The boy was one of 37 million people facing starvation in the Horn of Africa. After four failed rainy seasons, Kenya faces the acute risk of widespread famine. This suffering is about to get worse. Experts predict that drought-stricken areas in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia will see much lower rainfall for the rest of the year. The entire continent of Africa is responsible for less than 4% of historical global emissions, yet Africans bear the brunt of the climate crisis. We are experiencing deep damage to our societies, our economies and above all our people. The same injustice is crippling other lower income parts of the world. in Pakistan earlier this year, extreme floods submerged a third of the entire country, killing more than 1,700 people. The World Bank estimates the total economic damage to Pakistan to be over $30bn (£26bn). rebuilding will cost another $16 billion. Pakistan has contributed only 0.3% of global emissions, yet, like Kenya and Somalia, it has to pay, quite literally, for the greenhouse gases emitted by other countries. Moreover, these countries do not have the resources to pay for the damage caused to them. When Germany experienced terrible flooding in 2021, the government was able to immediately mobilize €30bn (£26bn) to pay for rebuilding cities and infrastructure decimated by the floods. Instead, Pakistan has had to rely on a UN emergency appeal that is only 34% funded. Mozambique was forced to take out an IMF loan to help pay for recovery after Cyclone Idai in 2019, pushing the country further into debt distress. The legacy of colonial mining and looting by rich countries has left countries like Pakistan, Kenya and Mozambique without enough resources to deal with extreme climate change. Without the money to recover from extreme weather events, there is little hope for countries like mine to survive the coming decades. At Cop27 this week, countries most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis are bringing a solution to the table. We are asking those who have largely caused this crisis to help pay for the damage they have created. This is called “loss and damage financing”, in UN parlance. Already, it has dominated the talks and kept negotiators fighting late into the night. Vanuatu, a Pacific nation that is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, first proposed such financial support in 1991. But the issue has been tied up in UN technical negotiations for years. This has allowed rich countries to delay any progress in providing money to people who need it to recover and rebuild. Now, the issue of loss and damage finally becomes inevitable. People all over the world are beginning to understand why this is necessary. Some might say that such funding is still unlikely amid energy and cost-of-living crises. But if we talk about who is to blame, there is one culprit that stands out – the fossil fuel industry. A new report from the Loss and Damage Collaboration found that in the first half of 2022, just six fossil fuel companies made enough money to cover the total cost of extreme weather and climate-related events in developing countries around the world – and they still have nearly $70bn (£61bn) left over as net profit. Even the UN secretary-general has called for windfall taxes on fossil fuel-producing giants to fund damage and loss payments. Others argue that we can’t control how the money is actually used – that the governments that receive it may not get it to people in need and instead spend it on their own projects. But we know what works. A report released last week by the Stockholm Environment Institute found that the most effective way to get that money to the people who need it is to simply give them money directly. Such direct transfers could take the form of small and accessible grants to communities in urgent need. The only thing still missing is the political will to make it happen. But as climate disasters pile up, the losses and damages become harder to ignore. People have described Cop27 as the ‘African cop’. It can only live up to that name if world leaders are willing to actually address the needs of people suffering from a crisis they played little part in creating. To the leaders gathering in Sharm El Sheikh this week, I say: you cannot adapt to hunger. Stop wasting time. Start getting money to those who need it most.
