Imagine a country hit by three of the world’s deadliest storms of the past three years and are about to face another typhoon. No this is not the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Unfortunately this is not fiction.
Typhoon Hagupit is bearing down on the Philippines – smashing into the Eastern Samar province which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) only one year ago. In 2012 Typhoon Bopha hit the Filipino island of Mindanao and in 2011 Tropical Storm Washi killed more than a thousand people and caused massive flooding. The Philippines has had the world’s deadliest storms of the past three years. We hope and pray that Hagupit will not fit in this category of terror. But such severe storms, and other forms of loss and damage, will be a more frequent occurrence as climate change worsens.
Delegates in Lima will face a devastating political storm if they fail the people of the Philippines, and other vulnerable people facing the worst impacts of climate change, and do not make progress on the operationalisation of Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage.
Two important elements — sufficient representation for vulnerable countries, and a subsidiary structure of a financial and technical facility for the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage – hang in the balance in the current SBSTA/SBI text.
ECO is aware that the US, Australia, Japan, and Poland have opposed such fundamental elements of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage before. We trust that their support for the people of the Philippines and other vulnerable countries goes beyond sending food parcels and military clean-up, but rather supports the Warsaw Mechanism to address the problem in a systematic fashion.
Developed countries would be morally bankrupt to renegotiate the fundamentals of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and wish away the finance and support elements agreed by parties at the last two COPs. ECO trusts that parties can see the advantage of agreeing upon a substantial work program for 2015 – rather than having the negotiations over the work program itself spill into 2015 in the lead up to the Paris COP.