Can Climate Change Fuelled Loss and Damage Ever be Fair?

This report discusses how much responsibility the wealthy countries behind the climate crisis must take for the devastating impact that rising global temperatures are already having on developing nations. It finds that the US and EU are jointly responsible for more than half (54%) the cost of repairing the damage caused by climate disasters in the Global South.

It highlights how the world needs to establish effective responses to climate disasters, remake global food systems to be resilient in the face of destabilised ecosystems, and respond to increasingly frequent migrant crises in ways that protect the rights of those forced to leave their homes. The report shows that the first step is for wealthy countries to immediately begin providing public climate finance, based on their responsibility and capacity to act, to support not only adaptation, but to also address the loss and damage already being caused by the climate crisis.

The civil society organisations calculated countries’ ‘fair share’ of responsibility using an equity analysis, based on countries' capacity to take climate action, based on national income while taking into account what is needed to provide basic living standards as well as their historic contributions to climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results of the equity analysis include the findings that the US owes at least 30% and the EU 24%, compared to India’s 0.5%.

The report suggests that, based on available estimates of loss and damage costs in developing countries, new and additional finance of $50 billion should be provided by 2022, rising to a minimum of $300 billion by 2030.