Leaders gathered in Dubai for the United Nation’s (U.N.) COP28 Climate Summit are fiercely debating loss-and-damage funding—money pledged to low-emission countries due to the costs of extreme weather and slow-onset disasters caused by high-emission countries. The central question is how exactly to use the $700 million in current contributions to a U.N. fund established in 2023 at COP27. The obvious answer should be: give the money directly to vulnerable people living on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
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This is exactly what
What will recipients do with this much cash in hand? I visited survivors of past storms in Malawi who chose to spend their cash payments repairing and strengthening damaged homes and adopting
Cyclone Freddy killed over 1,000 people in Malawi alone, and wreaked havoc on crops, infrastructure, and homes, with six-months-worth of rain typical in the region falling in just six days. By giving funds to the survivors, Scotland is granting its climate justice dollars as directly as possible.
Some feel that spending on climate loss and damage or adaptation is defeatist, preferring to exclusively focus on mitigating emissions. However, the reality is our collective failures to curb emissions quickly enough have significantly increased global average temperatures, which is already causing climate chaos. Worsening forest fires, floods, storms, and droughts are costing the world an additional
Providing small cash payments to relieve the impacts of climate change as part of social protection systems is an
A single cash injection sized to a poor household’s annual income gives families the flexibility to address the loss and damage they’ve experienced in a wide range of ways. One could call them the ultimate “localized” solution, restoring dignity and choice for recipients.
Notable climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti
Most excitingly, sending digital cash to mobile phones allows us to efficiently and effectively reach those most in need. The Covid pandemic spurred significant innovations, with countries like Togo testing
Saleemul Huq, the late climate leader instrumental to creating the U.N.’s fund, told Nature in 2022 that
Climate finance has been excessively hard for low-income countries—let alone low-income families—to access. As administrator of the U.N.’s new loss-and-damage fund, the World Bank now has the opportunity to buck that trend. With its vast experience in social protection, it knows how to deliver cash. Will it be willing to place more trust—and money—into the hands of the most impacted families?
While not all losses and damage are economic, direct cash can be transformational for survivors. I lay down the challenge: give the money and decision-making power to the real experts—the people already living with the harshest realities of the climate crisis.