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loss and damage fund
To Solve the Climate Crisis, Look to Women
Women, and in particular women from the Global South, have delivered some of the biggest successes in the global race to climate solutions.
Feb 12, 2024
The host country for this year’s United Nations climate negotiations recently made a mistake: It announced it would exclude women from the negotiations’ organizing committee. Reaction was fierce and immediate. Across the world, climate experts condemned the “shocking and unacceptable” decision to exclude women from leadership. In response, the host country, Azerbaijan, updated the committee to include 12 women along with 29 men.
In downplaying women’s abilities to fight the climate crisis, leaders miss a huge opportunity. Women are not only most affected by climate change; through the ingenuity born of necessity, we are devising ways to solve it. Women, and particularly women from rural areas of the Global South, are essential to the success of progress on climate change.
This year’s climate talks are known as “COP29,” as they are the 29th annual Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Greenhouse gas pollution remains far too high, with tragically predictable consequences for those whom the climate crisis is making more hungry, sick, conflict-prone, and forced into migration.
Rural women from the Global South deserve a seat as leaders at the climate negotiating table. Beyond that, the negotiating table deserves them.
The Paris climate agreement and the commitment to cover loss and damage from climate change are bright spots in this decades-long journey. But as noted by climate diplomat Catherine McKenna, a widely circulated photo that was promoted to the media at the end of last year’s negotiations left many with the mistaken impression that work on climate change has all been done by men.
This is not the case. Men alone have never led progress on climate change. Women, and in particular women from the Global South, have delivered some of the biggest successes in the global race to climate solutions.
The architect of the Paris climate agreement, Christiana Figueres, is from Costa Rica. The champion of the Loss and Damage Fund, Madeleine Diouf Sarr, is from Senegal. Even going back to the very foundations of the UNFCCC, which led to the COP process, women like Kenya’s Wangari Maathai were leading.
And far beyond the spotlight of the front pages, women in poor, rural areas continue to lead, albeit in unrecognized and unrewarded ways. Women do three-quarters of the world’s unpaid labor, according to a report by Oxfam. This includes everything from planting smallholder farms to gathering water to caring for sick family members. This is all work that is likely to be affected by climate change.
Even now, women are figuring out how to adapt. Women—and especially women in the Global South—are solving the grinding daily challenges of the climate crisis with ingenuity. They are shifting the dates when crops are planted, trying new ways to get water, and making time in busy days to devote extra care to those who are ill from climate-related illnesses.
Rural women from the Global South deserve a seat as leaders at the climate negotiating table. Beyond that, the negotiating table deserves them.
It is unthinkable that any real end to the climate crisis will leave behind the very people who have the greatest experience in grappling with it. Developing the talent pool that already exists within each country will build genuinely representative leadership teams that bring the full spectrum of expertise to bear.
This work is now done by leading NGOs like SHE Changes Climate and by surprising allies like the nuns who deliver healthcare, education, and development in rural regions. Intentional efforts by each party to the U.N.’s climate framework should complement and eventually outpace the work of these civil society champions.
Without question, there are plenty of women who get things wrong. Having women in recognized leadership is not in itself sufficient. But it is necessary.
The planetary crisis is the defining issue of our time, the one challenge that shapes all others. Leaving half of humanity out of the picture is not an option.
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A New Year’s Letter to President Biden
My wish for you in 2024 is to imbibe this wisdom and act on it: What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man.
Jan 01, 2024
Dear Joe,
I would wish you a Happy New Year; but it seems trite and banal, given all the challenges and troubles you and our country face in 2024—some inherited from previous administrations, others of your own making.
Americans are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than people in other wealthy countries, with homicides, suicides, and mass shootings on the increase. For the past four years, mass murders have skyrocketed into the 600s per year, breaking all past records. Since 2020 more children and teens are killed by firearms than any other cause.
Don’t these sound like war statistics?
Yes, you have established the first White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. But it is rare to find anyone in your administration making the connection between our country’s record-breaking gun violence at home and our country’s record-breaking military weapons sales across the world, to democracies and autocracies alike, having grown dramatically over the past five years. To restate, isn’t it possible that the U.S. global culture of weapons and militarism, with nearly 100 military bases ringing the world, and our long and persistent history of war (nearly 40 in your and my lifetime) rebounds back to infect our violent culture here at home?
You are generous with weapons, but dismissive of dialogue where it is most needed.
