Despite efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, it will inevitably cause damage. A financial fund could soon enable the countries most in difficulty to cope: we take stock with NOWU, France Télévision’s environmental digital media.
The subject of loss and damage will be at the heart of COP28 after having already been a major subject of COP27. To understand what this expression refers to, we must look back at the strategy that has been adopted by the international community in the face of climate change.
The first thing is to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The second is to adapt to face the effects of climate change that we cannot avoid. And finally, we will have to manage the damage that will occur despite everything.
These are good this damage which is designated by the expression “loss and damage” : extreme events such as floods, droughts, or slower but equally dramatic events such as rising water levels which threaten the very existence of certain countries.
Loss and damage, a subject at the heart of COP28
Losses and damages raise the question of climate justice. Because in fact, among people affected by extreme weather events since 1991, 97% lived in developing countries according to the Loss and Damage Collaboration.
However, it is proven that it is the most developed countries which historically are responsible for the majority of emissions caused climate change: one of the estimates referred to by Loss and Damage Collaboration shows that countries in the North emitted 92% of the greenhouse gas emissions that caused current climate change.
The countries of the South which are on the front line even though they have contributed little or nothing to the climate crisis and do not necessarily have the financial means to deal with it have been demanding since 1991 that this damage, and they obtained in 2022, during COP27, the creation of a dedicated fund.
A financial fund dedicated to losses and damages
This fund is therefore on the agenda for negotiations, which are still ongoing on this subject. Between COP27 and COP28, a transition committee made up of 24 governments was responsible for defining how it would work and published its plan at the beginning of November. He proposes toestablish the fund provisionally, for four years, within the World Bankwithout specifying who will contribute and to what extent.
This text is widely criticized, particularly by developing countries and NGOs: Fanny Petitbon, advocacy manager at Care France, has many reservations.
“We are going to fight so that the fund is not hosted by the World Bank, which continues to invest in fossils and which must be reformed, then there must be a financial objective for the fund, […] and finally there must be an obligation for developed countries to contribute. »
Enough to plan debates at COP28 where this agreement must be finalized.
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