In 2022, Pakistan has been one of the top 10 worst affected countries hit by climate change. Between August and September 2022, the country witnessed severe monsoon flooding that affected more than 33 million people. With 110 out of the 150 districts affected by the floods, nearly 15 per cent of Pakistan’s population is homeless or living without adequate shelter. According to its National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), more than two million acres of cultivated crops have been wiped out, about 3,500 kilometres of roads have been destroyed, and more than 150 bridges have been washed away across the country. This large-scale devastation caused by the floods and wildfires caused food scarcity in the country. Nearly 43 per cent of the country’s population is facing food insecurity. Before the floods, Pakistan had experienced an unprecedented heat wave that caused wildfires in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and an extremely dry spring season with 62 per cent less rainfall.
According to Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change, Sherry Rehman, the country makes very negligible contribution towards global warming. However, Pakistan has been among the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The floods have claimed thousands of lives and have caused economic damage worth billions of dollars. According to the minister, the developed nations owe reparations or compensations to countries like Pakistan for the consequences of climate change.
Demand for Reparation
Pakistan’s demand for reparations is unlikely to succeed, but worth trying, because the principles being invoked are fairly well-established in the environmental legal theory. Along with Pakistan, many developing countries, small island states, etc., have been insisting on it for years. They insist on setting up an international mechanism for financial compensation for loss and damage caused by climate disasters. This issue has come up repeatedly at the international climate change negotiations and also on other platforms.
In fact, the demand for compensation for loss and damage due to climate disasters is an extension of universally acknowledged ‘Polluter Pays’ principle. The polluter is liable for not only paying the cost of remedial action, but also for compensating the victims of environmental damage caused by their actions. In the climate change framework, the burden of responsibility falls on those rich and developed countries that have contributed most of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the beginning of the industrial age in about 1850.
Share of GHG Emission The European Union, including the UK and the US account for over 50 per cent of GHG emissions. If Russia, Canada, Japan, and Australia are also included in the list, the combined contribution of emissions is more than 65 per cent or two-thirds of emissions of all the countries. Cumulative accumulation of carbon dioxide is the cause for global warming. Due to these emissions since the industrial age, carbon dioxide has been remaining in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Presently, China is the biggest emitter, accounting for about 11 per cent of total emissions since 1850. India, which is currently the third largest emitter, accounts for only 3 per cent of historical emissions.
Impact of Climate Change
Though the impact of climate change is global, it is much more severe on developing nations due to their geographical locations and weaker capacity to cope with natural calamities. That’s why underdeveloped, developing, and vulnerable countries demand for loss and damage compensation from the developed countries which are major emitters.
Convention on Climate Change
In 1992, more than 150 countries joined an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for international cooperation by limiting average global temperature rise and the resulting climate change and its impact. The UNFCCC entered into force on March 21, 1994. Presently, there are 198 countries that have ratified the convention, and are called the Parties to the Convention.
Preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system is the ultimate aim of UNFCCC which laid down the broad principles of the global effort to fight climate change, explicitly acknowledging this differentiated responsibility of nations. According to the convention, developed countries must provide both the finance and the technology to the developing nations to help them cope with the impact of climate change. It is this mandate that later evolved into the US$ 100 billion that the developed countries had agreed to provide every year to the developing countries. Though this promise is yet to be met, this amount is not meant for loss and damage because when this agreement was drafted and signed, climate disasters were not a regular occurrence. Therefore, there is no mention of the loss and damage in the agreement. This demand for loss and damage, due to the impact of climate change in poorer nations, emerged much later. And so, the developed nations are strictly opposed to the demand.
Warsaw International Mechanism
In the face of stiff resistance to the demand, the developing countries and the NGOs had to undergo much struggle to establish a separate channel on loss and damages at international climate change negotiations. As a result, in 2013, at the 19th Conference of the Parties of UNFCCC, the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) was established. The WIM was to promote implementation of approaches to address loss and damage due to climate change in a comprehensive, integrated, and coherent manner. First formal acknowledgment of the need to compensate developing countries struck by climate disasters, the WIM created the space and opportunity to create an evidence base by 2015 that would help in determining:
- what could be done to help vulnerable communities when they face barriers and limits to adaptation;
- how could that understanding be channelled back into effective policy and practice at the appropriate level; and
- how could that understanding also contribute to the wider policy adjustments that are part of the 2015 milestone year to align policy priorities with 21st century realities.
However, the progress on this front has been painfully slow with no progress on the funding mechanism or even an assurance to provide funds that has come about. In 2021, the Glasgow Climate Change Conference called for setting up of a three-year task force to discuss on the funding agreement.
UNOCHA Report
The UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Efforts (UNOCHA), has published a report for the UN General Assembly. According to the report, annual funding requests related to climate-linked disasters averaged US$ 15.5 billion, during the three-year period between 2019 and 2021. The economic loss from cyclone Amphan in India and Bangladesh, in 2020, has been assessed at US$ 15 billion. The report also states that the US alone is estimated to have inflicted more than US$ 1.9 trillion in damages to other countries due to emissions. There are non-economic losses for the developing countries as well including loss of lives, displacement and migration, health impacts, and damage to their cultural heritage. As per the report, the unavoidable annual economic losses from climate change were projected to reach about between US$ 290–580 billion, by the year 2030.
Conclusion
Science and technology have progressed so much these years that scientists are now able to predict, with a fair degree of certainty, how much role climate change has had to play in a particular extreme weather event. The next step is about assessing the exact losses due to the climate change event and what could be attributed to misgovernance. For instance, in Bengaluru, there were flash floods in August and September 2022. However, the loss was attributed to the lack of efficient urban planning to a great extent even though heavy rains could be the result of climate change. That’s why this calls for a lot of background work to quantify the compensation due to an affected country.
The next climate conference is scheduled to be held in Sharm-el Shaikh, in Egypt, in November 2022. Through its demands for reparations, Pakistan has called attention to this neglected aspect. Though Pakistan has already received widespread support from the global climate NGOs, more time may be allotted for discussion on the quantification of compensation to the affected country during the Egypt conference.
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