Under the climate agreements, if you want to access climate finance to install solar panels to mitigate your greenhouse gas emissions, you can access the climate facility to purchase the panels. If your house is threatened by increased flood risk, you can access climate finance to raise your house to adapt, again paid for by the climate facility. But if your house is devastated by a massive flood, you lose your house and your belongings. You suffer huge Loss and Damage and you are on your own. You cannot access climate finance to help you rebuild.
The science is conclusive. The recent impacts report from the IPCC shows extreme climatic events have been observed in all regions. Populations with considerable development constraints, who have the highest vulnerability, and who have contributed the least to climate change, are disproportionately suffering these impacts. Simply put, those least responsible for the climate emergency are paying the highest price.
If we don’t act now, then we already know that the costs will add up. NOW is the time for increased global solidarity. NOW is the time for courage to stand up for the greater good. Lessons learned from the global pandemic demonstrate that money at scale can be mobilized when the political will exists. If we delay action, then litigation will replace collaborative efforts. The delay in climate action coupled with the evolution of legal mechanisms and attribution science, has seen climate change litigation more than double since 2015. Inaction will also affect the global economy and erode development gains. Climate losses and damages in one region will have carryover effects to others. As a country experiences disruptions, business activities will be impacted with the risk of stranded assets, and reduced economic output that may take years to recover. The global and regional customers, suppliers, and trading partners of disrupted businesses will also be impacted with spill-over effects causing shocks throughout the global economy.
Inaction on this issue will further erode trust. After COP26, trust in the process was already fragile, a world plagued by vaccine inequity and growing concerns in regards to indebtedness. A critical and consistent ask of the developing countries is to deliver the long awaited and largely symbolic USD$100 billion in climate finance. Although developed countries pledged to deliver this annually starting in 2020, sadly this has still not been achieved. Finally, failure to act will delay mitigation and adaptation actions in the developing world. As climate disasters increase, then for developing countries they will direct their scarce resources to humanitarian recovery efforts, meaning attention that needs to go to climate action will be diverted.
At COP26, the G77 & China negotiating bloc proposed a solution to the gap in finance available to address their needs in the form of a Loss & Damage Finance Facility (LDFF) which will be able “to provide new financial support under Article 9 of the Paris Agreement, in addition to adaptation and mitigation finance, to developing countries to address loss and damage”. But agreement could not be secured for the LDFF’s establishment, not even for a process to do so. In Glasgow, developed countries rejected this request, saying that they were unable to agree to this. They came to the negotiations unprepared and unable to respond. This request has been central to the loss and damage negotiations since Article 8 was enshrined in the Paris Agreement in 2015.
We hope that here in Bonn, they have come better prepared, that they have new and additional finance to contribute to respond to this escalating climate emergency. The Glasgow Dialogue takes place over three days, starting tomorrow, continuing on Wednesday, and culminating on Saturday. This process must not replicate another talk shop. We must not spend more time talking about what we already know. We need to focus on finance to respond to the needs of people impacted by the climate crisis. We need a loss and damage finance facility and we need it NOW.
We hope that the outcomes of the Glasgow Dialogue are consistent and coherent with the progress made in strengthening the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement’s institutional arrangements. This means that Parties must exercise political oversight of the progress and process of the Glasgow Dialogue, in relation to creating a Loss and Damage Finance Facility through the development of recommendations by the SBI for draft decisions relating to the progress and process of the Glasgow Dialogue for the consideration of the COP and CMA at COP27/CMA4.