Millions of people around the world are already suffering the devastating impacts of climate change, and these impacts are only going to get worse. Loss and Damage finance is essential to help communities rebuild and recover from climate-induced disasters and to address the irreversible losses that they are experiencing.
In November 2022, at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, countries agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund to provide financial support to developing countries that are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This was a historic outcome, but there is still much work to be done to design and implement the Fund.
Lostisland alongside 170+ international organizations from the humanitarian, climate, and development sectors have issued a joint call demanding Loss and Damage finance, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), based on four priorities: access, adequacy, additionality, and accountability.
The full letter comes just days before governments meet in Aswan, Egypt, for the fourth and final Transitional Committee meeting (17-20 October) on Loss and Damage ahead of COP28.
In the past year, deliberations by the Transitional Committee on Loss and Damage, the body set up to design the fund and its implementations, have met three times but progress has been slow. Issues around the Fund’s location, sources of funding, who must pay, and who gets resources are emerging as major political fault lines between countries and threaten to weaken the Fund and its ultimate goal to deliver climate justice through timely resources to communities suffering unavoidable impacts from climate change in developing countries and who are least equipped to cope with extreme weather events.
Co-signatories of the call to action letter organized by Climate Action International and the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) include; World Vision International, Caritas Internationalis, Oxfam International, CARE International, Norwegian Refugee Council, International Rescue Committee, Action Against Hunger International, Mission East, Plan International, Mercy Corps, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) International.