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SPOTLIGHT
If you were to time travel back two years ago and tell folks we’d have a meeting of the Loss and Damage Fund board in 2024, they would have laughed you off the planet. And yet, here we are. The first meeting kicked off Monday and will wrap up tomorrow.
Main agenda items include the election of co-chairs, discussion of host country eligibility (the Philippines, Bahamas and Barbados have all expressed interest with selection likely to take place at the next meeting), agreement on a process for hiring an Executive Director (to be completed by the third or fourth meeting), and a discussion of the official name of the fund. Since they're starting three months behind schedule they have a lot of work to do, and quickly, in the lead up to the United Nations annual climate conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan this November.
The civil society has been very vocal in their concerns regarding transparency, meeting accessibility, and lack of robust public participation as expressed in this letter with 326 organizational sign-ons.
After laying the groundwork for how the board will operate, they will turn their attention to addressing access to finance, eligibility, and fundraising. The fund has just under $662 million pledged, with $10 million already in hand thanks to Japan. Their proposed budget is nearly $5 million per year in operating costs, largely due to staffing needs. The board must confirm the World Bank as the fund’s interim host by COP29 or risk further delays, but meetings between the two groups are already off to a rocky start over a number of legal and technical matters.
Context: Azerbaijani pro-democracy activist Anar Mammadli was detained earlier this week under money smuggling charges, which he denies. The charges have also been used against seven journalists and media employees in recent months, prompting concerns around free speech and human rights.
ON OUR RADAR
It's been quite a week for multilateral climate diplomacy! The United Nations plastic treaty negotiations wrapped up yesterday in Ottawa and the US received significant backlash for its efforts to focus on reuse and recycling as opposed to plastic production. Currently, plastic accounts for around 10% of fossil fuel demand globally and is increasingly sourced from coal.
Speaking of coal, the Group of Seven (G7) energy and environment ministers met in Turin over the weekend and announced a phaseout of “unabated coal power generation” by 2035. While a step in the right direction, the commitment falls short of aligning with the Paris Agreement to keep warming below 1.5C and relies on “abatement” technologies that are ill-defined and lack strong evidence for delivering reductions of greenhouse gasses at-scale.
Following the Petersberg Climate Dialogue April 25-26th, Germany, Spain and South Africa joined Brazil in endorsing a 2% tax on billionaires to raise roughly $250 billion in annual revenue to be spent in part on climate. This dovetails with the first round of substantive negotiations last Friday of the new United Nations committee tasked with drafting a framework convention on effective international tax cooperation. And in Nairobi on Monday, African Heads of State met to discuss replenishment of the World Bank’s concessional lending window that provides critical finance to developing countries.
Finally, while the rights of protesters areunder attack globally, countries across Latin America and the Caribbean gathered last week and approved new action plansto protect the rights of environmental defenders. Notably, Brazil has not ratified the agreement despite being one of themost dangerousplaces in the world for land defenders. Last Thursday, thousands of Indigenous peoplesmarched in Brazil’s capital for the 20th year in a row to protest human rights abuses.
NEWS
Climate Diplomacy
China: China climate chief says he’ll visit US to bolster key ties (Bloomberg $), Biden’s push for World Bank funds to compete with China stalls (Bloomberg $), China can't quit coal by 2040, researchers say, despite global climate goals (Reuters)
COP29: Peak COP? UN looks to shrink Baku and Belém climate summits (Climate Home), Azerbaijan president: COP29 won’t stop us investing in ‘god-given’ gas (E&E), Indigenous people rush to stop ‘false climate solutions’ ahead of COP29 (High Country News)
Climate finance goal: Tensions rise over who will contribute to new climate finance goal (Climate Home)
Drilling: OPEC offers support to African oil exploration hot spot Namibia (Bloomberg $)
International Finance
Debt: Global south now repays more in debt than it gets in grants and loans (Devex $)
Modeling injustice: South experts call for climate model paradigm shift (African Arguments)
Seeking finance: As donors dither, Indigenous funds seek to decolonise green finance (Climate Home)
Impacts
Kids: Climate change poses a child labor ‘threat multiplier’ (Bloomberg $), ‘Children won’t be able to survive’: Inter-American court to hear from climate victims (The Guardian)
Most impacted: Asia is most climate disaster-impacted region, UN meteorological agency says (Reuters), Climate change played a role in killing tens of thousands of people in 2023 (Yale Climate Connections)
Loss and damage: Drought study raises tricky questions for loss and damage fund (Climate Home)
At a glance: Taxing fossil fuel majors in wealthy countries at just $5 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, ratcheting $5 annually, could raise $900 billion for climate by 2030.