Tense final days as COP27 becomes a summit of deadlocks

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Editor's note: As the COP27 climate conference enters its final stretch, anxiety levels are running high among delegates here at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. There is disagreement among nations on nearly every important issue that was up for negotiation, and some are already calling the conference a failure. But it may still be too early to call. Ministers and heads of government have returned to the resort city and will hold talks to resolve matters that their negotiators could not. Formal negotiation meetings are being scheduled beyond 8 pm. And, the conference is expected to overrun its scheduled close on Friday (as it does every year). High on the list of deadlocked issues are those that make this conference significant. As we reported last week, this year’s edition was supposed to be a pit stop on the multi-year calendar of climate negotiations. But several events in 2022—related to new scientific findings on climate threats and the devastation witnessed across the world—gave COP27 a greater importance. The Egyptian presidency billed it as the “implementation COP”. The issue of finance for “loss and damage” shot …