Financing climate crisis loss and damages make or break for COP27
Less than a month to the United Nations (UN) climate change conference, COP27, watchers of the climate crisis space say the issue of climate financing will be on the front burner, especially for developing countries.
For some experts in the field, providing funding to avert, minimise and address loss and damages associated with the adverse effects of the climate crisis would be a make or break issue when the world converge on Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt from November 6 to 18, 2022.
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A Chief Advisor at DanchurchAid and Co-chair of the Climate Justice Group, Mattias Soderberg, has observed that with developing countries pushing to make loss and damages financing a prioritised issue on the agenda, the stakes would be high, especially so when latest science had shown that climate crisis was moving much faster than human interventions and was pushing ecosystems and communities to their limits.
Again, he noted that loss and damages financing would be the focus of the African bloc at COP27 because communities in Africa were the most challenged in terms of the adverse effects of the climate crisis, despite the continent contributing just four per cent of global gas emissions.
From the African perspective, he observed that a successful COP27 would be one that negotiators prioritised more finance mechanisms for climate interventions on the continent.
In a presentation made to 24 African journalists participating in the DANIDA Fellowship Centre climate reporting programme last week, he said it was envisaged that getting a leveler in the polarised positions taken by the developed countries on the one hand and the Group of 77 (G77) and China on the other regarding loss and damages financing would be crucial to collective search for answers to the climate crisis.
DFC journalists
The journalists who have been selected from African countries such as Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, are be taking part in DFC's new learning programme dubbed “Reporting from the African frontline of the global climate crisis."
They are being prepared to report accurately from the African perspective at COP27.
Unmet commitments
A senior Advocacy Advisor on climate at CARE Denmark, a Danish nonprofit organisation, John Nordbo, said in the wake of the unmet commitments by developed countries to scale-up new and additional climate finance to reach $100 billion annually by 2020, there was lack of trust for sustainable funding for both adaptation and mitigation interventions in developing countries.
He said a critical analysis by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showed that climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for climate action in developing countries had reached USD 83.3 billion in 2020.
Although the trend analysts showed a four per cent increase from 2019 and followed a one per cent increase from 2018 to 2019, he said it fell short of the US$100 billion target.
Mr Nordbo said it was important for developed countries to ramp up efforts at mobilising resources to meet the UD$ 100 billion annually goal.
He said that was particularly critical because the COVID-19 pandemic had devastated the economic and social strength of many developing countries while climate crisis continue widespread damages to the environment and people.
Action now
For his part, the chief on National Centre for Climate Research at the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), Adrian Lema, said strong political will was needed for Climate financing and investment in green energy.
He stressed the need for prompt decisions to be made now on sustainable climate financing and green energy to avert increasing threats of the climate crisis on biodiversity, cities, agriculture and human health.
"We are not taking the actions we need to take now, and what that means is that we have to be digging deeper because of delayed action. We need to make swift investments now to save the future," he said.
Background
As used in the UN climate negotiations, "loss and damage" is a general term for the consequences of climate change that go beyond what people can adapt to, or when options exist but a community does not have the resources to access or utilise them.
Loss and damage continue to harm vulnerable communities the most, making addressing the issue a matter of climate justice.
Since the formation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the early 1990s, vulnerable nations have been calling on developed countries to provide financial assistance that can help them address loss and damage, but that call has been resisted.
The call for funding to address loss and damage however gathered steam during COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 and continued at the Bonn UN climate negotiations in Germany in June 2022.
Currently, a few developed countries have soften their stance and beginning to show some level of support for loss and damage financing.
These countries include Canada, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Scotland and the Belgian province of Wallonia.