The U.S. pledged $17.5 million to a loss and damage fund for poor countries vulnerable to extreme climate damage (for which the U.S. is more responsible than any other country) at the 2023 U.N. climate conference while doling out over $100 billion in weapons and military aid in the same year to feed and fuel wars in Gaza and Ukraine, wars that destroy and contaminate, likely irreparably, the homeland and ecosystems of those peoples who survive these wars and genocide in the case of Gaza. Crumbs for climate crisis and ruined ecosystems fall from the master’s table, while feasts of weapons abound.
Our habit of war “has yielded a host of perverse results here at home,” writes war veteran and noted historian of American military history, Andrew Bacevich. Neither have our wars brought about “peace [or democracy] by even the loosest definition of the word… the opposite in most case[s].” His wise counsel: Discard militarism in favor of “prudence and pragmatism.”
You often state proudly that we are the strongest military in the world, as if it is a crown of excellence, when in fact it is a crown of thorns on our country, which hangs on a cross of iron. As former president Dwight Eisenhower memorably said in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
What felonious theft our military budget is from the 140 million poor and low-income American people, 40% of U.S. citizens, for whom the crucial Poor People’s Campaign advocates. Forty-four million Americans “struggled with hunger” in 2022, according to USDA. Diseases of despair are rampant. Our life expectancy—a critical marker of people’s overall health—is lower than all comparable wealthy countries and many other countries including China and Cuba. Recall Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s warning: “If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”
I do wish that that you had read the other Catholic president John F Kennedy’s 1963 peace speech at American University before you met recently in San Francisco with Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China. At the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the Cuban Missile crisis, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev opened a line of communication and held many secret talks, despite monumental political differences, for the sake of moving away from imminent nuclear war. In his 1963 address at American University, Kennedy, after stating his abhorrence of communism, praised Russia’s key role in saving Europe from Nazism while losing 20 million citizens, and he foregrounded the two countries’ shared humanity: “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
In many diplomatic private talks and communications, also involving Pope John XXIII, Kennedy and Khrushchev laid the groundwork for ending above ground nuclear weapons testing with the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and forging a more peaceful country-to-country relationship. Within six-and-a-half months President Kennedy was assassinated, with the CIA strongly implicated.
Xi’s remarks to a gathering of business leaders, following your more private meeting with him last November, manifests a kinship with JFK’s speech. He displayed respect for our country’s accomplishments (even if for self-serving reasons) and advocated the two countries accept political diversity in a multipolar world. Joe, if you had listened more deeply, you may have given a wiser response to a reporter’s question than your dismissive, “Yes, I think Xi is a dictator” —an off-the cuff remark that conveys little wisdom or will to work together to rescue the world from war and climate crisis and to live in a multipolar, diverse world. You are generous with weapons, but dismissive of dialogue where it is most needed.
My wish for you in 2024 is to imbibe this wisdom and act on it: What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the core of the Torah, the New Testament, the Quran, and other religious traditions. Make it your own, end the U.S. addiction to war, and save your country’s soul and your own.
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2023's Costliest Weather Disasters Reveal 'Double Inequality' of Climate Crisis
"There is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor," Christian Aid's chief executive said on the publication of the charity's annual list of the year's costliest climate-driven disasters.
Dec 27, 2023
Christian Aid's annual list of the 20 costliest climate crisis-driven disasters of 2023, published Wednesday, reveals a "double injustice," as populations that have emitted relatively little greenhouse gas disproportionately suffer the impacts of extreme weather events ranging from floods to storms to wildfires.
While the disasters on the list impacted low-, medium-, and high-income countries, the U.K.-based charity observed that people in low-income nations have fewer resources to recover.
"When it comes to the climate crisis, there is a global postcode lottery that is stacked against the poor," Christian Aid chief executive Patrick Watt said in a statement. "In poorer countries, people are often less prepared for climate-related disasters and have fewer resources with which to bounce back. The upshot is that more people die, and recovery is slower and more unequal."
The disasters on the list reflect an accelerating climate emergency, as 2023 is set to be the hottest year both on the official record and in 125,000 years of human history.
"The effects of climate change are increasingly obvious, not least in the increasing frequency and severity of climate related disasters," Watt wrote in the report foreword. "Floods, storms, heatwaves, and droughts are all becoming more intense, and climate attribution science is becoming clearer that climate change is causing these more intense disasters."
