Cop27: The polluter pays? Globally, not really
One-third of the Pakistani population has been made homeless by the recent floods, yet the UN humanitarian appeal for the floods is set at only $472.3m (just over 1% of what is needed). Picture: AP/Pervez Masih
The defining issue of Cop27, ongoing in Egypt, is loss and damage.
The phrase is unfamiliar, but the following example should explain what’s at stake and why it’s so important to address.
Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but has suffered the following losses and damages due to the recent climate-related floods:
- At least 33m people were directly affected by the floods;
- Costs were estimated at over $30bn;
- One-third of the Pakistani population has been made homeless;
- The UN humanitarian appeal for the floods is set at only $472.3m (just over 1% of what is needed);
- This inadequate appeal is only 19% funded.
The huge gap between what is needed and what is being made available will have to be met by Pakistan. It must take out another IMF loan, that it can ill-afford, to help recover from the floods.
But the floods were part of an increasing number of devastating weather events caused by climate change caused by greenhouse gases (GHG).
By any reckoning, wealthy countries are responsible for GHG or excess carbon emissions. We are responsible for 92% of excess emissions in the atmosphere right now.
Another respected calculation puts the carbon emissions of the richest 1% of people globally at more than double the emissions of the poorest half of humanity, between 1990 and 2015.
Ninety seven per cent of people affected by these events live in developing countries.
In Ireland, if a factory or farm is responsible for pollution, they are taken to court under a widely accepted principle that the polluter pays. This principle is widely accepted as fair and is acted on within developed countries. It was agreed in principle 31 years ago at Cop.
But a recent report, The Cost of Delay, by Oxfam and the Loss and Damage Collaboration highlights how rich countries have repeatedly stalled efforts to pay up, especially on the devastating losses side.
The report states: "Despite 31 years of pressure, 26 Cops, and multiple workshops and dialogues, no dedicated finance to help people deal with the aftermath of climate impacts has been delivered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."
The cost of this shameful delay is now being felt in multiple ways, all of them making it the critical Cop27 issue.
First and foremost, there is human suffering. Between 1991 and 2021 there were:
- 676,000 deaths in developing countries linked to climate and weather-related events;
- An average of 189m people per year are affected by extreme climate- and weather-related events in developing countries.
Every year, the World Bank has found that extreme weather-related disasters force about 26m people into poverty. It has been warning for some time that severe climate shocks threaten to roll back decades of development progress.
Ten of the world’s worst climate hotspots have suffered a 123% rise in acute hunger over the past six years. Today, 48m people across those countries suffer acute hunger (up from 21m in 2016), and 18m of those people are on the brink of starvation.
A direct consequence is that in the absence of the polluter paying, the humanitarian system is being left struggling to cope with a scale and depth of disasters that it was not designed for. No wonder the ever more frequent humanitarian appeals are unrealistic and chronically underfunded, as in the example above from Pakistan.
Pakistan being forced to take out an IMF loan leads us to another dire consequence. We’ve seen that poorer countries are on the frontline of climate disasters, but they are also least equipped financially to mop up in the aftermath. Hard-won advances in living standards are being eroded.
Sometimes Irish people wonder if issues like poverty and disaster are intractable. They’re not and poorer countries have made great strides.
But there is an unprecedented threat in climate change and it has the potential to reverse progress made to date.
The African Development Bank reported recently that Africa was losing between 5% and 15% of its GDP per capita growth because of climate change.
The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, has said: “This year’s heatwaves, floods and forest fires in North America and Europe were terrible and tragic but will be invisible in their aggregate GDP statistics.”
She has said that in many places like the Caribbean, climate and other natural disasters account for 50% of the long increase in public debt.
In her powerful introduction to The Cost of Delay report, Mottley warns, “On the frontline, the climate crisis is leading to a silent debt crisis which will lead to a development crisis.”
At Glasgow Cop26, those countries at the sharp end of climate chaos demanded a finance facility or some accountable mechanism for loss and damage. The delaying tactic is one familiar to any student of politics — they agreed to set up a committee (the Glasgow Dialogue) and talk about it for another three years.
In the intervening year since Glasgow’s Cop, there have been a further 119 climate and weather-related events in developing countries. There was an associated $26.2bn in economic losses which poor countries will have to bear.
There is well-deserved cynicism for the sort of measures that are agreed — it has proven much easier to get help for insurance and technical assistance for example. But these are examples of making the victim pay, not the polluter.
Our sense is that patience is understandably running out and that at the first African Cop, loss and damage will be the defining topic. This is in spite of the fact that it is officially pushed to the margins.
Loss and damage is not even on the permanent Cop agenda as a negotiating item. This is not a true reflection of the importance placed on it by at least 40% of the world’s population. We expect to see a battle to have this issue placed where it rightly belongs — at the centre of Cop27.
- Jim Clarken is chief executive of Oxfam Ireland
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