MADRID – Emissions cuts and adaptation efforts have not been enough to avoid climate change from destroying lives and livelihoods.
As a variety of dangerous phenomena intensify due to climatic change, countries are set to assess how these impacts – referred to as loss and damage – are taken into account.
The 2013 international framework to address loss and damage – referred to as Warsaw International Mechanism (Wim) – is up for review. How this mechanism ought to be governed and financed is really a major aspect of the Cop25 talks in Madrid this fortnight.
The framework intended that civilized world provide developing countries with finance, technology and capacity-building to assist victims of climate change recover after extreme weather events or slower-onset climate disasters such as sea-level rise.
The UN has established funds to invest in the transition to cleaner energy in poor countries and their adaptation to a heated world. But rich countries – which hold the historical responsibility for global warming – have dragged their feet on providing new finance to cover losses. Preferring to inspire the development of insurance schemes.
They also have sought to avoid any liability and compensation claims for their historic responsibility in causing global warming, using the US a regular opponent across multiple administrations. The united states in now the process of withdrawing in the Paris Agreement, as well as in a Tuesday op-ed for Climate Home News Bangladeshi academic Saleemul Huq required compensation to again be openly discussed.
But Carlos Fuller, lead negotiator for Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), told Climate Home News that pushing for compensation was still a political “no-no”.
“For me which will never fly,” he explained.
Still, the consideration from the Wim review – which took place on Sunday – will probably see disagreements between rich and vulnerable countries at Cop25, as it has for many years.
In submissions to UN Global warming in front of Cop25, the typhoon-vulnerable Philippines said hello was “imperative for finance to immediately and systematically flow” to deal with loss and damage impacts. The Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) urged countries to “sufficiently and reliably” fund work to address the issue.
Fuller said countries that experience loss and damage ought to be supported through “finance but additionally capacity-building”.
The establishment of the financing facility remained a distant prospect, he explained, with talks centered on reviewing the Wim.
“I don't think we've reached that stage yet,” he explained.
Civil society groups have called for financial support to visit beyond insurance-based funding and humanitarian aid for climate victims being systematic.
In an open letter to Cop25 president and Chile’s environment minister Carolina Schmidt, more than 150 civil society groups have called for the development of a specific financing facility and debt relief to assist vulnerable countries get over loss and damage impacts. They argued regular contributions from wealthy countries and global taxes on financial transactions, international air travel and non-renewable fuels should finance the fund.
The letter comes after a report by a coalition of climate and environmental organisations estimated rich countries should provide an additional $50 billion per year by 2023 and $300 billion annually by 2030 to address loss and damage.
Harjeet Singh, global lead on global warming for ActionAid, told CHN: “The world is recognising an environment emergency but there is no global system to supply relief and help [vulnerable countries] to recover in the impacts.”
