A realistic approach needed to fund loss and damage from climate change
By Dr. Saleemul Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh.
The topic of loss and damage from human-induced climate change has been a highly politically sensitive issue in international negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for many years with vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, arguing in its favour and the rich countries arguing against it.
In recent years, there have been two breakthroughs in the negotiations in our favour. The first was the adoption of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) on Loss and Damage adopted at the 19th Conference of Parties (COP19) in Warsaw, Poland in 2013, where a five-year work programme was agreed upon. In COP25, to be held at the end of 2019 in Santiago, Chile, the review and future mandate for the WIM will be a discussion and decision point which is likely to be quite heated.
The second breakthrough was the adoption of Article 8 of the Paris Agreement at COP21 in Paris, France in 2015, where loss and damage was finally acknowledged as an issue separate from adaptation. The Article also highlighted the related issue of future climate migration due to loss of livelihoods of millions of people around the world who will be forcibly displaced as a result of human-induced climate change.
At COP24, held in Katowice in 2018, the taskforce report on forced displacement due to climate change was adopted to give this issue greater prominence.
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