Initially everyone was positively surprised about the agreement by all countries to work towards a 1.5C goal. Now it looks like one important party is playing power games rather than working productively towards the common goal.
The issue namely arose around the issue of REDD+ funding. The US wants to stay within the mechanism but rejects the use of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) due to their imminent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which the GCF is a part of. The US instead proposed a new independent funding mechanism where voting rights are allocated according to the amount of funding provided.
This Idea was quickly rejected by a significant number of other countries. One of them told Klima Anzeiger “With the attitude that the US is currently showing, a climate accord is more distant than ever. If we do not act, the planet is lost.”
An other delegate confided that “negotiations were originally quite friendly, all countries could agree on using GCF funds, but threats from the US to withhold vital funding proved detrimental to any agreement between the US and other countries”
Both sources only spoke under condition of anonymity.
At this moment it is unclear how the issue can be resolved. Because the US originally supported the 1.5C target, other countries are struggling to understand the actual position of the worlds largest economy.
We have in the past already experienced the tendency of the US to make surprise and often abrupt statements. Other countries gathered here today can only be hopeful that the US will find their way back to a reasonable position.
