Climate reparations push intensifies in Glasgow talks

GLASGOW, Scotland — For as long as there have been international climate talks, Saleemul Huq, a botanist from Bangladesh, has quietly counseled diplomats and activists on the prickliest question: What is owed to countries least responsible for the problem of global warming but most harmed by its effects — and by whom?

Year after year, calls have steadily grown louder for industrialized nations responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions already heating up the planet to own up to the problem — and pay for the damage.

This year, demands for redress have sharpened as climate justice has become a rallying cry, not just from countries in the global south, like Huq’s, but from a broad range of activists in the United States and Europe. They have peaked in Glasgow: As negotiations close this week, a major point of contention between rich and poor countries is whether the final summit document will acknowledge the need for a separate pool of money to address historic harms.

Known by sterile code words crafted to avoid blame, “loss and damage,” that fund would be separate from money to help poor countries adapt to a changing climate, its proponents have argued. Loss and damage is a matter of historic responsibility and would pay for irreparable losses, such as the disappearance of national territory, culture and ecosystems, they said.

“The term ‘loss and damage’ is a euphemism for terms we’re not allowed to use, which are ‘liability and compensation,’ ” Huq said. “‘Reparations’ is even worse.”

The United States has long been cool to the idea. But in Glasgow, it signed a statement agreeing to “increase resources” for loss and damage, without committing to anything more specific. The U.S. climate envoy, John Kerry, said Thursday any agreement on loss and damage would have to shield countries from legal claims.

The latest draft statement from the summit, released early Wednesday, says very little about loss and damage except to cite the “urgency of scaling up action and support, including finance” for loss and damage. It says nothing specific about setting up a separate funding stream nor how much. This led a bloc of island nations to say that emerging economies would not put forth more ambitious emissions reductions targets, “if we don’t scale up the provision of finance, and this includes the long overdue recognition of a separate and additional component for loss and damage.”

A vigorous fight on the issue is expected in the closing hours of the summit. “I think there has been a change in the way all parties are approaching this,” Alok Sharma, the summit president, said Thursday afternoon.

Estimates of the amount of money required to address loss and damage varies widely, from roughly $300 billion to $600 billion a year by 2030. At the moment, rich countries have failed to shore up the $100 billion they promised to deliver annually by 2020. That aid is designed to help countries adapt to climate change; it doesn’t include funds to address permanent damage.