Climate compensation demands grow louder at COP26

GLASGOW — Rich countries are being put on the spot at the COP26 climate summit as poorer nations facing floods, fires, droughts and sea-level rise caused by global warming ramp up calls for compensation. 

Countries vulnerable to climate change have pushed for decades to get the issue of “loss and damage” — the social and economic costs of global warming — on the agenda at U.N. talks. 

Rich nations, historically responsible for the bulk of planet-warming emissions, have resisted, fearing that any commitments could amount to accepting legal liability and open the door to massive claims for compensation.

But with extreme weather events occurring with ever greater frequency and ferocity and rich countries breaking past promises of financial support, loss and damage funding is turning into a key part of this week’s negotiations in Glasgow.

“Those of you who have followed this process will know that loss and damage has historically been seen as a polarizing issue,” COP26 President Alok Sharma told reporters on Monday. “But I’m encouraged that the mood music has changed somewhat, and there is now a practical recognition that action is needed on this topic in the face of growing [climate] impacts.” 

Members of a group pushing for more ambitious climate action — including the United States and European countries — last week said they “recognized” the need to increase “resources for averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage.” 

The EU and a growing number of wealthy countries also support strengthening the Santiago Network, created two years ago to provide technical assistance to countries affected by loss and damage but so far something that largely exists only as a website. 

While wealthy nations are increasingly willing to stump up cash to help poorer ones prepare for climate impacts, with millions pledged at Monday’s “adaptation, loss and damage day,” there’s much more reluctance to give money for the devastation already wrought by rising temperatures. Only Scotland earmarked any cash for climate damage — £1 million. 

“The rhetoric around loss and damage is very prominent,” said Mohamed Adow, director of the Kenya-based think tank Power Shift Africa. “But what they would rather not discuss is finance.” 

Liability concerns

Demands to “operationalize” the Santiago Network — meaning giving it enough funding and staff to start working — are garnering support in Glasgow. But rich countries still balk at demands for a separate loss and damage fund, as well as any suggestion that it’s their responsibility to finance it. 

Ministers and negotiators in Glasgow also tend to steer clear of the word “compensation,” which was expressly excluded in the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

“The regime that we set up … is about international cooperation,” EU negotiator Jacob Werksman said at a press conference last week. “It is not a regime about liability and compensation. It is not intended to be a means by which countries negotiate what one country should, on a theory of liability, be paying another country on the basis of what they’re experiencing in terms of impacts.” 

In Glasgow, he added, “nothing is going to divert that basic concept.” 

Still, the matter of major polluters’ responsibility is inevitably the undertone to any discussion on loss and damage. 

“Tropical island states most at risk have contributed less than 1 percent of the global stock of greenhouse gases that have contributed to global warming. Countries in the northern climes have contributed 70 percent,” said Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on Monday, adding that it was “fundamentally wrong” as well as “unjust” and “immoral” to make the victims pay.

Broken promises

Rich countries do accept the need to help finance mitigation — reducing greenhouse gases — and adaptation — preparing for the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather.

They pledged in 2009 to provide developing countries with $100 billion per year in such funding by 2020, a promise they broke and now expect to only meet in 2023. Even that promise isn’t enough: Developing countries need $70 billion a year just to adapt, a figure the U.N. says could rise to $300 billion by 2030. 

That shortfall is driving growing calls for loss and damage financing, aimed at addressing climate impacts countries can’t adapt to.

“In a way, it’s a continuum,” said Harjeet Singh, a senior adviser at Climate Action Network International. “If you don’t sufficiently invest in mitigation, you have to prepare for disasters, that’s adaptation, but if you do not sufficiently invest in adaptation, you will face loss and damage.”

Vulnerable countries also say their demands for loss and damage funding are more urgent given recent extreme weather events. 

“We must have a decision on loss and damage,” said Milagros de Camps, the Dominican Republic’s deputy environment minister. “For us in the Caribbean, we have extreme weather events happening every year. They have been stronger. Our hurricane season this year was unprecedented.” 

Climate justice

Single events can have devastating economic impacts. Germany estimates the cost of this year’s deadly floods at €30 billion; in 2015, Hurricane Erica wiped out 90 percent of Dominica’s GDP. 

Given these sums, conventional insurance won’t suffice, island nations say. Humanitarian aid isn’t enough either — and developing countries are keen to stress that “climate finance is not charity,” as de Camps put it. 

Meanwhile, activists have started placing demands for “climate justice” at the heart of their protests — and out on the streets, unlike in negotiating rooms, the words “compensation” and “reparation” aren’t taboo. 

“We don’t need aid, we need reparations,” said Farzana Faruk Jhumu, a 23-year-old climate activist from Bangladesh who is attending COP26 as an observer. Debt cancellation for poorer countries should also be discussed, she added. 

Such demands have no chance of garnering the 197-country consensus required for any agreement at COP26, but wealthy nations are starting to accept that they can’t continue to dodge the issue of loss and damage. 

“The topic is very delicate for industrialized nations,” Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary in Germany’s environment ministry, said. “But beyond questions of legal responsibility we must venture further … People are losing everything they own due to climate change; the international community has to provide answers to this.”