Vulnerable island states say they cannot wait another 3 years for a funding mechanism to assist victims of climate disasters.
Developing countries demanded the creation of a fund to reply to the losses and damages caused by increasing climate impacts during last year’s Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK.
But in the face of US and EU opposition, they settled for any “dialogue”, co-chaired through the US and Singapore, which runs until June 2024 and it is tasked with discussing potential funding arrangements.
At the first session of the dialogue , small island states said 2024 was past too far for the money to start flowing to communities around the frontline of climate impacts. They want to set up a finance facility only at that year’s climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and exercise the details along the way.
“There is no clear finance for that loss and damage that's right now undermining fundamental human rights in our region. This really is essential,” Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, told the meeting during preparatory climate talks in Bonn, Germany.
Jetnil-Kijiner said no climate finance, neither humanitarian aid nor adaptation funding, “even compares to the scale of resources required”.
Small island states first proposed compensation for victims of projected sea-level rise 31 years ago however their calls, joined by others, remain unanswered.
“The Glasgow Dialogue appears to be a 1 standalone dialogue with no clear destination,” Michai Robertson, climate negotiator of Antigua and Barbuda said with respect to the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis).
Denmark has been a lone voice among civilized world actively engaging on the issue. Rich nations have long sought to avoid any liability and compensation claims for their historic emissions and responsibility in causing global warming.
“I cannot in good conscience put Canadian taxpayers at liability risks that could be limitless,” Canada’s environment minister Steven Guilbeault told the nation's Observer last month.
Instead, donor nations point to existing provision of development finance and humanitarian aid.
But research by anti-poverty charity Oxfam published highlighted that humanitarian aid is not keeping up with the growing toll of extreme weather.
It discovered that UN humanitarian appeals for extreme weather disasters, for example floods and droughts, rose by a lot more than 800% between 2000 and 2023. Since 2023, donor nations have met 54% of these appeals on average, leaving an estimated $28-33bn shortfall.
“Those figures are alarming. And also the humanitarian product is neglecting to continue,” Tracy Carty, climate policy and advocacy lead at Oxfam, told a press conference in Bonn. “Countries cannot hide behind the excuse the humanitarian product is there and for that reason we do not require a fair financing system for loss and damage.”
Humanitarian aid won't stretch to satisfy those needs since it tends to focus on most-affected areas and frequently doesn't capture small and medium-size crises, said Carty, who described the funding as “piecemeal, inadequate and frequently in the whim of donors”.
In fact, Oxfam estimates that more than the past 2 decades, UN appeals only covered around 7.5% of extreme-weather-related disasters in low and middle-income countries. This only provided relief for 474 million people when closer to 3.9bn everyone was affected.
This “disaster begging bowl” approach is misaligned with principles of climate justice, the charity argues, and needs to be replaced “with a good and automatic mechanism for financial support” in line with the “polluter pays” principle.
The issue of financing for victims of climate disasters “deserves more than a dialogue,” said Madeleine Diouf Sarr, of Senegal, chair from the least civilized world (LDCs) at the beginning of the talks.
“Countries with much greater responsibility and capabilities than ours must close the funding gap so that when the impacts of climate change hit – when houses and hospitals are washed away, when crops are destroyed, when islands sink so when whole communities are displaced – the costs don't find the already vulnerable households,” she said.
Harjeet Singh, senior adviser on climate impacts at the Climate Action Network (CAN) International, said the dialogue risked becoming “a talking shop” and “won't result in anything meaningful” unless discussions are fed into the formal outcome of the meeting.
So far, the dialogue remains away from meeting's formal negotiating agenda.
“If rich countries do not let the Glasgow dialogue on loss and damage finance to be on the formal agenda, it clearly implies that they have no aim of helping people around the ground- that are suffering right now,” he explained.
Jerome Ilagan, co-chair from the UN body responsible for loss and damage, promised the dialogue would exceed “a talking shop” and work “to deliver concrete ideas and progress”.
