Climate change meet must address need for ‘loss & damages’ fund
The World Climate Change Conference—or COP27 (Conference of Parties)—that has just kicked off at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, has a desperate urgency about it not witnessed in the earlier editions. In recent months, rising sea levels have threatened to submerge entire island communities like in Fiji and Kiribati. Incessant flooding has killed thousands in Pakistan, with monetary losses estimated at over $40 billion. Extreme temperatures have triggered forest fires in Europe and a record-breaking 40°C heatwave this summer in London. No wonder United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his opening remarks at the conference, warned the world was “on a highway to climate hell”.
However, there’s been an important shift in the climate change discourse. The Paris Convention in 2015 made great strides in signing a treaty to reduce greenhouse emissions. Last year, at COP26 in Glasgow, there was a breakthrough when participating nations agreed to limit global warming to 1.5°C. The question being posed since then, especially by the developing nations, is: Who bears the cost of fighting climate change? Speaking in Egypt, Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, told the rich nations their prosperity was built on high carbon emissions at the expense of the poor nations, and now they were being forced to pay again as victims of climate breakdown that they did not cause. She warned of a billion climate refugees around the world by the middle of the century if governments failed to tackle the climate crisis.
India has raised the same question when pressed to give up coal. The rich used coal and oil for their industrial revolution. But who will compensate India and the others for giving up these assets in favour of green energy? The answer on the table is the setting up of a ‘loss and damages’ fund to be financed initially by a $1 trillion contribution by the rich nations. The big boys led by the US have opposed this fund as it creates a legal liability and the potential of a rash of lawsuits in the future. Another big change is the Ukraine war. Many nations, particularly those in Europe, who had embarked on phasing out fossil fuels, have now restarted their coal-fired power plants to tide over the energy crisis. But there is a positive side: the world is finally getting down to the nuts and bolts of climate change.