Here’s something for those who think climate summits aren’t really getting us anywhere.
COP28 in Dubai opened to a standing ovation greeting a deal in which rich, polluting countries agree to compensate poor ones for losses due to things like floods, fires and crop failures caused by climate change.
The “Loss and Damage Fund” is a landmark.
Without it, there had always been a fundamental issue of fairness at the heart of global climate talks.
How can rich countries, which got rich by burning fossil fuels, expect poor ones to pay for the consequences of climate change they didn’t cause in the first place?
Why should poor countries join an agreement to prevent the dangers of global warming by developing more expensive clean economies, when rich countries got to develop on the back of dirty ones?
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The Loss and Damage Fund is a formal mechanism to address that unfairness.
But so far, it’s not much more than that.
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Wealthy nations including COP28 hosts the UAE, Germany, the UK, Japan and the US have contributed a total of nearly $300m to the pot. Not bad for day one.
But the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates upwards of $2tr is needed to finance climate mitigation and adaptation in the most vulnerable parts of the world. To make it more than a gesture, much more money, from many more nations will be needed.
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It’s also worth pointing out its taken 32 years to get here. Loss and damage was raised at the UN’s fist climate change “framework” meeting 1991.
These summits may be getting somewhere – but they’re not getting there anywhere fast enough.
