Island states say fund for victims of climate disasters must be created by Cop27

Vulnerable island states say they cannot wait another three years for a funding mechanism to help victims of climate disasters.

Developing countries demanded the creation of a fund to respond to loss and damage caused by increasing climate impacts during last year’s Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK.

But faced with opposition from the United States and the EU, they settled for a “dialogue”, co-chaired by the United States and Singapore, which runs until June 2024 and is responsible for discuss potential funding arrangements.

During the first session of the dialogue on Tuesday, small island states said 2024 was too late for money to start flowing to communities on the front lines of climate impacts. They want to establish a funding facility at this year’s climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and iron out details along the way.

“There is no clear funding for the loss and damage that is currently undermining basic human rights in our region. This is essential,” said Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, during the meeting during the preparatory climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany.

Jetn̄il-Kijiner said that no climate funding, humanitarian aid or adaptation funding, “even comes close to the scale of the resources needed.”

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Small island states first offered compensation for victims of projected sea level rise 31 years ago, but their calls, joined by others, remain unanswered.

“The Glasgow dialogue appears to be a stand-alone dialogue with no clear destination,” said Michai Robertson, climate negotiator from Antigua and Barbuda on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis).

Denmark was the only voice among developed countries actively engaged on the issue. Wealthy nations have long sought to avoid liability and compensation claims for their historic emissions and responsibility for climate change.

“I cannot in good conscience expose Canadian taxpayers to liability risks that could be unlimited,” Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault told the National Observer last month.

Instead, donor countries emphasize the existing supply of development funding and humanitarian assistance.

But research from anti-poverty charity Oxfam released on Tuesday highlighted that humanitarian aid is not keeping pace with the increasing pace of extreme weather.

He revealed that UN humanitarian appeals for extreme weather disasters, such as floods and droughts, increased by more than 800% between 2000 and 2021. Since 2017, donor countries have responded to 54% of these calls on average, leaving an estimated shortfall of between $28 billion and $33 billion. .

“These figures are alarming. And the humanitarian system is failing to keep up,” Tracy Carty, climate policy and advocacy manager at Oxfam, told a news conference in Bonn. “Countries can’t hide behind the excuse that the humanitarian system is there and therefore we don’t need an equitable funding system for loss and damage.”

By 2030, unavoidable economic losses from climate change in developing countries are expected to reach $290-580 billion. The precise figure depends on the success of efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

Humanitarian aid will not expand to meet these needs, as it tends to focus on the worst-affected areas and often fails to take into account small and medium-scale crises, said Carty, who described funding as “fragmented, inadequate and often capricious”. donors”.

In fact, Oxfam estimates that over the past two decades, UN appeals have covered only around 7.5% of extreme weather-related disasters in low- and middle-income countries. This only brought relief to 474 million people while nearly 3.9 billion people were affected.

This ‘disaster begging bowl’ approach is not aligned with climate justice principles, the charity says, and needs to be replaced ‘with a fair and automatic financial support mechanism’ based on the principle of the “polluter pays”.

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The issue of financing victims of climate disasters “deserves more than dialogue”, said Madeleine Diouf Sarr of Senegal, chair of the least developed countries (LDCs) at the start of the talks.

“Countries that have far more responsibility and capacity than ours must fill the funding gap so that when the impacts of climate change hit – when homes and hospitals are swept away, when crops are destroyed, when islands sink and when entire communities are displaced – the costs don’t land on already vulnerable households,” she said.

Harjeet Singh, senior adviser on climate impacts at Climate Action Network (CAN) International, said the dialogue risked becoming “a talk shop” and “won’t lead to anything meaningful” unless the discussions were integrated into the official outcome of the meeting.

So far, the dialogue remains outside the meeting’s formal negotiating agenda.

“If rich countries do not allow the Glasgow dialogue on financing loss and damage to be on the official agenda, it clearly means that they have no intention of helping people on the ground… who are suffering right now,” he said.

Jérôme Ilagan, co-chair of the UN body responsible for loss and damage, promised that the dialogue would go beyond a “discussion workshop” and work “to provide concrete ideas and progress”.

If you have only vaguely followed the COPs, you may have heard of the need for a new funding mechanism to respond to the #LossAndDamage.

But you might be quite shocked to learn that it’s not even a formal agenda item to be negotiated at the UNFCCC.

Just a “dialogue” without a mandate for results. pic.twitter.com/flaCZ5JAjS

— Teresa Anderson (@1TeresaAnderson) June 7, 2022