Denmark first to pledge to pay climate change compensation

DENMARK yesterday became the first country to promise to pay millions of pounds in compensation to developing countries ravaged by climate change.

The landmark pledge to make “loss and damage” payments was made at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Flemming Møller Mortensen, Denmark’s development minister, said that more than £11.4 million would go to the Sahel region in north-west Africa and other regions.

Developing countries say they are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis that has been caused largely by the pollution and carbon emissions from richer, industrialised nations.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable areas, such as low-lying islands at risk of rising sea levels, want the UN to set up a “loss and damage” funding facility at the Cop27 climate negotiations in Egypt in November.

However, the US, EU and other richer nations are opposed to making reparations, despite being responsible for the vast majority of carbon emissions.

“It is grossly unfair that the world’s poorest should suffer the most from the consequences of climate change, to which they have contributed the least,” Mr Møller Mortensen said, as Denmark broke ranks with those countries in a move that will put pressure on others to follow suit.

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretarygeneral, has urged rich countries to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies and use that money to compensate “countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis”.