The most recent climate talks were seen as a watershed moment for the issue of loss and damage – the worst impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable – but we emerged with a mixed situation. Despite disappointment from the Fiji COP, not all is “lost and damaged."
The “Pacific COP,” the first one hosted by a small island developing country (Fiji) helped focus minds on the most vulnerable on the frontline of climate impacts. Amplified by the extreme hurricane season that broke record after record, the third year of devastating drought in the horn of Africa, extreme monsoonal rains displacing millions – everywhere you looked the media were reporting on extreme weather events as examples of climate change loss and damage.
The first week of the COP saw an epic David and Goliath battle. Developing countries were well coordinated by the delegate from Cuba whose country had been left looking like a “nuclear wasteland” by Hurricane Irma. They fought for progress on finance for loss and damage against developed countries. Australia and the US led the charge - even denying that recent extreme weather events have a link to climate change. As well as questioning already agreed to mandates, they suggested this wasn’t the right place to discuss loss and damage finance (whilst resisting discussing loss and damage finance in the venues they suggested shifting it to). Whilst the US and Australia were the worst players, other rich countries like Canada and EU member states did not stand with vulnerable countries.
Reflecting this epic, behind closed doors battle, the Climate Action Network awarded rich countries two “Fossils of the Day” (one and two) , a non-honorific of sorts for standing out as being particularly obstructionist in the climate process, and a Ray of the Day to the delegate from Cuba for uniting developing countries and standing up to the rich country bullies. “When your island is destroyed, when the roof of your house is gone, you know it's climate change.”
The COP23 result was a disappointingly tiny step forward. Rather than a clear pathway forward with concrete steps and timeframes for developing and delivering finance for loss and damage, countries agreed to hold a one-off meeting (the Suva expert dialogue) in April/May 2018. They called for submissions by February.
But the crystal-clear messaging and strong support from developing country ministers, delegates and global civil society for the "operationalization" of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (WIM) and the UNFCCC body tasked with taking the work on this issue forward by instituting a finance arm gives momentum to the topic. The few opportunities that were agreed at COP23 (submissions in February, the Suva expert dialogue in April/May) will be enough to apply pressure going forward and put the climate talks on the right path to establishing a finance arm of the WIM in 2019 - when the WIM is due to be reviewed. This will be able to provide finance to the worst affected communities on the frontline of climate change.
A key part of finance for loss and damage will be ensuring that it is in addition to other types of climate finance – there isn’t enough adaptation finance as it is, and short-changing adaptation will only lead to even more catastrophic loss and damage. Additionally, in agreeing on loss and damage as a separate pillar of the Paris Agreement (in the stand-alone Article 8), countries agreed that it was separate to and distinct from adaptation, hence needing additional finance from that already agreed for adaptation.
There have been a number of proposals for where this additional finance could come from, including a Climate Damages Tax. This tax would be on fossil fuel extraction paid directly into loss and damage finance, and other sources would include international aviation and maritime fuel taxes, airline levies and a financial transaction tax (a Robin Hood Tax). These sources are mostly polluter pays and can be implemented in a way to respect the equity principles of the convention – namely that they impact rich countries and benefit poor countries. And, as they are from industries that are un- or under-taxed, they can be implemented on top of existing tax systems and generate genuinely new finance at a scale to match the problem, around US $200-300 billion a year.
