Disaster-hit nations call for climate aid
Countries on the frontlines of climate change have warned they cannot wait another year for long-sought aid to recover from disasters as floods and hurricanes wreak havoc across the globe.
The appeal came during a meeting of the "loss and damage" fund that concluded Friday amid concerns it is unlikely to be able to approve climate aid until 2025.
"We cannot wait until the end of 2025 for the first funds to get out the door," Adao Soares Barbosa, a board member from East Timor and a long-standing negotiator for the world's poorest nations, told AFP.
"Loss and damage isn't waiting for us."
Nearly 200 nations agreed at the UN COP28 summit last November to launch a fund responsible for distributing aid to developing countries to rebuild in the wake of climate disasters.
That historic moment has given way to complex negotiations to finalise the fund's design, which some countries worry will not move at a pace or scale that matches the tempo of extreme-weather disasters afflicting their people.
"The urgency of needs of vulnerable countries and communities cannot be left until we have every hair in place for this fund," said Barbosa.
Damage bills for climate disasters can run into the billions and there is barely enough cash set aside for loss and damage at present to cover just one such event, experts say.
This year has witnessed a string of catastrophes on multiple continents, from floods and landslides to heatwaves and wildfires.
Delegates met in South Korea for the second meeting of the loss and damage fund this week as Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and North America.
The "massive" destruction witnessed in recent weeks "puts immense pressure on us to deliver on our work", Richard Sherman, the South African co-chair of the board steering the negotiations, told the meeting.
The fund said it wanted money approved "as soon as possible, but realistically by mid-2025", according to an official document seen by AFP.
In an appeal for faster action, Elizabeth Thompson, a board member from Barbados, said Hurricane Beryl alone had caused "apocalyptic" damage worth "multiple billion dollars".
"In five islands of the Grenadines... 90 percent of the housing is gone... Houses look like packs of cards and strips of wood, roofs are gone, trees are gone, there is no food, there is no water, there is no power," she said.
"We cannot keep talking while people live and die in a crisis that they do not cause." Thompson said the fund needed to reflect "the urgency and the scale required to respond to... the risk, the damage and the devastation faced by people across the world who need this fund".