The US and Other Rich Countries Stonewalled $300 Billion Climate Relief Fund
By Christine MacDonald, In These Times
14 December 19
Furious activists protested, but mandatory measures remained lacking as
negotiations continue into the night on Friday.
With climate-related disasters happening "at the rate of one a week,"
according to the United Nations, more than 150 civil society organizations
around the world are using the UN climate negotiations this week to stand
with the Global South. They are pushing for demands set out in an open
letter to negotiators in November, including a new global climate fund to
aid poor countries in the midst of climate catastrophes.
The organizations say it's about time for a rethink of climate financing as
climate-related disasters like extreme storms, droughts, floods and famines
take a mounting economic toll on poor countries. Worldwide costs are
estimated to grow to between $300 and $700 billion a year by 2030. To cover
the costs, poor countries must increasingly borrow from development aid,
which is "pushing them into a debt trap," says Harjeet Singh, global lead on
climate change with ActionAid International, one of the 150-plus
organizations that signed the letter.
The United States and other wealthy countries made a pledge in 2010 to
commit $100 billion annually to assist poorer countries, but wealthier
countries have consistently failed to pay in. The new proposal calls for a
comprehensive and mandatory new fund to help poor countries recover that
would make an additional $50 billion available by 2022 and gradually
increase the amount to $300 billion a year by 2030.
The money would come from the wealthy countries that are responsible for the
vast majority of the emissions behind climate change. Additional funds could
be raised from taxes on air travel, fossil fuels and financial transactions.
The money would go directly to local organizations working in frontline
communities in the Global South to help with rebuilding, recovery and
resilience efforts.
However, with negotiations still going on as nighttime fell in Madrid, all
suggestion of additional mandatory climate funds have met stiff resistance
from wealthy countries. The 47 members of the Least Developed Countries
group pushed new "loss and damage" funding commitments, using much of the
language culled from the environmental groups' proposal. But the rich
countries that would have to foot the bill, including the United States,
Singh says, "would not even engage."
Earlier in the week, Singh expressed optimism about proposals for beefing up
climate recovery funding through something called The Warsaw International
Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts, or
WIM. But by late Thursday, a draft of WIM circulating among negotiators
included no mention of additional funding but merely urged developed
countries and others to "scale up" their financial commitments. The reality,
Singh said, is that a failure to mandate additional funding would merely
spread existing funds around more thinly, thus "exposing more people to
climate disasters."
The lack of commitment to countries in the Global South has prompted
unprecedented protests this year, both inside of the negotiating halls, led
by youth and indigenous activists, and outside on the streets, where an
estimated 500,000 people marched with Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg on
Friday, December 6. On Thursday more than 300 activists from around the
globe protested just outside of the room where climate talks were taking
place. Banging on pots and pans in a version of what is known in Latin
America as a cacerolazo, they chanted slogans and yelled "Shame!" until
security guards rounded them up, snatching conference IDs from around
activists' necks and herding them out of the building.
In response, UN officials threatened to bar all international observers from
the talks, saying the protests were "illegal" under the UN's code of
conduct. After tense negotiations, UN officials agreed to let some but not
all of the international observers back into the conference after extracting
promises not to carry out any more so-called "illegal protests." The Fridays
for Future organization responded by calling an emergency climate strike
this afternoon worldwide.
Activists have denounced the UN for allowing oil company executives to roam
free while controlling the access of activists. "The UN should be kicking
polluters out of the talks, but instead they are kicking people out," says
Sara Shaw, international program coordinator for climate justice and energy
at Friends of the Earth International.
Oil companies and the U.S. government have emerged as the biggest villains
of this year's conference. Increasingly, companies are looking to profitable
approaches like trading in carbon offset projects. While wining and dining
negotiators over drinks and canapes, industry experts, corporate friendly
environmental groups and corporate executives have outlined an array of
"market-based solutions" to the climate crisis-despite warnings from
scientific experts that it's magical thinking to assume the world can trade
its way out of more than a fraction of the necessary emissions reductions.
This week's industry proposals include plans to launch broad new markets in
"natural climate solutions" that will involve investing in everything from
mangrove preservation to sustainable farming and more.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration, which is in the process of withdrawing
from the UN Paris climate agreement, has taken advantage of its waning
negotiating power to push for renewed assurances that the United States and
other big polluters can't be held accountable for historic pollution. This
"liability" issue-the same one assailing the world's fossil fuel
companies-have been among the most contentious issues in past climate
negotiations, which is what led to the "loss and damage" provision being
included to help poor countries, in the first place. As negotiations
continued Friday, U.S. delegates kept pushing for a liability and
compensation waiver included in the final WIM document, a move that Taylor
Billings of Corporate Accountability International referred to in Buzzfeed
as "an ass-covering maneuver."
"With this waiver, the U.S. is trying to torch critical elements of climate
action on its way out of the Paris Agreement-and create an escape hatch for
polluting countries and potentially corporations," Billings told In These
Times. "Across the negotiations, it's obvious that the U.S. is attempting to
gut the Paris Agreement of any promise and potential. That's what they've
always done in these talks. Shamefully, it's not just the U.S.-the EU,
Australia and Canada are helping the U.S. do its dirty work and cowering in
Trump's shadow when questioned about it."
"The U.S. is lighting the house in fire as it's on its way out the door and
Global North governments like the EU, Australia and Canada are backing it
every step of the way," said Billings' colleague Sriram Madhusoodanan,
deputy campaigns director of Corporate Accountability, at an ActionAid press
conference on the final day of the climate talks Friday.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
talk on the record, one person involved in negotiations told In These Times
that the United States and other developed countries have been unwilling to
discuss additional funding beyond the existing commitments for climate
adaptation and resilience, in part because they don't want to open the door
to further discussion about climate blame. It remains a thorny issue whether
wealthy industrialized countries should pay more to mitigate the impacts of
climate change since they are responsible for the bulk of fossil fuel
emissions, dating back to the bringing of the Industrial Revolution.
"The U.S. has been very clear that it doesn't want anything more beyond
adaption funding, because if you start talking about 'loss and damage' it
gets into the issue of who is responsible for the fossil fuel emissions that
have created the climate crisis," the negotiator says.
"It is the U.S., EU, Canada, Japan and Australia that are not allowing any
progress," concurs Singh.
With poor and rich countries still far apart, there's speculation that the
negotiations may end without agreement on key issues. Some of the less
costly ideas outlined in the open letter have found their way into the
latest draft agreement. They include language stipulating a new "expert
group" by 2020 to help poor countries grappling with climate damages and the
creation of a "Santiago Network" for technical assistance, but without
additional funding, those measures are expected to have limited effect.
Organizations that penned the open letter, which included 350.org, Friends
of the Earth International and WWF International, the Center for Biological
Diversity, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Climate Justice
Project, say they are not giving up and will continue to push a
comprehensive new approach to climate finance even after this year's
negotiation's wrap up. The proposal by ActionAid and the other 150-plus
groups also backs a temporary interest-free moratorium on foreign debt
payments of poor countries in the throes of climate disasters. But that idea
didn't even get discussed by negotiators this year.
Dylan Hamilton, a Fridays for Future activist from Scotland, said in a press
conference in Madrid today that the UN process "has failed us again" and
promising to bring an even bigger fight next year at the 26th annual
conference in Glasgow, Scotland, a half hour from where Hamilton lives.
"Get ready," she said. "We're going to be even bigger next year."
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