After a long, hard battle to get the world’s wealthy nations mostly responsible for planet-heating emissions to pay for climate damages, vulnerable nations finally succeeded in making it a defining issue in the recently COP27 talks in Egypt.
In the end, a decision to create a loss and damage fund was the first item confirmed after fraught negotiations, with nations clashing over a range of issues around curbing planet-heating emissions.
Loss and damage covers a broad sweep of climate impacts, from bridges and homes washed away in flash flooding, to the threatened disappearance of cultures and whole island nations to the creeping rise of sea levels.
Observers say that the failure of rich polluters to curb emissions and to meet their promise of funding to help countries boost climate resilience means that losses and damages are inevitably growing as the planet warms.
“The establishment of a fund is not about dispensing charity,” said Pakistani climate minister Sherry Rehman. “It is clearly a down payment on the longer investment in our joint futures, in the down payment and an investment in climate justice.”
After last-minute tussles over wording, the final loss and damage document decided to create a fund, as part of a broad array of funding arrangements for developing countries “that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.”
Depending on how deeply the world slashes carbon pollution, loss and damage from climate change could cost developing countries $290-580 billion a year by 2030, reaching up to $1.8 trillion by 2050, according to a 2018 research.
Although it is good that the wealthy nations responsible for most planet-heating emissions have finally agreed to contribute to a loss and damage fund that can help vulnerable countries like the Philippines cope with the increasingly disastrous effects of climate change, it is still ultimately up to us to be ready and prepared for whatever may come as the planet continues to heat up.
The existence of a loss and damage fund may help, but we would be better off being prepared and implementing the necessary and sustainable initiatives that can mitigate the impacts of climate change.*
