There was a meeting in Abu Dhabi this weekend as poorer nations contemplated how best to extort money from richer nations when bad weather hits. The fourth Transnational Committee on Loss and Damage did not reach a consensus agreement on many of the major issues. Most importantly, the smaller nations doing the extorting wanted to make contributions to the climate Loss and Damage Fund mandatory with penalties for not contributing. The U.S. scotched that idea but not without wailing and gnashing of teeth from nations that will benefit from bad weather
It's not even certain that the outline of the fund agreed to this weekend would survive when 200 nations gather on November 30 for the COP 28 climate conference. There's anger among the extorting nations that the fund will be administered by the World Bank.
Unanswered by either the extorting countries or the nations being extorted is how you separate damage done because of climate change and damage done by ordinary weather events. Catastrophic weather events would occur even if the internal combustion engine had never been invented.
Apparently, they're not even going to try.
Unresolved issues hung over the committee when it began meeting Friday in Abu Dhabi, including where the fund would be hosted and which countries would have access to its money. But determining who would contribute cash was the most fraught issue.
Developing countries blamed the U.S. and other wealthy nations for failing to support poor, vulnerable countries after climate-fueled disasters.
“The poorest countries are suffering increased debt and increased loss to deal with this loss and damage. So we cannot accept a retreat to volunteerism,” Avinash Persaud, the lead negotiator for Barbados, said Saturday.
The fear among extorting countries is that because the World Bank is in the U.S. and because U.S. presidents get to appoint the bank's president, donor countries would have an advantage.
Let's hope that's the case. The extorting countries see dollar signs in front of their eyes and are already getting greedy.
The U.S. has pressed the committee to make the contributions voluntary, saying rich countries are not obligated under the Paris Agreement to pay for loss and damage. The U.S. has long faced opposition from within Congress for climate funding.
A 2009 pledge by rich nations to deliver $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poorer countries recover from climate impacts remains unmet. Developing countries want the separate loss and damage fund to also receive $100 billion a year by 2030.
So far, only a handful of small countries have pledged money to the future loss and damage fund. The U.S. is not among them.
“It is a sombre day for climate justice, as rich countries turn their backs on vulnerable communities," said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at nonprofit Climate Action Network International.
"Rich countries ... have not only coerced developing nations into accepting the World Bank as the host of the Loss and Damage Fund but have also evaded their duty to lead in providing financial assistance to those communities and countries."
The extorting countries aren't serious about divvying up this mountain of cash. They want $100 billion a year plus a cut from the Loss and Damage Fund? Who are they trying to fool?
Funding the lavish lifestyles of third-world kleptocrats should not be part of mitigating "climate disasters," especially when it's impossible to tell the difference between a "climate disaster" and a not-out-of-the-ordinary drought or flood.
If other nations want to pay extortion money, they can have at it. Biden knows that no Congress, no matter what party is in control, will pay "damages" for weather events in other countries.
