Why India Care So Much about Guyanese Oil | The West Agreed to Pay Climate Reparations | Turkey Approves Finland’s NATO Bid, and more

For the Nordic country, which shares an 800-mile border with Russia and has sought to maintain a careful balance in its relations with Moscow and the West—the Cold War-era notion of “Finlandization” springs from just that high-wire act—joining NATO is a big deal. At the same time, it’s also a culmination of Finland’s security policy over the last three decades, which has kept a wary eye on Russia and in recent years held the so-called NATO option in reserve should Russia overstep.

The West Agreed to Pay Climate Reparations. That Was the Easy Part.  (Emma Marris, The Atlantic)
Last year, Pakistan was hit with floods so devastating that they were hard to comprehend. In some areas, 15 inches of rain fell in a single day. And the rain went on for months, inundating one-third of the country, spreading disease, and displacing nearly 8 million people. Six months later, Pakistan is still in crisis—nearly 2 million people are living near stagnant floodwater. Pakistan has estimated that it needs about $16.3 billion to recover from the floods, a sum that does not take into account the many ripple effects of the crisis: grief over those who died, education abruptly ended, the struggles of girls married off young as their families coped with a sudden plunge into poverty.
But these floods were not a “natural disaster.” The monsoon rains were up to 50 percent more intense than they would have been without climate change. So although Pakistan has to foot this bill, or at least most of it, the country bears little responsibility: Pakistan contributes less than 1 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, while the United States is the world’s second-biggest emitter, accountable for about 20 percent of emissions since 1850. But there is no mechanism for the United States or any other country to pay for the loss and damage that it is at least partially responsible for.
That may be changing. In November, world leaders at the most recent big climate meeting, known as COP27, agreed to set up a “loss and damage” fund, bankrolled by rich countries, to help poor countries harmed by climate change. Now comes the hard part of figuring out the details: This week, a special United Nations committee set up to plan the fund will meet for the first time, in Luxor, Egypt. Delegates will start negotiating which nations will be able to draw from the fund, where it will be housed, where the money will come from, and how much each country should pitch in. At this point, the fund is “an empty bucket,” says Lien Vandamme, a senior campaigner at the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law, who is in Egypt for the negotiations. “Everything is still open.” Other meetings will follow, and the committee will make its recommendations to the world this fall in Dubai at COP28.

Turkey Approves Finland’s NATO Bid, Clearing Path for It to Join Alliance  (Emily Rauhala, Annabelle Timsit, and Kareem Fahim, Washington Post)
Turkey’s parliament has voted to approve Finland’s NATO membership bid, paving the way for the Nordic country to join the security alliance.
The decision only applies to Finland, not Sweden, its neighbor and fellow membership hopeful. Both countries applied on the same day last year, having made the decision to join the alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine.