MANILA–Filipino environmental and advocacy groups continued to demand that developed countries’ governments fill the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) with “trillions, not billions” as part of their obligation to deliver climate finance to developing countries.
“The refusal of Global North governments to deliver their full obligations in climate finance is a huge injustice on top of many other injustices and harms they have inflicted on our people,” said Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) coordinator Lidy Nacpil.
“While rich, polluting countries shamelessly avoid their obligation to pay up, those who have contributed the least to global warming suffer the most from its effects. People in the Global South are losing their homes, livelihoods, and their very lives,” added Nacpil in a statement to the media.
On December 3, 2024 alone, more than 200 Filipinos mobilized in front of the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City to air their demand.
They also called on the board members of the FRLD to maintain independence from the World Bank, the host of the FRLD’s secretariat.
The mobilization was led by APMDD and conducted a week after the conclusion of COP29, where an “extremely inadequate climate finance deal of 300 billion USD a year by 2035 was adopted by the COP Presidency despite the objections of developing countries.”
Global civil society present at COP29, including APMDD, called on developed countries to pay up “trillions, not billions” of climate finance and urged developing countries to reject a bad deal.
Extreme heat in South and Southeast Asia in the first half of the year has closed schools, disrupted food production, and collapsed power grids.
In southern Pakistan, 568 people died in six days due to heat stroke. In the second half of the year, the monsoon rains, exacerbated by climate change, have given Bangladesh its heaviest rainfall and worst flooding in over a century, leaving millions of people stranded and damaging 282 million USD worth of crops.
In Nepal, floods and landslides killed over 200 people and cost at least 127 million USD in losses.
In the Philippines, the Department of Agriculture disclosed that this year’s El Niño has cost 162 million USD in losses, devastating over 175,000 farmers and fisherfolk.
“To support the communities most affected by climate disasters, the FRLD must be filled with far, far more than the 731 million USD of current pledges,” said Nacpil.
Economic losses and damages in developing countries have been estimated to cost 447 to 894 billion USD a year by 2030, but the FRLD has received only 731 million USD of pledges as of November.
The FRLD, a hard-won victory of climate campaigners and developing countries, was established at COP27 in 2022 and held its first board meeting early this year.
At COP28 in 2023, the World Bank was appointed as the host of the secretariat, a decision criticized by civil society as a threat to developing countries’ ability to receive adequate and grants-based payment for losses and damages.
“Loss and damage finance should not only be adequate and predictable, to ensure that communities are able to respond to disasters as they happen, it should be non-debt-creating and delivered free of conditionalities. The World Bank’s promotion of loans with conditionalities has only increased inequality in the Global South,” added Nacpil.
According to APMDD, from 2010 to 2024, the World Bank agencies IDA and IBRD received 79.76 billion USD in interest payments from its loans to developing countries.
The campaigners also criticized the “World Bank’s history of funding fossil fuel projects, to which they supplied $3.7 billion in trade finance as recently as 2022, calling it a conflict of interest and calling on the board members of the FRLD to maintain independence from the Bank.”
Photo by Mata: Asia Press Photo
