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Pollution from developed countries set climate change in motion. But it’s the countries left behind by industrialization that are feeling the heat. Now, those poorer nations are demanding what’s known in the climate debate as “loss and damage” — financial and technological help to cope with problems they didn’t cause. It’s an issue that could dominate the global climate talks set for November in Egypt.
1. What is ‘loss and damage’?
Shorthand for a program of climate compensation. The phrase refers to the “loss” of lives, cultures or species that can never return, and the “damage” to vital infrastructure that needs to be repaired after climate-driven disasters. Low-lying developing countries are already bearing the cost and want the largest polluters to make them whole. The aim is a global agreement that would amount to an insurance program paid for by developed nations to poorer nations most affected but least responsible. A recent string of extraordinary disasters, such as this summer’s flooding in Pakistan, which left a third of the country flooded for weeks, have brought urgency to the debate.
2. Why is ‘loss and damage’ so controversial?
Because it requires an implicit admission of responsibility by rich countries — and paying a lot of money. There is no official cost estimate, but Pakistan’s floods alone inflicted $30 billion in damage since the end of August; researchers have estimated that climate change made peak rainfall there 75% more intense than it would have been without climate change. Money is likely to be central to disagreements at the COP27 United Nations-sponsored talks scheduled for Sharm El Sheik, a resort in Egypt. But even the most generous estimates of what such a deal might involve, reaching many billions of dollars, would likely cover a small portion of what’s needed.
3. What else is involved in the talks?
A lot. Besides discussions of technology transfers, there are questions of agreeing on a common baseline for climate measures, demands for transparent accounting of expenditures, the need for an ethical framework and much else. Any one of these issues might pose difficulty to a real-time negotiation among almost 200 countries; together they are a challenge of enormous complexity. Even when domestic politics allow a rich country to send loss and damage aid abroad, these donor countries might require more robust accounting and oversight than recipients might be willing to accept.
4. Where does the debate stand?
Calls for a “loss and damage” program date to the early 1990s, but have only gotten significant attention in recent years. At the 2021 UN talks in Glasgow, developing countries pushed for a formal process to dispatch assistance where it’s needed. They failed. Negotiators at the COP27 talks will take up the debate again. The conversation is moving quickly, with the US and EU agreeing in principle to formally negotiate loss and damage in Egypt.
5. Could this lead to big payouts?
It could, but could also lead to big promises with little follow through, not for the first time: Developed countries had already committed to raising $100 billion in climate finance a year by 2020, and haven’t come close to that yet. There’s also the competition between loss and damage requests and the vast spending being proposed for basic economic development, to speed the transition to a clean energy economy and to prepare for a harsher climate. “If it becomes just liability and compensation and reparations or something, that’s not going to advance the dialogue,” John Kerry, the US special envoy on climate, said in October, stressing that there needs to be more spending on development and climate adaptation.
–With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
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