The question at the heart of COP27, the United Nations-led climate conference Egypt, is who owes what to who? The world’s most vulnerable countries say they are already dealing with irreversible losses because rich, industrialized countries have heated Earth’s atmosphere and let loose climate hazards that destroy their homes, their economies, their heritage. They want money to compensate them.
Industrialized countries, led by the United States and the European Union, say they want to help. But they are wary of setting up something that could potentially hold them liable. It’s not politically realistic in their countries, they say.
This debate is called loss and damage. You might think of it as climate reparations.
“Loss and damage have been the always-postponed issue,” Guterres said on Thursday. “There is no more time to postpone it. We must recognize loss and damage and we must create an institutional framework to deal with it.”
“Damage” refers to the destruction of physical things like roads, homes and bridges. It’s relatively easy to quantify.
“Loss” refers to economic impacts: Lost work hours because of extreme heat, for instance, or lost agricultural revenues because rising sea levels flood paddy fields with saltwater, or lost tourism revenues because of a hurricane. That’s harder to quantify.