Small island nations led calls at the UN climate summit Tuesday to tax oil companies' windfall profits to pay for damages caused by natural disasters and enact a "non-proliferation treaty" to halt fossil fuel production.

Developing nations have pressed their case at the COP27 summit in Egypt for the creation of a "loss and damage" fund, arguing that rich nations are to blame for the biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions.

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices have soared in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The parents of Tunisian migrants missing since their boat sank in September have dug up graves in a cemetery hoping to locate and retrieve their dead offspring, witnesses said Tuesday.

In late September, a small boat sank after departing Zarzis in southeastern Tunisia with 18 migrants on board. Eight bodies, including several Tunisians, were subsequently recovered.

Four bodies of Tunisians were buried by mistake in the Garden of Africa, a cemetery for drowned migrants from elsewhere on the continent -- many of whom remain unidentified and or unclaimed.

The United States sought to reassure the UN climate summit in Egypt on Tuesday that it will stick to its energy transition even if Republicans triumph in midterm elections.

The COP27 talks have been dominated by calls for all nations to step up their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and for rich ones to fulfil pledges to financially help the developing world to green their economies and build resilience.

UN rights chief Volker Turk on Tuesday called on Egypt to immediately release Alaa Abdel Fattah, a jailed dissident on hunger strike, saying his life was at "acute risk".

British-Egyptian Abdel Fattah, 40, was a major figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled longtime president Hosni Mubarak.

After a seven-month hunger strike during which he consumed only "100 calories a day", he has for the past week refused food altogether, and on Sunday he stopped drinking water to coincide with the opening of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt agreed Tuesday to develop one of the world's largest wind farms in a deal struck on the sidelines of the UN's COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The 10-gigawatt (GW) onshore wind project in Egypt will produce 47,790 GWh of clean energy annually once it is completed, the UAE's state news agency WAM said in a statement, without specifying an exact timeframe.

It will offset 23.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions – equivalent to around nine percent of Egypt's current CO2 output, according to WAM.

Developing and emerging countries -- excluding China -- need investments well beyond $2 trillion annually by 2030 if the world is to stop the global warming juggernaut and cope with its impacts, according to a UN-backed report released Tuesday.

A trillion dollars should come from rich countries, investors and multilateral development banks, said the analysis commissioned by Britain and Egypt, hosts respectively of the 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow and this week's COP27 event in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The possible death of jailed British-Egyptian dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah in prison is "in no one's interest", his sister Sanaa Seif said, nearly two days after he started refusing water.

Following a seven-month hunger strike during which he only had 100 calories per day, Abdel Fattah stopped drinking water on Sunday to coincide with the opening of the United Nations COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

The crushing impacts of climate change are already a "living nightmare" for people across Africa, Kenyan President William Ruto told world leaders at UN talks on Monday.

The UN climate Conference of the Parties talks in Egypt, billed as the "African COP", are set to be dominated by calls from developing countries that rich polluters pay for the harm their emissions have already caused, known as "loss and damage".

"Africa contributes less than three percent of the pollution responsible for climate change, but it's most severely impacted by the ensuing crisis," Ruto said.

The United Nations on Monday unveiled a five-year plan to build a global early warning system for deadly and costly extreme weather events amplified by climate change.

The price tag -- a relatively modest $3.1 billion, or less than 50 cents per person -- is a small price to pay for proven methods that can save thousands, if not millions, of lives, UN chief Antonio Guterres said at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

The world needs to rethink the international financial system to provide debt relief to countries battered by devastating and costly climate impacts like Pakistan, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Monday.

The catastrophic flooding that put a third of Pakistan under water this year displaced millions of people, swamped swathes of key farmland, and destroyed homes, roads and bridges.

The disaster caused more than $30 billion of damages and economic losses, according to World Bank estimates, piling pressure on an already fragile economy.