DISASTERS3 Innovative Ways to Help Countries Hit by Climate Disasters, Beyond a Loss and Damage Fund
The usual sources of disaster aid funding haven’t come close to meeting the need in hard-hit countries in recent years. So, groups are developing new ways to meet the need more effectively. In some cases, they are getting aid to countries before the damage occurs.
These days, it’s hard to escape news stories discussing how climate change is contributing to extreme weather disasters, including the recent U.S. hurricanes. Aid agencies are increasingly worried about the widespread damage.
A growing question as these disasters worsen in a warming world is how to pay for recoveries, particularly in poorer countries that have contributed the least to climate change.
I am a climate scientist who researches disasters, and I work with disaster managers on solutions to deal with the increasing risk of extreme events. The usual sources of disaster aid funding haven’t come close to meeting the need in hard-hit countries in recent years. So, groups are developing new ways to meet the need more effectively. In some cases, they are getting aid to countries before the damage occurs.
Disaster Aid Funds Aren’t Meeting Growing Need
Countries have a few ways that they typically send money and aid to other countries that need help when disasters hit. They can send direct government-to-government aid, contribute to aid coordinated by the United Nations, or support disaster response efforts by groups like the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
However, the support from these systems is almost never enough.
In 2023, the amount of humanitarian funding through the U.N. was about US$22 billion. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that countries hit hard by disasters actually needed about $57 billion in U.N. humanitarian aid. This does not even include the costs borne directly by disaster-affected people and their governments.
To help address damages specifically from climate change, the global community agreed at the U.N. climate conference in 2022 to create a new method – a Loss and Damage Fund. Loss and damage is generally defined as consequences of climate change that go beyond what people are able to adapt to.
The goal of the fund is for countries that historically have done the most to cause climate change to provide funding to other countries that did little to cause it yet are experiencing increasing climate-related disasters.
So far, however, the Loss and Damage Fund is tiny compared to the cost of climate-related disasters. As of late September 2024, total pledges to the Loss and Damage Fund were about US$700 million. According to one estimate, the costs directly attributable to climate change, including loss of life, are over $100 billion per year.
One goal of the 2024 U.N. climate conference, underway Nov. 11-22 in Azerbaijan, is to increase those contributions.
