Climate disaster aid scheme ‘Global Shield’ launched at COP27
A scheme to give speedy financial support to communities battered by climate disasters was launched Monday by a group of rich and developing nations at the UN COP27 summit in Egypt.
The “Global Shield against Climate Risks” comes as many of the most vulnerable nations are also demanding wider compensation for the “loss and damage” they have already suffered from a heating planet.
The initiative, backed by the G7 and launched with initial funding of more than US$200 million, aims to provide “pre-arranged financial support designed to be quickly deployed in times of climate disasters”.
The Global Shield project “is long overdue”, said Ken OforiAtta, Ghana’s finance minister and chair of the V20 group of nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
“It has never been a question of who pays for loss and damage, because we are paying for it,” he said in recorded remarks at the summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
“Our economies pay for it in lost growth prospects, our enterprises pay for it in business disruption, and our communities pay for it in lives and livelihoods lost.”
A first group of nations that will benefit from the scheme includes Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Fiji, Ghana, Pakistan, the Philippines and Senegal.
Nations at the COP27 agreed this year for the first time to include the thorny topic of loss and damage on the formal agenda, after years of reluctance from richer polluters wary of creating open-ended liability.
Germany said the Global Shield scheme, largely in the form of insurance that pays out immediately after – or even before – a climate disaster, would be part of a broader effort to respond to loss and damage.
Svenja Schulze, Germany’s minister of economic cooperation and development, stressed that the scheme was not “a tactic” to sidestep calls for a specific loss and damage funding mechanism.
“The Global Shield isn’t the one and only solution for loss and damage, certainly not,” she said, adding that more funding will be needed to cover more countries.
“Those most affected by climate impacts need practical action now.”