The report focuses on disasters whose increased frequency or intensity have been linked to the burning of fossil fuels, excluding events like earthquakes. It draws primarily on the EM-DAT database of international disasters, supplementing with data from individual countries, insurers, and the United Nations. It then determines their per capita cost by dividing total damages by the impacted population.
"The worst negative impact of Cyclone Freddy that I shall never forget in my entire life is the destruction of the only house that we struggled to construct."
"This method offers a more individualized perspective of the disaster's impact, highlighting the financial strain on the average citizen rather than just the aggregate economic toll," the report authors explained.
The costliest climate disaster of 2023 was the wildfire that devastated Maui from August 8 to 11. The report found that the fires had a per capita cost of $4,161 for the people of Hawaii. While Hawaii is part of the U.S., a wealthy country, other commenters have noted that the fire reflected the legacy of the colonialism inflicted on Indigenous Hawaiians and land-use changes that favored first agricultural plantations and then tourism over maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Locals and climate justice advocates voiced concerns that the affected area would be rebuilt in the interests of wealthy developers rather than surviving residents.
Other headline-making disasters on the list included the flooding that inundated Libya in September and Cyclone Freddy in Malawi, which was the second deadliest cyclone in Africa since 2000.
Christian Aid's full list of the 20 costliest disasters of 2023 and their per capital price tag is as follows:
- Hawaii, U.S., wildfire: $4,161 per person
- Guam, storm: $1,455 per person
- Vanuatu, storm: $947 per person
- New Zealand, storm: $468 per person
- New Zealand, flood: $371 per person
- Italy, flood: $164 per person
- Libya, flood: $105 per person
- Peru, flood: $66 per person
- Spain, drought: $50 per person
- Myanmar, storm: $41 per person
- Chile, flood: $39 per person
- Haiti, flood: $36 per person
- Mexico, storm: $35 per person
- Chile, wildfire: $30 per person
- U.S., storm: $25 per person
- China, flood: $23 per person
- Peru, storm: $20 per person
- Malawi, storm: $17 per person
- U.S., storm: $16 per person
- Peru, flood: $9 per person
The report authors pointed out that per capita costs tend to be higher in wealthier countries that have higher costs of living and more insurance data to inform figures. This does not always reflect the relative impact of a disaster on a population. For example, a full recovery from Storm Freddy in Malawi is estimated to cost $680 million.
"Given the scale of the disaster, and the huge number of people affected, this may seem like a relatively low amount," the report authors noted, "but since the total of economy of Malawi is $13 billion, it represents 5%, a much higher proportion than in most other disasters on our list."
The per-person cost of that full recovery comes out to $33, which seems small by U.S. standards but amounts to more than 5% of the average annual income of $500 in Malawi.
"The worst negative impact of Cyclone Freddy that I shall never forget in my entire life is the destruction of the only house that we struggled to construct," 69-year-old widow and storm survivor Mofolo Chikaonda told Christian Aid.
Watt wrote in the foreword that "the fact that poorer countries and communities contribute little to global heating makes climate-related disasters a double inequality. This is an injustice that a growing number of poorer countries and civil society campaigners have rightly challenged."
The charity made several recommendations for the international community to prepare for and address climate disasters in a just manner.
"Governments urgently need to take further action at home and internationally to cut emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change," Watt said. "And where the impacts go beyond what people can adapt to, the loss and damage fund must be resourced to compensate the poorest countries for the effects of a crisis that isn't of their making."
A loss and damage fund to help poorer nations pay for the inevitable impacts of the climate crisis was agreed to at the 27th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) in 2022 and had its details finalized at this year's COP28 in Dubai.
"Loss and damage costs are in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually in developing countries alone," Nushrat Chowdhury, Christian Aid's climate justice policy adviser in Bangladesh, said in a statement. "Wealthy nations must commit the new and additional money required to ensure the loss and damage fund agreed at COP28 can be quickly get help to those that need it most."
Christian Aid said that countries should agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal to fully fund climate mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage; make sure poorer nations can quickly access the new loss and damage fund as it becomes operational in 2024; make vulnerable communities more resilient by investing in solutions like agroecology; increase funding for early warning and response systems; measure the impacts of disasters and share their findings; and establish social services at home to assist disaster victims while providing poorer nations with the debt relief, funding, and tax-rule reform they need so they can afford to help their own populations.
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