The damage bill from Pakistan’s flood crisis is now US$40 billion (S$57 billion). The disaster risks setting back the indebted nation by years and its shocking scale, inundating a third of the country, is testament to the growing impacts and costs of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable nations – which are least to blame for global warming.
Finance to help these cash-strapped countries has become urgent, and the issue will dominate discussions at next month’s COP27 United Nations climate talks in Egypt.
The money is needed to pay for clean energy investment, help poorer nations adapt to worsening impacts and compensate them for permanent loss and damage. The last issue has become an urgent and focal one for vulnerable countries, with many hobbled by debt.
“We’ve entered what I call the era of loss and damage from human-induced climate change. It’s no longer something we are preparing for or trying to prevent,” Dr Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said at a recent media briefing hosted by World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington-based think-tank.
The loss and damage era has just begun, he said, pointing to the floods in Pakistan and Hurricane Ian, which devastated parts of Florida in September. “We are now going to see this kind of devastation every single day somewhere in the world for years to come.”
Rich nations are under pressure like never before to pledge more money because they are most responsible for the emissions that are heating up the planet and triggering more extreme floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms.
But the risk is that any new pledges will be far from enough as the costs of the climate crisis keep escalating. More than a decade ago, wealthy nations pledged to support poorer countries with at least US$100 billion in annual climate finance by 2020. But that amount has still not been reached, hitting US$83.3 billion in 2020.
The US$100 billion target might be reached by next year and, at COP27, there will be discussions on what the new annual figure will be from 2025. However, failure to honour the US$100 billion pledge has led to deep mistrust between rich and poor countries, deepening the divide between them.