Rich to pay for ‘loss & damage’ of pollution
The UN’s COP27 climate summit has approved a special fund to cover the losses suffered by vulnerable nations hit by the impact of global warming.
Delegates applauded after the “loss and damage” fund was approved yesterday following two weeks of contentious negotiations over demands by developing nations for rich polluters to compensate them for destruction from weather extremes.
“The world is watching,” COP27 president Sameh Shoukry said after the fund was passed at 4am following tense overnight talks.
The “loss and damage” inflicted by climate-induced disasters was not even officially up for discussion when UN talks in Egypt began.
But a concerted effort among developing countries to make it the defining issue of the conference melted the resistance of wealthy polluters fearful of open-ended liability and gathered momentum as the talks progressed.
“At the beginning of these talks loss and damage was not even on the agenda and now we are making history,” said Mohamed Adow, executive director of Power Shift Africa.
“It just shows that this UN process can achieve results, and that the world can recognise the plight of the vulnerable must not be treated as a political football.”
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 islands to the creeping rise of sea levels.
This year, climate-induced disasters -- from catastrophic floods in Pakistan to severe drought threatening famine in Somalia -- sharpened focus on disaster-hit countries, which were already struggling with soaring inflation and mounting debts
Observers say that the failure of rich polluters both 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.
Science can now measure how much global warming increases the likelihood or intensity of a cyclone, heat wave, drought or heavy rain.
The agreement was a highwire balancing act. On one hand the G77 and China bloc of 134 developing countries called for the immediate creation of a fund with operational details to be agreed later.
Richer nations like the US and European Union accepted that countries in the crosshairs of climate-driven disasters need money, but favoured a “mosaic” of funding arrangements.