Developed nations must pay for loss, damage in climate crisis, say experts
When COP27 kicks off in Egypt early next month, the face of human suffering in less developed countries such as South Africa should be brought to light.
Developed nations that have so far pushed back against the loss and damage facility should be forced to be accountable and pay up because the greatest polluters have a greater responsibility to compensate.
These were some of the views expressed this week by South African and other experts during a webinar hosted by the World Wildlife Fund SA and the South African Climate Action Network.
So what is the loss and damage facility and what does it mean to South Africa?
Conceived at COP26, the idea is that an international fund would be created through which developed nations create a purse for aid for loss and damage related to the climate crisis.
According to Lutfiyah Suliman from the Institute for Economic Justice, South Africa is particularly vulnerable to climate change. She said on the whole, the climate crisis is going to result in a whole host of “negative impacts”.
They include an increase in global temperature due to greenhouse gases, changes in weather patterns and extreme weather events. “But,” she adds, “in SA specifically, what we can expect is an increase in water stress.”
This will put pressure on commercial and subsistence farmers and food systems, while flooding will affect urban infrastructure, and sanitation damage will affect whole communities, schools and businesses.
“We are going to see a severe and negative impact on municipalities’ ability to deliver on services and this will affect the most vulnerable who are least able to restore a basic sense of dignity,” she said.
The loss and damage facility is also not conventionally understood as the same thing by all, points out Suliman. While some relate it mainly to “severe climate impacts and the recovery phase”, others see it also in terms of mitigation, recovery and adaptation simultaneously. Despite having its own article in the Paris Agreement, it does not yet have any dedicated financing stream and the least developed are reliant on humanitarian aid.
According to Prabhat Upadhyaya, WWF SA senior policy analyst, the conversation about the loss and damage facility is “finally getting serious”. It appeared for the first time in UN climate talks in 2007 but only in 2013 did it start gaining traction to avert, minimise and address loss and damage. Thandolwethu Lukoko, co-ordinator of the South African Climate Action Network, concurred that it was finally being taken seriously but said it was a “long-standing issue that hasn’t been resolved”.
Citing the floods in KwaZulu-Natal as a case study of the multiple effects of an extreme weather event, he said: “Let’s say you’re living in KZN, what you would have experienced in a rural community was run-off water that wasn’t able to seep into [the] ground because of drought. Maybe your home got washed away. There were also containers washed away in the ports, while bridges and infrastructure were torn down.”
These are all elements that need to be rebuilt, he said. “But where do the resources come from to rebuild and how does one get access to that funding?”
Lukoko said the coffers had “already been depleted by Covid-19 and the riots” , so a funding facility “brings some kind of solace”. While efforts towards a “just transition” to mitigate the climate crisis were commendable, there were already impacts being felt the most intensely by those “least responsible for the climate crisis”.
“Developed nations are pushing back against loss and damage facilities, saying they will have to pay for poorer countries, but the latter are saying they owe it to society.