Short Wave - COP-out: Who's Liable For Climate Change Destruction?

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

World leaders have gathered in Egypt this week to begin climate talks at the 27th Conference of the Parties. However, there are still outstanding questions about who should pay for climate change losses and damages. Vulnerable countries hit hardest by climate change are asking the wealthier countries most responsible for these damages for compensation.Climate change correspondent Lauren Sommer joins Emily Kwong to talk about this debate — and the case one island nation is making to seek payment.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey everyone, Emily Kwong here with NPR climate reporter Lauren Summer, who has a hypothetical for us. I do. Okay. Say your neighbor is renovating their house. They're making it super big, you know, fancy. And with all the construction work going on and there's digging and stuff, they managed to completely destabilize the ground under your house, too. So, you know, your walls are cracking and they're falling down. stuff. I'd be scared and I'd be mad. Yeah. And it's so bad, you can't live there anymore. So what would

you do? Well, in that case, I would probably want them to fix it, like pay for the fix or pay for a new place for me to live, right? Yeah, right. And so that's exactly what's happening with climate change right now. Smaller countries in the world, maybe their lower income, they've done very little to cause climate change. You know, their greenhouse gas emissions are low. But they're bearing some of the worst impacts, you know, like more extreme storms and droughts and flooding from rising seas. Oh, this is a clever metaphor because you're saying that smaller countries are, you know, knocking on the doors of wealthier countries like, hey, look at what you're doing to us. You owe us for the damage you're causing, and this is a question of fairness.

Yeah, yeah, they want compensation from richer countries because those countries got rich in part by burning fossil fuels. And so these would be payments for what's called loss and damage. And it's going to be a huge issue at these big international climate talks that are starting this week in Egypt, which are known as COP 27. At last year's talks, there was a ton of frustration about this. Thank you, Fiji, for your intervention. The Marshall Islands seeks the floor, I give the floor to the Marshall Islands. Vulnerable countries asked rich nations to commit to paying for loss and damage, you know, or maybe just set up a way to do that in the future, like Tina Staggy of the Marshall Islands here. Can we go back to our home islands, to our communities with nothing?

And for my country, the answer to that is no. It's quite a statement. Yeah, but so far, it hasn't really gotten anywhere. So tensions are really high at this year's talks about whether anything will be agreed to. So today on the show, the emerging debate over who is liable for destruction caused by a changing climate. and the case that one small island nation is making over what they believe they're owed. You're listening to Shortwave, Daily Science Podcast, from NPR. So, Lauren, big climate talks are starting this week in Egypt.

Countries are coming together like they do every year to hash out their climate policies. But what are world leaders trying to get done at this summit? Yeah, so the big overarching goal, right, is to stop the planet from heating up to dangerous levels. You know, slow down climate change. Yeah. And that means cutting emissions. And there is a goal on paper, which is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is 2.7 Fahrenheit. But, you know, that's just a goal.

In reality, the world is not on track to meet that. Yeah, Lauren, how far off are we? Yeah. So to hit that goal, emissions worldwide would have to drop really fast. Basically, they need to be cut almost in half by 2030, you know, around 45% drop. But if you add up all the commitments, which is what countries have said, said they would do to cut emissions, emissions would only fall around 3%. And that's the best case scenario. So it's way off. And it puts the world on track for around 2.5 degrees Celsius of warming

by the end of the century. All right. So the difference between the 2.5 we're expecting to see and the 1.5 degrees Celsius cut off, it seems small on paper. But it actually has a huge impact on the world, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's kind of deceptively small when you look at those numbers, but the science shows it's absolutely critical. It's the difference between losing some coral reefs and almost all the coral reefs. It's storms and heat waves that are much, much more dangerous and put a lot more lives at risk. So are countries going to buckle down this year? Are they going to commit to bigger emission cuts? Yeah, there's not a ton of hope for major progress. The U.S. announced its goal last year, which was to cut emissions basically in half by

2030. But the two other biggest emitters, which are China and India, they expect their emissions to increase over that same period. They're arguing that, you know, other countries have had their chance to build their economies by burning fossil fuels, so they should get that same shot. And kind of with that reality, many vulnerable countries, smaller countries are saying, okay, the writing's on the wall. More climate impacts are coming. And they need help paying for the loss and damage from them now. Yeah, so let's talk about loss and damage. What would those payments look like? And how do you calculate something like that? Right. Yeah, I've been talking to folks in Vanuatu about this. It's a small island nation. It's made up about 80 islands in the South Pacific. It usually ranks as one of the

happiest places to live, which, you know, it's not really like a scientific index, but it's out there. It's a cool fact. Yeah. Being in that part of the world, though, they're really vulnerable to cyclones. And there was a Category 5 storm that hit in 2015 and then another Category 5, Cyclone Herald, that hit in 2020. And when I spoke to Christopher Bartlett about that, who works on climate diplomacy for Vanuatu, he told me the storm did around $600 million in damage. It might sound small, but that represents more than 60% of the country's GDP that was wiped out in a matter of hours. So this is huge sums of our national wealth that is being erased by climate extremes. So those would be, you know, damages from climate change. But then there are also climate losses.

