Comment Since mid-June, torrential rain has transformed Pakistan’s landscape, inundating villages and fields, destroying homes and killing at least 1,000 people. But if the human toll is devastating, the economic cost is almost unimaginable: According to Pakistan’s finance minister, the damage so far is likely to exceed $10 billion, or a whopping 4 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product. “Pakistan was already facing the devastating effects of climate change,” Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, told a news conference on Thursday. “Now the most devastating monsoon rains in a decade are wreaking havoc across the country.” But even as Pakistan turns to donors around the world for help, there’s one thing the country almost certainly won’t get: Compensation from countries — including the United States — that are responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Although the two issues may seem unrelated, for decades developing countries have asked richer ones to provide financing for the costs they face from heat waves, floods, droughts, sea-level rise and other disasters related to climate. They argue that nations that got rich from burning fossil fuels, such as the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan, are also warming the planet. causing “loss and damage” to poorer countries. Flood victims in Pakistan carry what they can salvage from their submerged homes as they walk through a flooded area in Dera Allah Yar on August 28. (Video: AP) At UN summit, poor nations demand rich ones pay for climate damage The issue has become a flashpoint in global climate negotiations. In the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, countries agreed to recognize and “address” the losses and damages caused by these dangerous climate impacts. Last year, at the major UN climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiators from developing countries hoped that negotiators would finally create a formal institution to channel cash to the countries most affected by climate disasters. But the United States, despite being the largest historical emitter of carbon dioxide, has blocked such efforts at every turn. In Glasgow, the Biden administration joined a group of countries resistance to efforts to establish payments in developing countries that have been hit hard by climate change. One of the key issues is liability. US officials fear that if an official damage and loss fund is created, the United States could open itself up to lawsuits from poorer countries. “We are always thinking about the issue of responsibility,” John F. Kerry, the US’s international climate envoy, said during the Glasgow summit. Preety Bhandari, senior adviser on climate and economics at the World Resources Institute, points out that UN negotiators reached a side deal in 2015, according to which the treatment of damages and losses does not provide any basis for legal liability. “I think there is probably too much caution on the part of the US and other developed countries,” he said. But as the damage mounts, some have already gone to court, as citizens and politicians from vulnerable countries seek compensation for the loss of their livelihoods, homes or farms. In Peru, a farmer is suing a German energy giant. island nations, meanwhile, are trying to create a commission that would allow them to sue major countries for climate damage. Kerry has also argued that there are existing channels to help provide relief to countries like Pakistan that are suffering from weather disasters. USAID, for example, is providing $100,000 in humanitarian aid to Pakistan. But such donations pales in comparison to the growing toll of climate change on the developing world. A report published by humanitarian group Oxfam in June found that over the past five years calls for extreme weather relief were only 54 percent funded on average, leaving a deficit of tens of billions of dollars. Existing systems also require developing countries to rely on acts of charity, rather than a standardized system of who owes what. The United States and other developed nations will be forced to reckon with that question at the next major UN climate meeting, known as COP27, scheduled for November in Egypt. But unless the Biden administration’s perspective changes, significant progress is unlikely. “This particular issue could make or break COP27,” Bhandari said. correction An earlier version of this article mistakenly stated that COP27 is scheduled for December. In fact, it is scheduled for November. This version has been corrected. Sign up for the latest news on climate change, energy and the environment, delivered every Thursday
