Poor and developing countries have been asking for this fund for three decades, and at this COP27 they united in the G77, which brings together 134 nations and has the support of China.
Their argument is that historically they have hardly contributed to global warming, but at the same time they suffer more from the consequences of extreme climatic effects whose intensity and frequency have increased according to the scientific community due to climate change.
Precisely, 2022 came loaded with disasters, with the floods in Pakistan, which left 33 million homeless, or the drought in Somalia, synonymous with a gigantic threat of famine.
“What was achieved at this COP is that the developing world acted under the G77+China group in a unified manner,” said the Colombian Minister of the Environment, Susana Muhamad.
“At the beginning of these talks, losses and damages were not even on the agenda and now we are making history,” stressed the director of PowerShift Africa, Mohamed Adow, for whom the approval of the fund “demonstrates that this process of the The UN can achieve results, and that the world can recognize that the situation of the vulnerable should not be treated like political football.”
Along the same lines, commented the president of the World Resources Institute (WRI), Ani Dasgupta, who described the result as “a historic breakthrough.”
The loss and damage fund obtained the green light in the plenary session, applauded by the island states, which were especially involved in the dialogue so that the developed countries and the greatest historical culprits in the climate crisis would pay for the extreme phenomena they suffer to a greater extent the so-called Global South.
The special envoy of the Prime Minister of Barbados, Avinash Persaud, who described the fund as “a victory for humanity”, appreciated the “strong leadership of the alliance of small island states” and the “surprising degree of solidarity shown by the rest of the world, from the major industrialized developing countries to the developed ones”.
With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters
