Concern Welcomes Landmark Decision on Climate Loss and Damage Fund for World’s Poorest Countries

Concern Worldwide has warmly welcomed the landmark decision by global leaders at COP27 to establish a loss and damage fund to support the world’s poorest countries who are experiencing the worst impact of climate change.

“This is a first step and a landmark decision that the countries most vulnerable to climate change have been pushing for, for many years,” Concern’s Advocacy Manager Sally Tyldesley said. “It will now need to be operationalized. Crucially, decisions need to be made on where funding will come from. It’s important that this is new funding, otherwise, we run the risk of double counting by governments between different announcements and commitments.”

Concern stressed that there was also an urgency in progressing the development and delivery of loss and damage funding. “It is important that the new funding be provided on the basis of a grant. Work to agree on the details of the mechanisms must begin immediately, with no backsliding, given the widescale suffering and damage being caused by climate change in some of the world’s poorest countries,” she said.

“The urgency of the negotiations was underlined by the fact that famine is expected to be declared in the near future in Somalia and large tracts of Pakistan are still severely and dangerously flooded – both climate-related humanitarian crises. This urgency now needs to be reflected in progress to implement the loss and damage fund decisions made at COP.”

Concern noted that the welcome for the loss and damage funding had to be balanced against the fact that less progress was made at COP on other core issues such as climate adaptation funding and emissions reductions.

At COP26 in Glasgow, last year global leaders agreed to double adaptation funding.  “It is worrying that there were no concrete plans put in place for how this target is going to be met,” Tyldesley said.

She added, “we need rapid progress across the issues of loss and damage, adaptation and mitigation if the world’s poorest communities are to be protected.”