Loss and damage fund boon for climate action
The UN Climate Conference of Parties (COP28) has witnessed a historic agreement on the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund after slow and protracted negotiations.
By establishing the fund to help vulnerable countries cope with loss and damage caused by climate change at COP28, world leaders have recognised the devastating threat the climate crisis poses to humanity and nature.
This breakthrough capped a long-standing demand of vulnerable developing countries such as Kenya for pledged funding to help them adapt to climate change as they continue to demand more contributions from the industrialised nations.
Nearly 200 nations have agreed to operationalise the fund to help vulnerable countries deal with more extreme climate events. So far $450 million has been made in pledges from several nations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres termed the agreement an essential tool for delivering climate justice. In September, an international group of 14 experts appointed by the UN launched the Synergy Solutions for a World in Crisis: Tackling Climate and SDG Action Together report.
The report called for an urgent rescue effort for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), noting that tackling both the climate emergency and sustainable development challenges synergistically can be a win-win solution, maximising impact.
Launched midpoint of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the report reveals that these two critical global agendas are both far off-track. Negotiators at COP28 deserve commendation for bridging the gap.
The US government announced in Dubai that it is pledging $3 billion to replenish the Green Climate Fund – the world’s largest climate fund created to help developing countries handle climate change.
In another victory for developing countries, the sustainable food systems transformation was placed on the COP28 agenda, with a call for a reform of the global financial architecture to deliver the means to implement it.
Financing of sustainable agrifood systems is anticipated that the end of the negotiations focusing on strengthened collaboration in agriculture, livestock, fisheries, environment, trade, industry, energy and health.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report explains how the two agendas the experts identified provide a clear vision for tackling today’s most oppressing challenges.
The window is fast closing to make a course correction and limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as called for under the Paris Agreement, to avoid the worst impacts.
Global warming has exacerbated the effects of climate on nature and humanity, characterised by hotter temperatures. As greenhouse gas concentrations rise, so does the global surface temperature.
The effects include more severe storms, increased drought, warming, rising oceans, loss of biodiversity species, severe lack of food and increased health risks such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Years or even decades of development progress have been halted or reversed.
Host UAE had set the agenda of the climate talks to deliver on the pillars of the Paris Agreement focusing on four areas – fast-tracking the energy transition, fixing climate finance and putting nature, people, lives and livelihoods at the heart of climate action.
Now the talks have come to the inevitable truth we have known all along – food systems are central to climate, so food has been enshrined in official climate policy.
COP27 in Sharm El Sheik had the strongest ever showing for food systems. However, it did not translate into high-level policy decisions with aggressive, ambitious goal-setting from government and business as in COP28.
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