The biggest achievement at the annual United Nations climate summit last year was committing to create a fund that would compensate the poorest for destruction wrought by global warming. One of the questions at the upcoming COP28 summit will be how to add money to this new loss-and-damage fund. If history is any guide, it’s going to be a hard problem to solve. In 2009, rich countries promised to provide $100 billion annually to poor countries to fund projects that reduce emissions and avoid climate impacts. By 2020, the deadline to reach that sum, the amount transferred that year stood at just $83 billion. And most of that total came in the form of loans rather than grants, according to an Oxfam report published this week.
Avinash Persaud, a Barbados economist who is the island nation’s special envoy on investment and financial services, says a creative solution is gaining traction. It’s rooted in a more successful history of wealth transfers from emitters to victims.
