Pakistan’s climate change minister, Sherry Rehman, is heading to Egypt for the UN climate summit COP27 with one goal: to finally get the world to commit to helping countries like hers deal with the growing “losses and damages” ” caused by global warming.
As the richest nations focus on debating how to slow the rise in temperatures while still producing the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions, the poorest places are already suffering the consequences of warmer and more extreme weather, from worsening floods and droughts to deadly heat and rising sea levels.
Pakistan has been hit by back-to-back weather catastrophes in recent years – floods, heat waves and wildfires – and is struggling to find the funding it needs to recover from the unprecedented floods that began in June, inundating a third of the country.
“We have repeatedly argued morally for loss and damage on different platforms,” Rehman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We will deliver the same message at COP27.”
“Loss and damage” refers to the damage and destruction that happens when people and places are not prepared for the impacts caused by the climate and have not or cannot adjust the way they live to protect themselves from long-term changes. .
Nine years ago, UN climate negotiators agreed to establish a formal mechanism for dealing with loss and damage – but apart from a donor-backed effort to increase climate disaster insurance in developing countries, little has happened since.
This was mainly because rich governments did not want to be held financially responsible for the impacts of their historically high emissions, although some are now softening their opposition to finding funding to deal with loss and damage, as vulnerable people are being hit hard at every turn. parts of the world.
Rehman, along with other officials and climate experts in Pakistan, are calling for the establishment of a dedicated “Loss and Damage Financing Facility”.
They see COP27 as an opportunity not only for governments to create this fund, but also to commit an amount to launch it.
Pakistan is a “climate victim” that has garnered the world’s attention and empathy – and is also currently chairing the G77 and China, an alliance of developing countries that is a key player at the COP summits, noted Malik Amin Aslam. , environmentalist and former Pakistani climate change minister.
This puts it in a unique position to “not only highlight the catastrophic reality of climate change, but also directly influence the COP process to ensure some concrete results,” he said.
“Pakistan must not leave the table without ensuring this [fundo de perdas e danos]”, added Aslan. “Anything less than that will be a failure.”
rebuilding trust
Efforts to find more money to help the poorest countries grow sustainably, adapt to climate impacts and recover from climate disasters they did little to create are expected to be at the forefront of negotiations in Egypt.
In 2009, rich countries pledged that, starting in 2020, they would mobilize $100 billion a year to help vulnerable states adapt to climate change and greener their energy systems — a promise that has yet to be fulfilled.
In a video message posted in the run-up to COP27, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the climate conference a “litmus test” to rebuild trust between developed and developing countries, and said he hoped it would be able to to ensure significant results around loss and damage.
Guterres highlighted the devastation caused by the floods in Pakistan as an example of how “the world is failing to invest in protecting the lives and livelihoods of those on the front lines”.
A recent assessment led by the government of Pakistan estimated the cost of flood recovery at more than US$16 billion, based on impacts on transport and communication infrastructure, agriculture, food supply and housing, among others.
That amount is impossible for Pakistan – with its economy already ravaged by spiraling inflation – to cover alone, said its climate change minister, Rehman.
While a national recovery plan has yet to be announced, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the government is first focusing on recovering farmers.
This week, Sharif announced that banks would provide small farmers with subsidized, interest-free loans totaling 1.8 trillion Pakistani rupees ($8.12 million), while interest on money borrowed before the flood would be waived.
For Ahmad Rafay Alam, a Pakistani lawyer and environmental activist, the floods “crystallized the voice of loss and damage” – demonstrating both the devastating impacts of climate change and the lack of support from the West.
He pointed to the fire that destroyed Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, recalling how 900 million euros ($877 million) in donations were flooded in just two days.
On the other hand, in response to the floods in Pakistan, the United Nations launched an appeal to raise US$160 million, which was later increased to US$816 million to provide medical care, food, shelter and clean water to 9.5 million. of people.
The UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, Julien Harneis, told reporters in October that only $90 million had been received so far.
“Notre-Dame may be iconic, but it was still a brick and mortar building,” Alam said. “Here we are talking about 30 million homeless Pakistanis.”
climate apocalypse
In Egypt, Rehman hopes to pressure officials about the need for urgent action, rather than “discussing which emissions are good and which are not.”
The climate summit’s consensus-based decision-making and the lack of an enforcement mechanism to ensure that nations live up to the commitments they make can often be barriers to concrete, positive change, she said.
But this imperfect system is “all we have” to help developing countries survive and adapt to an increasingly hot and dangerous climate, he added.
She emphasized that the world is “running towards” 3 degrees Celsius warming — “and developed nations will need to move beyond carbon-rich lifestyles and conflict and security interests to avoid a climate apocalypse.”
“What happens in Pakistan will not stay in Pakistan,” warned Rehman. “If one ecosystem suffers, soon others will feel the impacts as well.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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