Facing a call for climate reparations, wealthy nations propose an insurance scheme – By Naveena Sadasivam (Salon) / Nov 19, 2022
A group of countries led by Germany announced a climate insurance scheme called the Global Shield at COP27
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Tensions at the United Nations climate change conference known as COP27 have been running high, largely over the issue of what’s called “loss and damage” — shorthand for the disproportionate suffering that the developing world is already experiencing at the hands of climate change. In the most concrete response yet to the issue, on Monday a group of countries led by Germany announced their commitment to developing “a Global Shield against Climate Risks” to help people in the least developed countries better prepare for climate-fueled disasters.
The Global Shield is a joint initiative by the G7, a political forum consisting of the world’s most industrialized countries, and the V20, which is represented by the finance ministers of 58 of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The German government has committed roughly $175 million to the effort, which intends to address loss and damage through insurance programs and social security schemes. Denmark, Ireland, Canada, and France have also contributed about $42 million to the initiative.
The least-industrialized countries in the world have argued that they’ve done little to cause climate change but are the most affected by climate-fueled disasters, like the recent floods in Pakistan that left a third of the country underwater. (The V20’s website points out that it represents nearly 20 percent of the global population but only 5 percent of global emissions.) For this reason, developing countries have called on wealthy nations to set up a fund to pay for the loss and damage climate change has already caused and will cause in the future — in effect, for a form of climate reparations. The success of COP27 could rest on whether wealthy nations, whose early industrialization is disproportionately responsible for the climate change that has occurred so far, answer the call.
