Push to top COP27 agenda with thorny compensation talks
(SciDev.Net) - Compensation for irreversible climate impacts should lead negotiations at this year’s UN climate summit, say advocates.
In the months following last year’s United Nations climate conference, developing countries have been hit by waves of extreme weather – floods, fires and drought have killed thousands, displaced millions and caused untold damage to food systems and economies.
The communities bearing the brunt of this climate chaos are least responsible for the emissions that are driving up global temperatures. And they say it is time that wealthy countries take responsibility.
Loss and damage – the irreversible harm caused by climate change, which cannot be adapted to or mitigated against – gained focus at Glasgow’s COP26 like never before. Leaders of least-developed and small island states are determined to continue their push for compensation at this year’s COP27.
“Developing and vulnerable countries are being pushed into deeper and deeper crises by food security, energy poverty, and the debt crisis, which are all underpinned by the colonial extractive legacy,” Sindra Sharma, global policy lead at Climate Action Network (CAN), tells SciDev.Net.
More than 400 non-government organisations signed an open letter from CAN – a network of 1,500 organisations in 130 countries – that calls on governments to put loss and damage finance on the agenda at COP27.
Loss and damage is on the provisional agenda, but advo- cates remain worried that world leaders will find new ways to prevent agreement on financial support for low- and middle-income countries on the climate frontlines. Wealthy countries blocked a proposal at COP26 for a loss and damage financing body, opting instead for a new “dialogue” to continue funding discussions, as they seek to avoid legal liability for historic emissions and related compensation claims.
Climate damage
The World Bank has estimated that Pakistan will need US$40 billion to recover from this year’s devastating floods, which displaced one third of the country’s population. The national poverty rate could increase by up to four percentage points, pushing between six and nine million people into poverty.
Between 2019 and 2020, around 90 per cent of climate finance went towards mitigation – typically used by rich countries to develop greener technologies – while just over 7 per cent went on adaptation – more frequently used by poorer nations to find ways to live with the changing climate, according to research by the Climate Policy Initiative, a non-profit analysis and advisory organisation.
Researchers from the Basque Centre for Climate Change, a non-profit research organisation attached to the University of the Basque Country, have estimated that developing countries will need up to US$580 billion a year by 2030 to cover the costs of loss and damage.
Zoha Shawoo, an associate scientist at the international non-profit Stockholm Environment Institute, told SciDev.Net that climate finance had major gaps, making it ineffective and unjust.
“To be in line with climate justice principles, finance for loss and damage needs to be made in a way that puts the needs of vulnerable and marginalised communities at the centre and gives them a lot of freedom and decisionmaking power over how the money is used to meet their needs,” Shawoo says.