For the first time in the history of climate negotiations, and after years of pressure from the countries most vulnerable to global warming, the Egypt summit culminated in an agreement for rich states to finance an economic compensation fund to deal with the loss and damage caused by the ecological crisis .
This fund, which was put on the table almost a decade ago at the Warsaw summit, has now been agreed under the shadow of one of the worst climate disasters in years, the floods in Pakistan . This “nightmare”, caused after the most intense monsoon rains in decades, has left a third of the country under water and has caused the displacement of 30 million people -more than 10% of the population-, according to an explanation from Karachi. to RTVE.es Sidra Adil, researcher in disaster management.
For Adil, episodes like the one his country has suffered this summer are responsible with names and surnames, and Pakistan, “which has emitted only 0.3% of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere” is not one of them . He points to the big three , the three great emitters of greenhouse gases, that is, the United States, China and Europe , whose cumulative emissions represent more than 60% of the CO₂ emitted since the Industrial Revolution. “The communities most vulnerable to climate change are in low- and middle-income countries, which are precisely those that do not have the resources and capacity to deal with an extreme weather event,” she says.
“ "The communities most vulnerable to climate change are in low- and middle-income countries, which are precisely those that do not have the resources and capacity to face an extreme climate event" “For this reason, “the countries responsible for the emissions have to pay these compensations, because if not the most vulnerable will suffer.” “There is going to be a massive refugee crisis to the countries of the northern hemisphere in the next 10 years or 15 years at most , and that should already be an incentive for them to pay compensation,” says the researcher at the Pakistani think tank Collective for Research . in Social Sciences.
What are losses and damages?
The concept of loss and damage, which has flown over the two weeks of the summit and has caused tensions between the countries of the North and the global South, refers to economic contributions to compensate those States that are already suffering the effects of the global warming.
They would take the form of compensation for tangible damage, such as crops affected by drought that are the source of livelihood for affected communities, or homes destroyed by rising sea levels. They would also repair intangible losses , from human lives to the destruction of cultures, traditions and ways of life due to the climate crisis, aspects that are more difficult to quantify and have historically taken a back seat in the negotiations on these funds.
But aside from the monetary aspects, the debate on loss and damage is accompanied by another more profound one: who pays the bill for climate change? Should the large historical emitters, essentially Europe and the United States, do it? What has historically stopped these countries from assuming a great economic deployment in this sense is that it would entail assuming their historical responsibility for the disasters that are occurring in the present and that will occur in the future, a debt that goes beyond the economic and delves into the field of ethics for current and future generations.