Climate disasters – Will a special fund be set up for them?

At the climate summit in Egypt, representatives of the European Union made a proposal to resolve the situation regarding funding for countries affected by climate change disasters.

The proposal is to set up a special fund to cover losses and damages in the countries most vulnerable to disasters caused by climate change.

How should the fund be financed?

In addition to rich countries, emerging economies with high emissions should be involved in financing the fund. This is a slight change from the situation where only rich countries, which have historically contributed the most to global warming, should contribute to the fund.

At this year’s climate summit, the issue of damage from natural disasters was a big topic. More than 130 developing countries pushed for an agreement on a new fund.

Climate change drylands

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The United States and the European Union had previously resisted the idea, fearing it could open the door to spiraling liabilities for countries whose historic emissions have contributed to climate change.

More focus on China

But the European Union also wants countries to increase their ambition to reduce global warming emissions. China was specifically named as saying it should increase its emissions reduction targets.

The slight problem, however, is that the whole proposal goes against China’s expectations. It wants all developing countries to have access to the fund, and therefore it too. This would mean that China could receive the fund and not contribute to it.

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The whole plan would also be to get countries to stop generating electricity from coal as quickly as possible. This, however, goes slightly against the current situation, where, particularly in Europe, we are seeing a big effort to generate electricity by all available means, including coal. Similarly, China, while investing heavily in renewable energy, still has huge reserves of coal, which it intends to use for power generation for some time to come.