What's the difference between climate loss and damage? Yeah. So one example of that is coral reefs. The oceans are getting hotter, right? They're getting more acidic. And that's causing reefs to bleach and then they can die off. Reefs are really important to Vanuatu, both, you know, ecologically and for the livelihoods of the people who depend on them. So if the coral reefs disappear or collapse,

that would be a loss. They're just gone. That's a loss. Yeah. And another example of this is kind of a cultural loss. The oceans are rising, you know, as the polar ice is melting. And as they rise higher, that's obviously encroaching on the land in Vanuatu. And some of that land has burial grounds, Christopher says. I can't tell you how many times when entering the community you see graves and grave sites

half exposed to the rising tides. And it's devastating because that is such an important connection to history and ancestry here in the Pacific. Basically, countries are asking for compensation for damages, things that need to be fixed and losses, things that can't be replaced. Yeah. And I mean, how do you even put a number on something like that? Because damage from a hurricane is easier to measure. You could look at the cost of rebuilding houses and buildings, but cultural loss, I imagine that's harder to quantify. Yeah, I mean, no one's really come up with a formula for something like that yet. Vanuatu has come up with a starting point, at least. They're seeking $1.7 million to begin these community-led discussions about just what to do about the burial grounds. And they're also looking

for $110 million to start setting up a loss and damage fund. So when something happens, it's possible for people to get payments and compensation quickly. You know, altogether, it's about $177 million in total. that's just the starting point. That's for planning and set up. That's not for when actual disasters hit. Okay. And what has the reaction from richer countries been to the idea of paying for this? For Vanuatu and for other nations like it? Well, very few countries have rushed into pay for this because richer nations are already behind on other climate payments. They've already committed $100 billion per year for climate adaptation, as it's called, and that's different than loss and damage. that's money to help vulnerable countries prepare for climate impacts, you know, like maybe

building a seawall or building a renewable energy project. But richer countries have missed a 2020 deadline for that funding, that adaptation funding, and they're still short. So loss and damage is an ask on top of that. And last year's negotiations, basically, you know, all they could agree to was continuing a dialogue on loss and damage. Yeah, continue a dialogue is not the same as paying for it. And what about the United States? States, has the Biden administration proposed anything? Yeah, you know, John Kerry, who's the U.S. Special Envoy for Climate, he said the administration supports addressing it in some way. He's implied that it will be really hard to get new funding approved by Congress, given opposition from Republicans there.

So recently, he kind of echoed something that many developing countries have been asking for, which is tying their climate needs to the debt they already owe to the international community. Because, You know, when a big disaster hits, that's when countries need loans to pay for those impacts and the rebuilding. Many of these countries are burdened by debt. They are greatly impacted by what happens with respect to the crisis, the climate. And then they turn around in the West or the North offers them more debt. That isn't going to work. So one idea is that vulnerable countries would get debt forgiveness as a way of getting payments for loss and damage.

So it's like a swap? Death forgiveness, but no added payments for loss and damage. Yeah, and no one's kind of worked out. Maybe it would be a little bit of disforgiveness. Maybe there would be payments. I mean, that's what people are going to be talking about is what ways could this happen. Okay. So it sounds like there are ideas out there, but vulnerable countries shouldn't expect any checks to be in the mail anytime soon.

No, it's really not looking that way. And it kind of could be a really big breaking point in the talks this year. I talked to Preeti Bandari about that. She works on these issues at the World Resources Institute, and she's at these negotiations. Some group of developing countries, for them it may be the last straw. It really could be the lost show, and they might be ready to walk out. But she thinks what happened in Pakistan recently could kind of change the conversation this year, because millions of people were displaced by really extreme flooding from storms there.

I mean, the costs are over 30 billion by, by some estimates. It's just a scale that's unprecedented. So without having happened recently, we'll see how these talks shake out over the next two weeks. We are going to be watching. Thank you for keeping us updated and coming on the show, Lauren. Yeah, thanks for having me. This episode was produced by Margaret Serino and edited by Gabriel Spitzer. Abbey Levine Check the Facts. The audio engineer for this episode was Gilly Moon. Giselle Grayson is our senior supervising editor. Brendan Crump is our podcast coordinator. Our senior director of programming is Beth Donovan, and the senior vice president of programming is Anya Grundman. I'm Emily Kwong.

Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.