Climate Change Costs Are Eating Up the Money to Avert It
That won’t change until the rich world treats poorer nations as allies rather than debtors.
Pakistan’s cotton crop was damaged by catastrophic floods.
Photographer: Asim Hafeez/BloombergThere are three words likely to be heard again and again at the United Nations COP27 climate conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheikh next week: loss and damage.
The concept — straight compensation for the economic destruction that will result from climate change — is a relative newcomer to the thicket of jargon that surrounds climate diplomacy. Egypt, and the nations of the global south that regard this year’s conference in Africa as a chance to seize the initiative after last year’s Glasgow meeting, would like to see it take its place as a third pillar of climate funding. That would place it alongside mitigation (technologies such as solar and wind farms that prevent emissions) and adaptation (making infrastructure resilient to the effects of warming).