Fight over fossil fuels torpedoes key text of UN report

Dispute over environment report echoes a growing trend in consensus-based talks

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PARIS - The UN on Dec 9 unveiled its largest scientific assessment on the dire state of the environment, but a crucial summary of its findings was torpedoed as nations feuded over fossil fuels.

The dispute over the Global Environment Outlook echoed a growing trend in consensus-based negotiations, where oil-producing countries in particular are frustrating efforts to address pollution from fossil fuels and plastic.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said it was the first time that countries had failed to produce a politically negotiated summary of the mammoth report, which is published roughly every five years and involves hundreds of scientists.

"It's regrettable," UNEP executive director Inger Andersen told AFP, but added that "the integrity of the report" remained above question.

Since first being published in 1997, UNEP's flagship outlook reports have been accompanied by a summary for policymakers: a political statement, negotiated line by line, that distils the science into plain language for governments.