Climate deal lacks cash, says evangelical

A key pact made at the COP27 Climate Summit in Egypt doesn’t have enough money behind it to make it work, according to an evangelical climate expert.

Andy Atkins, chief executive of green Christian organisation A Rocha, said of the ‘Loss and Damage Agreement’ – designed to compensate poorer countries suffering from climate change:

Symbolic amount

‘At present there is very little money - it’s just a symbolic amount from a couple of “lead” countries, including Scotland. It is hard to calculate the huge damage climate change has already done, let alone what it will do in the next few decades, even if we do manage to slow and stop it. But we are talking multiple billions if not trillions right now. If that seems a lot, think of what the rich world was able to spend on fighting COVID.

‘That money should come from the nations that have most benefited from carbon emissions historically - those that were first to industrialise such as the UK, western Europe and the US. We bear the greatest historical responsibility, even if we did not know at the time the damage we were doing. However, it is right that today’s big polluters and rich fossil-fuel producing countries now pay as well, so China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.’

However en environmental columnist Simon Marsh said it was a ‘historic step’. But he added that unfortunately the summit saw ‘no agreement to phase out fossil fuels, which is vital if we are to keep global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius.’