The “loss and damage” of climate change: what are we talking about?
The planet is warming up and that obviously causes a lot of damage: material, human, cultural, psychological… Even if from today everything was done to limit damage, many consequences are inevitable.
In fact, this is already the case:
This summer a third of Pakistan was flooded.
At the moment, repeated droughts are hitting East Africa, preventing people from working and feeding themselves.
Rising waters around the world are pushing millions of people to move but also destroying legacies, like in Tuvalu where some cemeteries have completely disappeared, submerged.
And all this damage, whose official term is “loss and damage”, it obviously costs a lot of money!
Who is financing this damage?
The countries most affected demand that the countries causing climate change pay the bill. This is polluter-pays logic..
Paradoxically, the countries most affected by climate change are the least responsible for it. NGOs have shown that the countries of the North (the United States, France, Germany) have issued 92% of greenhouse gas emissions caused climate change!
Moreover, these most affected countries (thus the countries of the South) are also those who are less wealthy and the least able to cope financially with these consequences.
This is why this subject of “loss and damage” comes under what is called the “climate justice”. Do the countries of the North have a responsibility to take in relation to the countries of the South?
In any case, it is a crucial subject. Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, called on states to “ cooperate or perish during the first official plenary session of COP27. It sets the tone.
We know people and nations are suffering right now. They need decisions now. Failing to act on losses and damages will only accentuate the loss of confidence and climate damage.
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General.
What can we expect from COP27 regarding loss and damage?
From COP to COP, several solutions to finance losses and damages have been put forward: That the most polluting countries and companies finance these losses and damages, therefore. This year and during the COP, several countries have begun to pledge: 170 million for Germany, 50 million for Austria and 2.5 million for Belgium. Tax windfall profits of fossil fuel companies or taxing the air and maritime sectors are also solutions mentioned. Or establish a moratorium on the debt of affected countries by a climatic disaster.
An agreement at the end of this COP27 is eagerly awaited. Fanny Petitbon, specialist in the subject within the NGO Care France, believes that despite the highlighting of the subject, much remains to be done to do this.
This is the first time that the subject of financing loss and damage, the irreversible impacts of climate change has been on the agenda of a COP. This is a very important step but unfortunately still not enough: States now have 8 days to agree and create a funding mechanism for loss and damage. Climate justice is now
Fanny Petitbon from the NGO Care France
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