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Denmark pledges to be 1st country to offer funding for ‘loss and damage’ due to climate change
Denmark pledged Tuesday (Sep 20) at the UN General Assembly in New York to be the first country to provide funding to developing nations that have suffered “tab og skader”, which translates to ‘loss and damage’.
During a ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York City, the Nordic nation committed 100m DKK ($13m) to build resilience and help climate victims recover.
While the amount pledged is relatively small compared to mitigation and adaptation finance, the move breaks a taboo among rich countries over giving money to address the unavoidable losses and damages already caused by climate change.
Danish Development Minister Flemming Moller Mortensen said it is "grossly unfair that the world’s poorest should suffer the most from the consequences of climate change," to which they have contributed "the least."
Mortensen said the funds would go to Africa's Sahel region and other vulnerable areas affected by the climate crisis.
"With this new agreement, we are putting action behind words,” he added.
Last year at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26), the G77, a bloc of more than 130 developing countries, demanded financial support for climate victims, but the initiative was blocked by the US, the European Union, and other rich countries.
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Addressing the "loss and damage" in vulnerable countries was already agreed on under the Paris Agreement, but due to the fear of being sued by those countries affected by climate disasters, it was then rejected by the rich nations.
Previously, only Scotland and the Belgian region of Wallonia have pledged funding for loss and damage. Neither is a member of the United Nations.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed that the rich nations should support countries suffering losses and damage caused by the climate crisis by imposing taxes on windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.
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