By AFP - Agence France Presse
COP29 - Azerbaijan: Climate disaster fund for poor countries 'ready'
A long-sought disaster relief fund to help vulnerable countries weather the storm of climate change will start distributing aid next year, officials said at COP29 in Baku on Tuesday.
“The fund for responding to loss and damage is ready to disburse resources,” said Executive Director Ibrahima Cheikh Diong of Senegal as it was officially signed off in the Azerbaijani capital.
Its launch shows progress amid the dispute at COP29 between the global North and South over climate finance.
The fund, which will help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters, was agreed upon in a historic first at last year's UN climate summit in Dubai.
According to scientists, man-made climate change is making floods, hurricanes, and extreme weather events fiercer and more frequent. Southern nations say they are most affected by disasters but are least responsible.
Mainly, rich countries, including Germany, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Denmark, have pledged $722 million so far. Sweden was the latest nation to contribute, pledging $20 million on Tuesday.
But the amount “comes nowhere near redressing the wrong inflicted on the vulnerable” and “is roughly the annual salary of the world's ten highest-paid soccer players,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
“This is not even a quarter of the damage caused in Vietnam by Hurricane Yagi in September,” he said.
Damage caused by climate disasters can run into billions, and currently, there is barely enough money set aside for loss and damage to cover just one such event, experts say.
Developing nations have been pushing for a disaster relief fund to recover from climate impacts for the past 30 years, and last year's agreement was celebrated as a major diplomatic breakthrough.
The fund now has a director and a board - on which developing countries have greater representation than in other international funds - and is based in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
It is temporarily under the aegis of the World Bank, a move opposed by many poorer countries.
Some estimates suggest that developing countries need more than $400 billion a year to rebuild after climate-related disasters. One study claimed that the global bill could rise to between $290 billion and $580 billion a year by 2030 and keep rising.
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