “net zero” emissions, setting a 2070 deadline to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

One of the world’s largest consumers of coal, India also said that it would significantly expand the portion of its total energy mix that comes from renewable sources, and that half of its energy would come from sources other than fossil fuels by 2030.

It is common for United Nations climate conferences, which are supposed to run for two weeks, to go into overtime. Diplomats often don’t get down to the fine details of an agreement until the final night.

Lia Nicholson, who represents small island nations in the negotiations, said on Friday that the group “finds ourselves at the final hours of this conference overwhelmed at the work still ahead of us.”

Diplomats and negotiators worked past the deadline, well into Saturday morning. And many, especially those representing developing countries, lamented the gap between what nations have promised to do to cut greenhouse gas emissions and help people adapt to climate change, and what is needed.

“There’s a huge disconnect between where we are, where we will be based on current projections and where we need to be in terms of what science is telling us,” said Saber Hossain Chowdhury, a negotiator from Bangladesh, one of the nations that have suffered most from climate change.

The draft agreement released on Friday “requests” nations to return every year to strengthen their emissions-cutting targets until the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. One analysis found that even if all the pledges made in Glasgow were kept, temperatures would still rise by 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Even at current temperatures, Mr. Chowdhury said, “we see the destruction, the devastation, the pain, the suffering that all countries of the world are facing.” He received sustained applause from delegates in the plenary hall.

Kenya’s environment minister, Keriako Tobiko, noted that…