The UN Climate Conference Report: Preventing Climate Change and the Challenges for Adaptation in Developed and Poor Countries (COP17, Dec. 1997)

At the end of the UN climate conference last year, developed countries were advised to double their funding for adaptation from 2020 levels to 2025, if they wanted to have a chance. However, the UN says even that amount of money would be insufficient to address the needs that exist in developing nations to prepare for climate risk.

Pakistan cooked under a deadly heat wave this year and it was caused by climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The floods in living memory are what it is reeling from now.

“The message of this report is clear: strong political will is needed to increase adaptation investments and outcomes,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, wrote in a foreword to the report.

She stated that we need to get ahead of the game so that we don’t have to spend the coming decades in emergency response mode.

The UN published the report days before its annual climate conference starts in Egypt. The UN reported last week that the world isn’t cutting greenhouse gas emissions nearly enough to avoid potentially catastrophic sea level rise and other global dangers.

The countries that have ratified that convention (there are 197 of them now) became the “Conference of the Parties.” They held their first meeting in Germany in 1995. 27 countries have come together at once to try to save the world. At this point, the COP meetings have become a bonanza for anyone with anything to lose or gain from climate change. Indigenous peoples send their own delegates to represent their interests. Activists from the local area and from around the world flood the streets outside the conference. Corporations from Big Tech to the fossil fuel industry set up shop to try to sell themselves as part of the solution.

The COP will focus on figuring out how to live with the consequences of Climate change given how disastrous the situation is. Adaptation is one of the big topics at the conference. Specifically, delegates from more affluent countries will need to hammer out how they’ll make good on a promise they made last year to double finance for “adaptation” measures — a pledge of about $40 billion a year by 2025.

To prepare for more extreme weather, the world needs to invest more money in projects to reduce the hazards, vulnerability and exposure that people face, the UN says. That could include building water reservoirs in areas at risk of drought, ensuring infrastructure is built to stand up to the impacts of a hotter climate, and providing communities with early warning systems to help people evacuate in emergencies.

The UN warned about inflation and energy crisis not related to climate change in addition to the fact that wealthier countries may not be willing to provide more money for adaptation.

“We have to change our mindset and the way we think, because, actually, when it comes to climate, you know, an investment across borders in other places is a domestic investment,” Duarte says.

Climate Change in Africa: Progress, Challenges, Opportunities, and Challenges for Adaptation and Loss and Damage during the COP 27 Conference

This is a raging debate, even within the conference. The climate activist who was a media sensation at this year’s conference and will not attend again said that the conference is not working. “The COPs are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” Thunberg said.

It’s made people think about what might be accomplished at the climate conference if local voices are not heard. This year’s conference is being called “Africa’s COP.” African nations make up around 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries within the region are facing significant climate impacts. The Horn of Africa, for example, is in the midst of its longest drought in decades as climate change heightens the risk of drought. With five parched rainy seasons in a row, more than 50 million people in seven countries stretching from Sudan and Eritrea down to Kenya and Uganda face acute food insecurity this year. There are stark differences in the priorities of adaptation and loss and damage at COP 27.

The world has already warmed by 1.2 degrees. Staying below that 1.5-degree threshold requires reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades. The world needs a short period to transition to clean energy. The alternative is for us to lose the world’s coral reefs and turn many of the world’s megacities into “heat- stressed” places.

The money is supposed to go toward new and improved infrastructure that might help keep people safe in a warming world. That might look like cities designed to be better at beating the heat or communities that are less likely to be wiped out in a wildfire. Or it could mean expanded early warning systems that can warn people about a flood or storm headed their way. There’s a push this year to secure even more funding for these kinds of adaptation projects, particularly since adaptation costs in developing countries have been projected to reach upwards of $300 billion a year by the end of the decade. Advocates are also pushing for more locally led solutions since what it means to live with climate change looks different from place to place and the people most affected by climate disasters haven’t always been included at planning tables.

Climate change is threatening the social fabric of our Pacific communities according to Seru. “This is why these funds are required. This is a matter of justice for many of the small island developing states and countries such as those in the Pacific.”

Wealthier nations, headed by the US, have emitted vastly more greenhouse gas emissions historically. So the argument is that they should cough up some of the cash to pay for the consequences. Advocates and delegates from some of the most vulnerable nations want a funding mechanism for this kind of “loss and damage.” Over the years, wealthier nations have poo- tipped this idea over and over again, but now they are faced with an upswell of support for loss and damage financing from developing countries as climate change takes an ever greater toll.

The leaders of wealthy nations are warned that there can’t be a reversal of their commitments at the last climate conference in Glasgow, UK.

Mahmoud Sakr, president of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Cairo, says that scientists from climate-vulnerable countries will be urging COP delegates to boost research funding. The areas of the Middle East and North Africa, which already have low precipitation and arid conditions, need to conduct more of their own climate studies. The Arab world accounts for just 1.2% of published climate studies, according to an analysis1 published at the end of 2019.

