PESHAWAR: As thousands of flood victims are still struggling in Pakistan to rehabilitate their lives and livelihoods, international climate experts are set to meet in Egypt this week (27-29 March 2023) to deliberate the operationalization of a Loss and Damage (L&D) Fund.
If the L&D fund had existed already and Pakistan had access to its finances, the 2022 flood victims would have been in a somewhat better situation.
These observations were made by Aftab Alam Khan CEO of Resilient Future International, a research and training company.
In a press statement issued here on Monday, Aftab Alam observed the agreement on a Loss and Damage Fund was the most important win for climate-vulnerable countries at the last climate change meeting, Conference of Parties – 27 (COP27) at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt (Nov 6-Nov 18, 2022).
Loss and Damage refer to the permanent loss caused by climate change, including floods, heat waves, hurricanes, sea-level rise, drought and desertification. The L&D Fund aims to provide financial assistance to climate-vulnerable countries, such as Pakistan which faced USD30-40 billion in losses due to the historic floods in 2022.
A “Transitional Committee” was set up to deliberate the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund, Aftab added.
The Committee is meeting this week in the historic city of Luxor in Egypt and will meet two more times this year before sharing its proposals at the next global climate meeting (COP28) scheduled in Dubai from 30th Nov to 12 Dec 2023.
The Transitional Committee works with the support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Committee consists of 24 experts, including 14 from developing and 10 from developed countries.
CEO Resilient Future International believes that the COP27 agreement on an L&D fund was a big victory, the next big win would be creating a framework for the fund.
It is important that the Transitional Committee achieves the first to prioritize the creation of a framework for the L&D Fund over discussion on funding arrangements. The discussion on funding arrangements at this stage may distract the committee because once the Fund is created the arrangements would follow, anyway.
Aftab Alam Khan noted that the Transitional Committee has only three meetings this year to deliberate on the L&D Fund before COP28.
The climate-vulnerable countries should conduct smart negotiations. “Climate negotiations are arduous. There exist important questions around L&D funding arrangements but they should be treated as secondary to the primary deliverable of a new Fund.
For instance, a legitimate question is how to coordinate L&D funding with humanitarian assistance and other existing vehicles of climate finance.
Nevertheless, developing countries should ensure that such questions are considered in a separate process and 2023 is focused on the core work of creating the framework of the new L&D fund, he suggested.