Welcome progress on loss and damage, failure on fossil fuel phase out

While details about how the fund will work are yet to be developed, agreement to establish a loss and damage financing facility is a long overdue step towards climate justice.

Progress was also made in “the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment” making it into the final COP27 text for the first time.

However, the failure to deliver a commitment to phase out fossil fuels is a failure with life threatening consequences that will impact on the health of people all over the world. Keeping global temperatures within 1.5C from pre-industrial levels needs more urgency in putting an end to reliance on fossil fuels.

The 2022 Lancet Countdown report has warned that despite the health harms of global warming governments and companies continue to prioritise fossil fuels to the detriment of people’s health, and it is disappointing that agreement to phase out fossil fuels was not reached at COP27.

Failure to commit to phase out fossil fuels puts us on a course to see global temperatures to beyond 1.5C with devastating health impacts.  Rapidly transitioning to cleaner energy sources is critical to mitigating the worst impacts of climate change, limiting global warming, and protecting health.