COP27: Climate Change Losses, Whose Responsibility?

The great shift due to global warming in Kenya made Eric Njuguna furious. The 20-year-old environmental activist sees how the ugliest drought in the last 40 years in the territory has taken up livelihoods, homes and even some people live there.

"My anger is there because the effect makes us thirsty and hungry. I am furious because I know that we are not the core trigger, but it is our country and communes that carry the burden," Njuguna told DW from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Kenya is indeed counted among some of the countries hardest hit by excessive weather. But they are not one.

The drought has brought millions of people in Sundul Africa to the brink of famine. Meanwhile, the Philippines was plagued by a devastating storm that was devastating. And this summer, 1,500 people died from excessive rains that flooded the majority of Pakistani areas.

"We can adapt to some circumstances, but witnessing the increasingly chronic weather, there are circumstances that we cannot afford to adapt to," Njuguna said. "This has to be paid," he continued.

The call for some rich countries to provide compensation in the form of special funds to cover the cost of loss and damage is also getting louder.

Ide loss and damage

The idea of loss and damage was first introduced by the Alliance of Small Island States at an international weather meeting in Geneva in 1991. They suggested a pattern of insurance over rising sea levels at a cost that some industrialized countries need to guarantee.

That advice was not taken seriously until 2013, precisely at the COP19 weather meeting in Warsaw, Poland. At the meeting, the Warsaw International Process for Loss and Damage was also made with the aim of increasing knowledge of the problem and finding steps to deal with it. However, there has been little follow-up since then.

At the UN weather meeting in Glasgow, Scotland last year, some negotiators dismissed proposals from the G77 ranks divided into more than 100 developing countries and China for official losses and damage to financial means they suffered. In exchange, the Glasgow Discussions were created to enable a continuation dialogue on capital with "open, inclusive and non-viewpoints". That discussion was subsequently widely viewed as an "argument for delaying further treatment."

Some rich countries don't keep their promises?

Historically, several developed countries have the greatest responsibility for emissions that result in rising global temperatures. It is said that between 1751 and 2017, the United States (US), the European Union (EU), and the United Kingdom were responsible for 47% of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions, which is really far from the overall carbon emissions in all of Africa and South America which only reached 6%.

Despite the greatest responsibility, some developed countries have been slow to provide financial contributors to reduce the burden on some of the most affected countries.

In 2010, several developed countries from the Global North agreed to pledge $100 billion annually starting in 2020 to help some developing countries adjust to the impact of weather shifts.

But according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), some of those wealthy countries only disbursed $83 billion in 2020. Despite a 4% increase from the original year, the contribution was still far from the amount approved.

"Instead of just addressing the issue of poverty and teaching, they must take immediate steps to deal with the weather transition," said Marlene Achoki, one of the global regulatory chairs on weather justice at the NGO Care International. "They have to find the resources, the finances to make the residents resilient," he continued.

Not only economic losses

55 of the 58 countries counted in the Vulnerable 20 - a group of developing countries that includes Kenya, the Philippines and Colombia - have suffered more than $1/2 trillion in weather-related economic losses in the first two decades of the era, according to a report compiled by the Loss and Damage Collaboration.

But non-economic losses exist as well, such as the disappearance of some areas of cultural and indigenous significance.

"Many communes are most prone to weather switching as citizens of traditions, local communes and tribes. And they face the majority of those losses," said Zoha Shawoo, a scientist who studies loss and damage at the Stokholm Environment Institute.

"Fear of being held accountable"

Shawoo explained that there is a fear from some developed countries to claim the primacy of additional financial needs, for losses and damages. According to him, "it will make them the target of liability and compensation claims, which of course require huge costs."

Say if a bridge collapses due to flooding, or some homes are crushed by a hurricane in a developing country, there is a fear among some developed countries if "they will be held accountable for paying it off," he continued.

Some countries have already chosen to take their own treatment. Like Denmark, earlier this year, it pledged more than $13 million in damages and damages to several developing countries. And at last year's COP26 weather meeting, Scotland promised a minimum of $1 million.

According to Shawoo, this treatment is good to meet the urgency of losses felt by some developing countries. But with global temperatures rising and some rich countries failing to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the impact of weather shifts will continue to target the poorest communes.

"The impact we encounter with 1.2 degrees of warming is quite chronic and there is no serious treatment that appears to deal with it," said Njuguna.*