Open Letter to Members of the Board of the Fund for Loss and Damage

More than 350 international, regional and national civil society organizations from all regions of the world, the vast majority of them from developing countries, sent an open letter to the Board of the Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) on the eve of its second meeting from July 9-12  in Songdo, South Korea, which includes a discussion of access modalities on its agenda. It reiterates civil society’s collective commitment to and persistent advocacy call for direct access modalities and devolved finance to local communities, championed throughout throughout the Fund’s design process in the Transitional Committee last year.

To truly support often marginalized and disenfranchised communities most affected by climate change, including women and diverse gender groups and Indigenous Peoples, the LDF must adopt streamlined and inclusive direct access modalities, ensuring funds reach the local level swiftly and effectively. This includes establishing a dedicated community access window that provides funding, including in the form of small grants unbureaucratically to affected communities as part of broader direct access approach operationalized throughout the Fund. The pathway ahead highlights the necessity of clearly defining collectively what people-centered direct access entails. 

The ambition for a progressively larger share of Fund resources being channeled for simplified and enhanced direct community access must be realized in a well capitalized LDF with resource mobilization at scale commensurate with the challenges of loss and damage, which are expected to reach hundreds of billions US Dollars yearly by 2030. This stands in contrast to collective pledges of around 680 million US Dollars the Fund has received so far.