Moscow, Nov 20 (TIWN) Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a phone conversation to discuss the prospects of creating a gas hub in Turkey and the extension of the Black Sea grain export deal.

While the conference saw over 35,000 people roaming over the past two weeks, the feeling was quite different on the closing day on Friday evening.  An extended plenary discussion has been agreed for midnight on Saturday, with a formal announcement of any final text expected a day later.  Climate negotiators told IANS that five texts are still live. The cover text, finance, mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage and the design of carbon markets are still causing problems.  In every track, the debate between countries almost seems to be where it was following the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, says a negotiator.  Who’s saying what?  Saudi Arabia is still talking about ignoring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and zero transparency carbon offsets, the US is still talking about what it is against but not what it’s for, China isn’t saying anything at all beyond its talking point on the immorality of western countries supporting fossil fuel phase out while increasing fossil fuel use in the face of the war induced energy crisis.  India has moved up the fossil-fuel phase out agenda, but not landed it, and the EU attempted to flip the script with their Loss and Damage proposal which made agreement on a facility dependent on ambitious mitigation and broadening the definition of who should supply money to fill it — aka the donor base.  As Carbon Brief points out, the EU proposal to just focus on vulnerable countries framed around the least developed countries and small islands would exclude Nigeria, Pakistan and Philippines — all hit hard in 2022 by extreme weather.  Some NGO representatives have expressed their discontent with the latest draft of the conference’s final outcome, also known as the “cover decision”.  “An EU climate damage fund for only the most vulnerable is 10 years out of date. Climate impacts are now so bad. How can you tell Pakistan for example, they can’t have access to support in the wake of 2022 floods? Delay tactic now biting rich countries,” Harjeet Singh, ActionAid, told IANS.  “It’s increasingly looking like a Glasgow ‘repetition COP’, particularly on fossil fuel phase out, there’s no progress from last year. There’s still no mention of phase out of oil and gas in the text.”  “We also don’t need a fund in name only. A fund that doesn’t specify the requirement for historic polluters to deliver finance and shifts the burden to undefined aother sources’ won’t meet the needs of vulnerable countries facing the adverse impacts of climate change,” remarked Mohamed Adow, Power Shift Africa.  In an effort to spur the talks along, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday morning met separately with members of the European Union and the Group of 77 and China — which comprises almost all developing countries.