By Naveena Sadasivam, Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images, Grist, November 7, 2022
Wealthy nations have long dodged calls to compensate the developing world for the loss and damage that it has suffered as a result of the 1.2 degrees Celsius that the earth has already warmed since preindustrial times. Developing nations have argued that they did little to cause climate change compared to early-industrializing countries, and yet they are hit harder by climate-fueled disasters and phenomena like sea-level rise.
The call for loss and damage funding, which in effect would be a kind of climate reparations, began in the early 1990s. But at each annual United Nations climate change conference, abbreviated as COP, rich nations including the U.S., European Union countries, and Australia found ways to sidestep the issue. They excluded loss and damage proposals from discussions, watered down any language that referred to it, and suggested alternatives such as insurance schemes instead of direct funding. The loss and damage battle at recent COPs has often centered around the written agenda for the conference. In past years, wealthy nations blocked any mention of loss and damage funding in the official agenda.
But on Sunday, the opening day of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, wealthy nations and developing countries unanimously agreed to include loss and damage funding on the conference agenda. Hailed as a historic moment in climate negotiations, the breakthrough means that loss and damage funding is poised to finally receive concerted attention from both developed and developing nations. It paves the way for discussions about a separate international fund for loss and damage — as developing nations have demanded — the role of insurance in tackling the effects of climate change, and other financial arrangements to compensate island nations and countries in the early stages of industrialization.
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