The U.N.’s annual Climate Change Conference could see negotiations for this year’s agreement drag on much longer than anticipated. Late on Monday, draft text of only parts of the agreement appeared available, with a section on “loss and damage”—defined as unavoidable destruction from climate change—proving to be the most controversial. As New Scientist reports, unlike past years where the Conference of Parties (that’s the “COP” in COP27) worked off of a full draft, a “summary of possible elements” is what was issued this year instead.
Loss and damage has been on the world’s mind for decades but it was not until this year, when countries like Pakistan faced climate-worsened catastrophe from one-third of the country flooding, that true talks of compensation began to percolate. Around 33 million people in Pakistan were affected by the floods, though the country is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s emissions. Meanwhile, countries like the U.S. and China collectively account for more than one-third of the world’s emissions. As Bill McKibben writes in his “The Crucial Years” Substack, “there has rarely been a clearer moral argument for what amounts to reparations.”
“’Loss and damage’ is the great ethical question of our time and place, in the way that slavery perhaps seemed in the 19th century—a case so obvious that it makes itself for those who can see,” McKibben continues:
But of course that case was not obvious in the 19th century to the people who profited from it. And it is unlikely—highly unlikely, I would say—that the U.S. Congress is going to vote large sums of taxpayer money to repairing this damage. Token sums, perhaps, with a little more from Norway and the other usual noble suspects. But nothing like the actual cost, which is measured in trillions. We haven’t even begun, after all, to make reparations for slavery yet.
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Climate Envoy John Kerry previously made clear the U.S. has no interest in these types of reparations, to say nothing of how the country has handled badly needed domestic reparations for frontline communities similarly overburdened by the climate crisis. But he somewhat changed his tune during COP27, revealing that the U.S. is interested in at least having a discussion about loss and damage. “We are 100% ready… to discuss the issue of loss and damage. That’s why it’s on the agenda. We want to come to closure,” Kerry said during a Sunday press conference reported by The Guardian.
At least 200 countries must sign on for an agreement to be ratified at COP27. In terms of loss and damages, the draft text proposes and sets a deadline of two years from now for countries to be ready to deploy funding mechanisms. From there, they can agree to one of two options: either employing a U.N-backed arrangement, “such as a new operating entity,” or a “mosaic of funding arrangements.” Few details were given in terms of amounts allocated and what exactly a new funding mechanism or consortium of funds could look like.
With part of COP27 coinciding with the G20 summit in Indonesia, loss and damage negotiations may get even more complicated. The motto for this year’s event is “Recover Together, Recover Stronger,” which certainly hints at a focus on loss and damage, if not climate mitigation. A somewhat successful meeting between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in which the two agreed to resume talks on climate change bodes well, but enough progress on that front likely will not have been made before COP27 concludes on Friday, though negotiations on an agreement could continue into the weekend. The G20 summit last just two days and will end on Wednesday.