Is This Civilization Finished?

The Himalaya-Hindukush mountains, along with the Tibetan Plateau, are often called the Third Pole after the Arctic and Antarctic, because of their huge ice reserves. Rivers originating in the Third Pole are a source of water for 40% of the world’s population, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, and Pakistan, according to Eos Scientific News published by the American Geophysical Union. The importance of the region in global climate prompted China to launch the “Third Pole Climate Forum” in June 2024. Over the past several years, global warming has been melting the ice in the Third Pole at an alarming rate, causing flash floods, landslides, and glacial lake outbursts in the region. Losses in terms of human lives, crops, livestock, homes, roads, and other infrastructure are catastrophic.

It’s now widely known that global warming and resultant climate change are a consequence of over 250 years of carbon emissions, largely from industrialized nations since the mid-18th century. However, the losses and damages due to climate change are suffered most by the developing countries since they lack the resources and technologies to mitigate them. The developing nations have long been asking for reparations from the developed nations but to no avail. Finally, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27 held in 2022, an agreement to provide funding for loss and damage to vulnerable nations was reached. As of January 2024, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), as they named it, received ‘commitments’ for contributions amounting to $661 million, UNDP reports. We may recall here that the losses incurred by Pakistan in 2022 for floods triggered by unusual rains and melting glaciers were estimated at over $10 billion by the then Planning Minister of Pakistan.

At the 2009 COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark, developed nations pledged climate finance of $100 billion yearly by 2020 to aid developing countries combat climate change. Climate finance is different from the above-mentioned FRLD. It is intended to mitigate carbon emissions and make necessary preparations for adapting to climate change. This year COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22. A UN press release declares that a breakthrough agreement was reached in the conference that developing countries will now be provided with USD 300 billion annually as climate finance raising it from USD 100 billion. A great rise indeed.

Are these funds really coming in? Let’s count from 2016, the year after the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in COP21. The following table shows the amounts provided in climate finance funds by developed countries as published by OECD:

Although the contributions have consistently fallen below the commitments over the years, it is encouraging to see that they finally reached and even exceeded the $100 billion target in 2022. However, Oxfam International, the renowned NGO with a mission to end global poverty and injustice, disagrees. In its press release issued on July 9, 2024, the organization asserts that the “true value” of climate finance is only around $35 billion. This is because nearly 70% of the funds have actually been provided as loans, not grants, meaning poor countries will have to repay them with interest.

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This article was published in the Daily Sun on November 27, 2024. Please read the full article here or here.