Should people be harmed? Is climate change offset?
From storms and floods to heat waves and droughts, research has shown that many disasters have been made worse, or more likely, due to climate change. Climate events start slowly such as sea level rise, ocean acidification, loss of farmland or glacial retreat are also happening — sea level rise now in the region of 3 to 4 mm per year.
All countries will be affected by climate change, but some of the hardest hit have done little to cause it in the first place. These countries are also often the ones that lack the resources most needed to deal with these disasters.
The imbalance has been acknowledged by leaders of the developed world and historical polluters who have established mechanism transfers financial support to developing countries to help them cut emissions and adapt to the consequences of climate change.
But support for another issue, known as “loss and damage,” has long been a topic rife with politics and has so far received only minimal support. Chikondi Chabvuta, South Africa regional advocacy adviser at the nonprofit CARE, explains that the term refers to the consequences of climate change that are no longer adaptive. “It’s really about compensation and climate justice,” she said. “It is the same damage that is taking place in countries in the global south that are stretching their ability to adapt and absorb shocks. In the end, they are left with lost communities, lost livelihoods, lost lives that cannot be put into an adaptation program”.
Financial problems for loss and damage explode at COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last month, where developing countries represent the majority of the world’s population supported the creation of a financing mechanism for it, but it ultimately failed. ONE network has been established to provide “technical assistance” to deal with loss and damage, but rich countries like the US have been annoyed by putting money to actually help countries recover from climate disasters.
“Currently, the United Nations system has agreed to shift financing from richer countries to lower income countries so that those countries can transition to greener paths and for them to have can become more resilient to future impacts,” Teresa Anderson, a climate policy campaigner at ActionAid, told me during COP26. “But if you’re destroyed by a climate disaster, and have to pick up the debris and rebuild and recover, then you’re in yourself.”
Speaking last month at a news conference as COP26 ended, John Kerry, the US president’s special envoy for climate, said his country was still “still thinking about the issue of liability”. He added: “What do we think, over the next few years, we have to work to solve this problem? How much money is needed for what? What is its legitimacy? “
