Countries on the frontlines of climate change have warned they cannot wait another year for long-sought aid to recover from disasters as floods and hurricanes wreak havoc across the globe.
The appeal came during a meeting of the “loss and damage” fund that will conclude Friday amid concerns it is unlikely to be able to approve climate aid until 2025.
“We cannot wait until the end of 2025 for the first funds to get out the door,” said Adao Soares Barbosa, a board member from East Timor and a long-standing negotiator for the world’s poorest nations.
Photo: Bloomberg
“Loss and damage isn’t waiting for us.”
Nearly 200 nations agreed at the UN COP28 summit last November to launch a fund responsible for distributing aid to developing countries to rebuild in the wake of climate disasters.
That historic moment has given way to complex negotiations to finalize the fund’s design, which some countries worry will not move at a pace or scale that matches the tempo of extreme-weather disasters afflicting their people.
“The urgency of needs of vulnerable countries and communities cannot be left until we have every hair in place for this fund,” said Barbosa.
Damage bills for climate disasters can run into the billions and there is barely enough cash set aside for loss and damage at present to cover just one such event, experts say.
‘IMMENSE PRESSURE
This year has witnessed a string of catastrophes on multiple continents, from floods and landslides to heatwaves and wildfires.
Delegates met in South Korea for the second meeting of the loss and damage fund this week as Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and North America.
The “massive” destruction witnessed in recent weeks “puts immense pressure on us to deliver on our work,” Richard Sherman, the South African co-chair of the board steering the negotiations, told the meeting.
The fund said it wanted money approved “as soon as possible, but realistically by mid-2025,” according to an official document.
In an appeal for faster action, Elizabeth Thompson, a board member from Barbados, said Hurricane Beryl alone had caused “apocalyptic” damage worth “multiple billion dollars.”
“In five islands of the Grenadines... 90 percent of the housing is gone... Houses look like packs of cards and strips of wood, roofs are gone, trees are gone, there is no food, there is no water, there is no power,” she said.
“We cannot keep talking while people live and die in a crisis that they do not cause.”
Thompson said the fund needed to reflect “the urgency and the scale required to respond to... the risk, the damage and the devastation faced by people across the world who need this fund.”
NO MONEY, NO FUND
Wealthy nations have so far pledged around US$661 million to the loss and damage fund. South Korea contributed an additional US$7 million at the start of this week’s meeting.
“That would hardly cover the likely losses from one major climate-related disaster,” said Camilla More, of the International Institute for Environment and Development.
Some estimates suggest developing countries need over US$400 billion annually to rebuild after climate-related disasters. One study put the global bill at between US$290 billion and US$580 billion a year by 2030, and rising after that.
In one example in 2022, unprecedented flooding in Pakistan caused more than US$30 billion in damages and economic losses, according to a UN-backed assessment.
Developing nations had been pushing for a specific fund to distribute aid to recover from climate impacts for 30 years, and the agreement struck in November was hailed a major diplomatic breakthrough.
“(But) we can’t have a fund without money,” said Brandon Wu from ActionAid.
Technical discussions are taking place this year over the details of the loss and damage fund, including with the World Bank which will house the fund on an interim basis.
The Philippines was chosen this week to host the fund’s board. Contentious discussions remain to decide how the money is allocated and in what form it should be made available to countries. On Tuesday, more than 350 nongovernmental organizations sent a letter to the fund’s board demanding that a substantial share of the money be made directly available as small grants to local communities and indigenous groups.
Anyone who has been to Alishan (阿里山) is familiar with the railroad there: one line comes up from Chiayi City past the sacred tree site, while another line goes up to the sunrise viewing platform at Zhushan (祝山). Of course, as a center of logging operations for over 60 years, Alishan did have more rail lines in the past. Are any of these still around? Are they easily accessible? Are they worth visiting? The answer to all three of these questions is emphatically: Yes! One of these lines ran from Alishan all the way up to the base of Jade Mountain. Its
The only geopolitical certainty is that massive change is coming. Three macro trends are only just starting to accelerate, forming a very disruptive background to an already unsettled future. One is that technological transformations exponentially more consequential and rapid than anything prior are in their infancy, and will play out like several simultaneous industrial revolutions. ROBOT REVOLUTION It is still early days, but impacts are starting to be felt. Just yesterday, this line appeared in an article: “To meet demands at Foxconn, factory planners are building physical AI-powered robotic factories with Omniverse and NVIDIA AI.” In other words, they used AI
Nov. 25 to Dec. 1 The Dutch had a choice: join the indigenous Siraya of Sinkan Village (in today’s Tainan) on a headhunting mission or risk losing them as believers. Missionaries George Candidus and Robert Junius relayed their request to the Dutch governor, emphasizing that if they aided the Sinkan, the news would spread and more local inhabitants would be willing to embrace Christianity. Led by Nicolaes Couckebacker, chief factor of the trading post in Formosa, the party set out in December 1630 south toward the Makatao village of Tampsui (by today’s Gaoping River in Pingtung County), whose warriors had taken the
Last month historian Stephen Wertheim of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published an opinion piece in the New York Times with suggestions for an “America First” foreign policy for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Of course China and Taiwan received a mention. “Under presidents Trump and Biden,” Wertheim contends, “the world’s top two powers have descended into open rivalry, with tensions over Taiwan coming to the fore.” After complaining that Washington is militarizing the Taiwan issue, he argues that “In truth, Beijing has long proved willing to tolerate the island’s self-rule so long as Taiwan does not declare independence
RSS