Countries will establish a fund to pay for “loss and damage” from climate disasters by the end of this year, a leading climate diplomat has said.
Agreement to establish a “loss and damage” fund was secured at COP27 in Egypt last November to compensate vulnerable nations for “loss and damage” from extreme weather, although there are no specifications on who would pay into the fund or how money would be disbursed.
Before the last climate summit in Egypt, rich Western countries had long resisted calls from vulnerable states for a loss and damage fund for fear it could make them liable for historic emissions.
A committee tasked with deciding how funding should work held its first, three-day meeting this week in the Egyptian city of Luxor. It includes 14 representatives of developing countries, and 10 from developed countries.
According to Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s lead climate negotiator, the talks did not do enough to address controversial issues such as sources of financing or the type of projects the fund would cover, albeit there was some convergence between delegates over a road map to create a fund. There is also disagreement as to whether China, the world’s biggest emitter, should pay into the fund, given that its historical emissions are modest relative to the size of its population.
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About whether or not the fund would be up and running by the time of COP28, which will be held from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in the United Arab Emirates, he told an online briefing: “Will it be created? I hope so and I assume so, and this is what we are working towards.”
“Will it be delivering? I think this is a question of how complex this fund will be, and what will be the governing modalities and the working modalities of the fund.”
The main points of divergence at the Luxor meeting were over whether to identify gaps in the existing system of climate finance before looking at the mechanics of the fund, or to work on both in parallel, Nasr said.
“Although they have different views, in many cases there was this mood of cooperation and understanding and responsibility that part of the outcome in UAE has to be these funding arrangements and the fund,” he was quoted as saying.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
