With this week\u2019s UN climate science report laying bare the staggering economic costs and losses already faced from climate change, an inevitable question arises: who should pay?
\nWithin UN climate negotiations, \u201closs and damage\u201d refers to the costs countries are incurring from climate-related impacts and disasters \u2014 costs that disproportionately hit the world\u2019s poor and vulnerable who did least to cause global warming.
\nDrawing on more than 34,000 references from the latest scientific papers, the report released on Monday by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that economic sectors from agriculture and fishing to tourism were already being damaged.
\nExtreme heat has fuelled crop losses. Rising seas have turbo-charged cyclones that have razed homes and infrastructure, slashing economic growth.
\nAnd as the bills mount up, poorer countries are left with even less to spend on heath, education and infrastructure \u2014 compounding suffering.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an unending situation,\u201d said Anjal Prakash, a lead IPCC author and research director at the Indian School of Business.
\nThe report is likely to intensify a years-long political fight over funding to pay for climate-linked losses, ahead of the next UN climate summit, COP27, in Egypt in November.
\nVulnerable countries for years have sought funding to help them shoulder these costs. So far, it hasn\u2019t arrived, and rich nations have resisted steps that could legally assign liability or lead to compensation.
\nThe mention of \u201closs and damage\u201d in the 2015 Paris Agreement came with the caveat that it \u201cdoes not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation\u201d.
\nLast November at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, poor countries called for a special \u201closs and damage\u201d fund to be established, but the United States and other rich nations resisted. The delegates agreed to set up a UN body to help countries address loss and damage, and to continue discussions towards making \u201carrangements\u201d for funding.
\nBut there is no clarity on where the money would come from.
\n\u201cWe can\u2019t just create more talk shops when people are dying,\u201d said Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at Climate Action Network. He said COP27 needed to establish the funding facility that developing countries, including China, had called for at COP26.
\nSingh and other campaigners said the IPCC report \u2014 which has been approved by nearly 200 governments \u2014 could intensify pressure on the world\u2019s most powerful nations.
\n\u201cIt will help us to say that science is clear, the impacts are clearer now. So you are accountable for this, and you have to pay for this,\u201d said Nushrat Chowdhury, a policy advisor at NGO Christian Aid.
\nThe report\u2019s discussion of climate losses is bolstered by recent improvements in \u201cattribution science\u201d, which allows scientists to confirm when climate change caused or worsened a specific extreme weather event.
\nStill, putting a number on the resulting losses remains contentious. For example, can climate-linked losses from a weather event be separated from losses caused by poor disaster planning? Can costs be counted for losses outside our economic systems, such as when nature is degraded or a community burial site is destroyed?
\n\u201cWe are still debating that in the scientific community,\u201d said another IPCC lead author Emily Boyd, a professor at Sweden\u2019s Lund University.
\nAs climate disaster costs mount and UN negotiations remain stuck, some are considering other options.
\n\u201cLiability and compensation have other avenues to be taken forward, which are courts,\u201d said Saleemul Huq, an adviser to the Climate Vulnerable Forum group of 55 countries.
\nSophie Marjanac, lawyer at environmental law firm ClientEarth, said the IPCC report \u201cwill generally support litigation\u201d to address climate change.
\nThe legal avenue faces other obstacles, however.
\nLast year a federal appeals court rejected New York City\u2019s attempt to use state law to hold five oil companies liable to help compensate harm caused by global warming. The court said the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions should instead be addressed under federal law and international treaties.
\n\u201cChallenges in climate change litigation are related to the law, not to do with the science,\u201d Marjanac said. \u201cThe science has been clear, very clear for years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With this week\u2019s UN climate science report laying bare the staggering economic costs and losses already faced from climate change, an inevitable question arises: who should pay? Within UN climate negotiations, \u201closs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[46,48,57,68,76,77,82,86,87,90,96,99,103,107,109,111,113,137,139,146,148,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,222,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,262,263,267,277,279,280,285,288],"class_list":["post-5966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clean-energy","category-climate","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-carbon","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-cyprus","tag-decarbonising","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-eastmed","tag-egypt","tag-embargo","tag-emissions","tag-energy","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-greece","tag-greenenergy","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-pollution","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-solar","tag-solar-power","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-unclos","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}