Preparing for a Mechanism for the Loss and Damage Fund Heading into COP 28
Earlier, we heard how much climate change can impact the health of our people if we keep emitting greenhouse gases that are depleting our ozone layer. Belize is among the one hundred and ninety-three countries that attend the Conference of the Parties, or COP, that focuses on climate change. And we are among the ones that are the most vulnerable to sea level rise, as a result of rising temperatures. But while, developed countries that produce much of the Earth’s carbon emissions have pledged, in principle, to provide funding to assist those of us who stand to suffer most, that help has been slow in coming. Today, Minister of Climate Change, Orlando Habet told us that for there to be meaningful results, the most vulnerable have to have one chorus at COP twenty-eight later this year.
Orlando Habet
Orlando Habet, Minister of Climate Change
“We have to team up with other countries in the region that have similar needs, similar wants and are having similar effects. We are one of those that are very vulnerable. So we have to make sure if we’re going as CARICOM and we have certain common positions, if we are going as Central America, the same thing, if we’re going as the Western Hemisphere, that’s one region that we’re looking at, then we go with common positions because then we need support. At COP twenty-seven, we needed the support of Chile for their support in trying to get Loss and Damage on the agenda to try to get these large, rich countries to agree that there will be a Loss and Damage fund. We had countries like Germany and Denmark who we knew were favourable to establishing the fund but some other larger countries like China that were saying “we’re willing but we won’t be the only ones that will pay. The emerging countries need to also put in their contributions. So it was agreed that we establish the fund. Now we have ten, eleven months going forward to COP twenty-eight to establish a mechanism for the Loss and Damage fund, how that money will come by, will there be a new agency that will distribute the funding.”
