How Pakistan’s flood crisis bends climate talks towards reparations

By Eric Roston

Few countries are as vulnerable as Pakistan. Its cities regularly record some of the hottest temperatures in the world, including a springtime heat wave this year made 30 times more likely by greenhouse gases.

That set the stage for summer monsoons that saw rainfall reach an intensity more than 50 per cent greater than would have been the case without planet-warming pollution. Both findings come from World Weather Attribution, a leading research group that delivers rapid analysis of the link between extreme weather and climate change.

Also Read — 5.7 million Pakistani flood victims to face food crisis: UN

This is one example of powerful new evidence in the moral and political argument for climate reparations. As diplomats and world leaders prepare for next month’s annual UN climate summit, known as COP27, there’s likely to be renewed focus on the long-running dispute over who should pay for the devastation wrought by rising temperatures.

Speeches and closed-door negotiations will involve calls for payments from high-emitting countries, most of which are wealthier and less vulnerable, to their low-emitting counterparts that suffer climate impacts. The debate will be informed by the blatant suffering visible on the ground in Pakistan as well as new data on exactly who is responsible for atmospheric pollution.

Working with colleagues from Bloomberg’s data-visualization team, I took a deep look at cutting-edge research into economic attribution for climate damage. Two Dartmouth researchers, Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin, recently published a study and data estimating for the first time how much economic growth, in terms of GDP, has been lost to developing countries as a result of burning fossil fuel.

It’s striking to see estimated dollar figures linking the pollution by the two biggest emitters, the US and China, to more than $60 billion in economic loses for Pakistan.

Together, the US and China have created enough atmospheric impact to cost the world about $1.8 trillion. The US alone was responsible for 16.5 per cent of global GDP losses from climate change from 1990 to 2014, according to research by the Dartmouth team.

Mukwana’s experience driving through flooded provinces and walking along highways that have become makeshift homes for displaced people unifies the personal and the global in ways few will ever experience. That’s because the people pushed aside by flood waters are, in part, victims of a problem even bigger than the monsoon.

UN climate negotiations for many years focused almost exclusively on preventing new emissions and the resulting rise of global average temperatures, a concept called “mitigation” in climate jargon.

Diplomats and politicians have also taken up the question of “adaptation” — how nations might find the resources to afford greater resiliency. But Pakistan’s crisis has renewed emphasis on a more often ignored section of the 2015 Paris Agreement that deals with a concept called “loss and damage.”

Since the steepest costs of today’s climate continue to be borne by populations that emitted the least, recognizing loss and damage could mean that nations who gained the most from burning fossil fuel should pay compensation. It’s a vision of climate reparations — and it’s long been opposed by wealthy nations.

When nearly 200 national delegations meet next month for COP27 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, loss and damage is expected to eclipse most other topics on the agenda. In part this stems from the coincidence that a Pakistani diplomat is currently the leader of the largest bloc of developing nations, known as the G77+China. The Egyptian hosts of this summit are also members of the bloc.

Loss and damage has struggled to rise up the agenda for years. Developing nations last year went to COP26 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, pushing for a formal process for dispatching finance and technical help paid for by developed nations.

That summit ended with only a loosely defined “dialogue” on the topic. There are fresh indications that loss and damage may be treated with greater attention than ever before at COP27, even if it’s with “diverse views on the scope and timeframes” of how to tackle the issue, according to a briefing shared on Friday by Ed King, a climate media and policy strategist.

If or when countries agree on a structured way to help people deal with climate disasters, it won't come fast enough for the millions suffering from this year’s monsoon rains in Pakistan. Estimates of damage have tripled to $30 billion since the end of August. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which Mukwana represents in Pakistan, this week raised by a factor of five its initial aid goal, to $816 million, to pay for triage support through May 2023. Those funds might help blunt a rapidly emerging public-health crisis. But it can’t compensate Pakistan for the brutal consequences of other people’s emissions.

“How much can people go through these cyclical kinds of events?” Mukwana asks. “How much of it can people take?