Yesterday, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon must have had Nelson Mandela’s words on her mind when she announced her country’s pledge to provide £1 million to respond to loss and damage. The money will come from the Scottish Government’s soon-to-be £6 million-a-year Climate Justice Fund, which to date has been focused on adaptation, and is to be used to help communities recover from and build resilience against climate-related events. This is the first developed country – ever – to make an explicit commitment to loss and damage finance.
Of course, this is nowhere near sufficient to respond to the scale of loss and damage needs, which could range between US$290 billion and $580 billion annually by 2030, only for developing countries. Yet this small but strong political stance that Scotland, as a sub-state actor, is taking towards countries and people on the frontline of climate impacts, is a way of saying: we heard you, we bear a responsibility in this and we will not let you down. And it is also a message for other Western governments with much larger resources than Scotland: if small nations can do it, you can and MUST do it too.
Despite being anchored in the Paris agreement as the third pillar of climate action, loss and damage remains the “unwanted child” in the climate talks, as the AOSIS Chair bluntly but rightly said on Sunday. Developed countries do not want to face their responsibilities and pay to repair the devastating impacts of flood, hurricanes, sea-level rise, glacial melt, and increasing pace of desertification, triggered by their historical emissions but which primarily affect the poorest countries, communities and ecosystems. Rich countries are not exempt from loss and damage as the terrible flash floods in Europe over the summer sadly demonstrated. But not every country can immediately allocate €30 billion to rebuild the country, like Germany was able to.
The decisions from COP26 but also speeches from world leaders must reflect this urgency and provide solutions that address the scale of the needs in developing countries and the vulnerable communities therein. Its decisions need to contribute to ensuring that adequate and needs-based support is available and is accessible to the most vulnerable people for upscaling adaptation and responding to loss and damage. This is not a matter of charity but of climate justice!