Pakistani millers’ strike over withholding tax enters second day – looming bottlenecks

PARIS: Countries on the front lines of the fight against climate change have warned they cannot wait another year for long-awaited aid to recover from disasters as floods and cyclones wreak havoc across the world.

The appeal was made at a meeting of the Loss and Damage Fund, which ends on Friday. There are fears that the fund will probably not be in a position to approve climate aid until 2025.

“We cannot wait until the end of 2025 for the first funds to be disbursed,” Adao Soares Barbosa, a board member from East Timor and long-time negotiator for the world’s poorest countries, told AFP.

“Losses and damages do not wait for us.”

At the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 last November, nearly 200 nations agreed to set up a fund to distribute aid to developing countries to help them rebuild after climate disasters.

This historic moment was followed by complex negotiations to finalise the Fund’s design. Some countries fear that the negotiations will not progress at a pace and scale that matches the speed of the extreme weather disasters affecting their populations.

“The urgency of the needs of vulnerable countries and communities cannot be ignored until we have raised every penny for this fund,” Barbosa said.

The cost of climate disasters can run into the billions, and there are currently barely enough funds set aside for losses and damages to cover even a single such event, experts say.

This year we have seen a series of disasters across several continents, from floods and landslides to heatwaves and wildfires.

After Hurricane Beryl left a trail of devastation in the Caribbean and North America, delegates met in South Korea this week for the second meeting of the Loss and Damage Fund.

The “massive” destruction of the past few weeks “puts enormous pressure on us to do our job,” Richard Sherman, the South African co-chair of the body leading the negotiations, said at the meeting.

The fund said it wanted the funds approved “as soon as possible, but realistically by mid-2025,” according to an official document seen by AFP.

Elizabeth Thompson, board member from Barbados, appealed to the public to act more quickly. Hurricane Beryl alone caused “apocalyptic” damage worth “several billions of dollars”.

“On five islands in the Grenadines … 90 percent of the housing has disappeared … The houses look like decks of cards and strips of wood, the roofs are gone, the trees are gone, there is no food, no water, no electricity,” she said.

“We cannot continue to talk while people are living and dying in a crisis that they did not cause.”

Thompson said the fund must reflect “the urgency and scale needed to respond to … the risks, damage and devastation facing people around the world who need this fund.”

Wealthy countries have so far pledged around $661 million to the fund. South Korea contributed another $7 million at the start of the conference this week.

“This would hardly cover the likely losses from a major climate-related disaster,” Camilla More of the International Institute for Environment and Development told AFP.

Some estimates suggest that developing countries will need over $400 billion annually to rebuild after climate-related disasters. One study estimates that global costs will range between $290 billion and $580 billion per year by 2030 and will continue to rise thereafter.

For example, in 2022, unprecedented floods in Pakistan caused over $30 billion in damage and economic losses, according to a United Nations-backed estimate.

Developing countries had been campaigning for 30 years to set up a special fund to distribute aid to deal with the effects of climate change. The agreement reached in November was hailed as a major diplomatic breakthrough.

“(But) without money there can be no fund,” said Brandon Wu of ActionAid.

Technical discussions on the details of the Loss and Damage Fund are taking place this year, including with the World Bank, which will temporarily manage the fund.

The Philippines was selected this week as the headquarters of the Fund’s board of directors.

The distribution of funds and the form in which they should be made available to the countries remains controversial.

More than 350 nongovernmental organizations sent a letter to the fund’s board on Tuesday demanding that a significant portion of the funds be distributed directly to local communities and indigenous groups in the form of small grants.