In 2015, Egypt estimated that it needs to set aside $73 billion for projects to help the country mitigate climate change and adapt its infrastructure. The number has tripled, according to the environment minister. “Most climate actions we have implemented have been from the national budget, which adds more burden and competes with our basic needs that have to be fulfilled.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report in February that included the phrase “losses and damages”, which boosted the LMIC cause. Christopher Trisos is an environmental scientist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and one of the authors of the chapter on climate impacts in Africa.

Ian Mitchell, researcher with the Centre for Global Development in London, warned about the possible consequences if the loss and damage agreement was to fall through. High-income countries would agree to the principle and absorb loss- and damage finance in their humanitarian aid spending, meaning it wouldn’t be new money.

Even though the issues are likely to be dealt with in Egypt, the politics will probably get messy, according to Adil Najam, a professor of international climate diplomacy at Boston University. He adds that loss-and-damage finance can no longer be avoided by the high-income countries, especially given that climate impacts in vulnerable countries are becoming much more visible and severe.

Fouad says that organizing this year’s COP in Africa has been transformative. Africa is expecting more attention to issues like food security, desertification, natural disasters, and water scarcity, as they are relevant to most developing countries. This is a chance for non-governmental organizations to be heard.

The hometown of Khan was underwater. His friend rescued a woman who had walked barefoot, carrying her sick child, through stagnant floodwaters for 15 miles. Khan’s mother was unable to get home to check on her child because of the washed-out roads.

Loss and damage explained at COP27: South Asian island-brought back from floods or sinking into the ocean, or why Fiji needs a dedicated loss and damage fund

The South Asian country is slightly responsible for a small part of the world’s planet-warming emissions. And there are many other countries like it around the world.

Loss and damage will be center stage at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, this year, as low-emitting countries inundated with floods or watching their islands sink into the ocean are demanding that developed, high-emissions countries pay up for this damage.

Wealthy nations are concerned about paying for such a fund being seen as an admission of liability, which could spark legal battles, and that is one of the main reasons this type of fund is contentious. The US has pushed back on it in the past but is still reticent about it.

Climate activists in developing nations said Pakistan’s cascading disasters was the clearest evidence that a dedicated loss and damage fund was needed.

Gina McCarthy, former White House Climate Adviser, told CNN the developed world is not prepared to protect itself from climate disasters. “It’s the responsibility of the developed world to support that effort. Commitments have been made but are not being fulfilled.

Loss and damage is not a new ask. Developing countries and small island states have been pressing for these kinds of funds since 1991, when the Pacific island Vanuatu first proposed a plan for high-emitting countries to funnel money toward those impacted by sea level rise.

In Fiji, climate activist Lavetanalagi Seru’s home island, more than $1 billion has been spent to relocate families. It is not an easy decision to move away from ancestral lands and climate change is having a serious impact on the islands, said Seru.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/world/loss-and-damage-explained-cop27-climate/index.html

Putting Loss and Damage on the agenda of the United States: Is It Important for the Developed World to Empathize and Take Responsibility?

Khan said he understands why rich developed nations are “dragging their feet.” But he added that it’s “very important for them to empathize and take responsibility.”

John Kerry, the US Climate Envoy, said on a recent call with reporters that he was not sure if the term reparations was used in this context. He added: “We have always said that it is imperative for the developed world to help the developing world to deal with the impacts of climate.”

Ahead of a deadline in four years, Kerry will have a conversation on a fund this year, to decide on what it will look like. And US officials still have questions – whether it would come through an existing financial source like the Green Climate Fund, or an entirely new source.

Kerry also sparked some controversy on the topic at a recent New York Times event, when in response to a question on loss and damage, Kerry seemed to suggest that no country has enough money to help places like Pakistan recover from devastating climate disasters.

“Look at the annual defense budget of the developed countries. We can mobilize the money,” Alden Meyer, senior associate at E3G, told CNN. It isn’t a question of money being there. It’s a question of political will.”

Do we think we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? The ambassador to Egypt told reporters recently he would love to, but will see how parties deliver on that.

But Nasr also tamped down expectations, saying that if countries are still haggling over whether to even put loss and damage on the agenda, they’re unlikely to have a breakthrough on a financing mechanism.

He said it’s more likely that the loss and damage conversation will continue over the two weeks of Sharm, perhaps ending a framework established for a financing mechanism – or clarity on whether funds might come from new or existing sources.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/world/loss-and-damage-explained-cop27-climate/index.html

Comment on ‘Mitigation of a Black Hole’ by R.R. McCartan and R.P. Saunders

For countries that aren’t on the front line, it’s kind of a distraction and people should focus on mitigation. “If we had done mitigation early enough, we wouldn’t have to adapt and if we’d adapted early enough, we wouldn’t have the loss of damage. But we haven’t done those things.”