Countries vulnerable to climate disaster push for faster, easier access to finance at COP31

Developing countries want to make finance for climate adaptation and disaster relief a top priority at the COP31 summit in Turkey in light of the recent devastating floods in Nepal — a tragedy that has laid bare the inadequacy of current programs, experts say. A group of African countries succeeded on Monday to put financial commitments on the agenda of the UN climate negotiations in Antalya, which run through Nov. 20. They say they're seeking a measure of justice at the talks, as smaller, more vulnerable nations suffer the impact of climate change despite their relatively low emissions — and action is urgently needed as the UN now expects the world to overshoot the 1.5 C global warming target set by the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Several finance-related proposals are on the table, including measures like a "debt pause clause" that could help countries in the aftermath of climate disasters, and more funding to help compensate countries that suffer damage to their infrastructure, culture and economy. Developing countries, who need loans and grants to fund climate-related measures, also want a clearer and faster process for spending the billions of dollars that have already been pledged by richer donor nations like Canada.

Nepal gets UN damage fund's first payout Sagar Dhakal, a member of Nepal’s delegation to the summit, said the "whole world" recently saw what climate change means to his country in the Himalayas. “Within 10 minutes, we have lost roughly more than 7,000 people,” said Dhakal, referring to the devastating flash floods caused by a collapsed glacier that swept down the Trishuli River north of Kathmandu in August. More than 1,450 people have been confirmed dead and almost another 5,300 remain missing due to the floods, which destroyed towns and cost billions in damages.

In response last month, the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage — created three years ago to compensate developing countries for climate-related losses — made its first payout, earmarking $21.6 million US for Nepal. But that sum only shows how underfunded the program is, says Sasha Jattansingh, loss and damage expert at Climate Analytics, a Caribbean research organization. “This first step shows the fund can act quickly and be responsive.

However, $21.6 million covers less than one per cent of the actual loss and damage estimated for Nepal,” Jattansingh said. Nepal is one of 119 countries that have applied for money from the fund, requesting a total of about $2.8 billion US. Donor countries have pledged about $822 million US to the fund so far, but have paid in roughly half of that. Harjeet Singh, a climate finance campaigner based in India, is running a campaign called Fill the Fund to push donor countries, including Canada, to pledge and pay more.

“It's like we've got a fire station, but not enough water to put out the fire,” said Singh, who also believes the UN's loss and damage fund needs to respond faster. He told CBC’s What On Earth it took about seven weeks for the fund to hold a board meeting and decide to earmark the money for Nepal. The money has still not been paid out, Singh adds — that’s a further process involving applications for specific projects. Call for faster funding approval There’s also a push to speed up other forms of climate finance at COP31.

Representatives of vulnerable countries, such as low-income and small island nations, want an easier process for accessing funding for adaptation and mitigation projects, which they say can be tedious and technical — a difficult lift for countries with smaller government bureaucracies. Singh pointed out that Nepal applied to the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) — which finances climate-related projects in developing countries and is backed by about $87 billion US — to fund a flood-protection project about eight years ago, and it took seven years for approval.

That’s clearly too slow to help countries like Nepal prepare for just the kind of flooding it suffered, he says. “They could not even start acting on that project and they were hit by this disaster,” Singh said. Negotiations at COP31 will aim to put pressure on the GCF, donor countries and other funders to make it much faster and easier for developing countries to access that money. Nepal’s experience is also showing the growing need for debt relief, experts say.

Developing countries are forced to borrow money to help adapt to climate change and rebuild after disasters. That’s what Nepal had to do after a devastating earthquake in 2015 left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands homeless across the country. From 2015 to 2023, Nepal's debt to other countries and multilateral lenders went from about $4 billion US to over $10 billion US, in part to fund post-quake relief and development. In 2027, Nepal will owe about $400 million US to service its loans to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank — money that should be used for rebuilding instead, experts say.

The country is a perfect example of a developing nation that is going deeper and deeper into debt because of the frequency of climate disasters, said Ritu Bharadwaj, a climate finance expert at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. “Nepal has been in the state of constant rebuilding,” she said. While proposals to temporarily pause the debt of vulnerable countries is important, what’s more helpful, Bharadwaj says, is to “assess how much debt has been accumulated because of climatic disasters and, instead of servicing the debt, allow them to use [that money] for reconstruction.”