Climate Change - Paying for Loss and Damage.

Climate talks in Germany have ended in acrimony. At last year's COP26 conference in Glasgow, island states and developing countries agreed to prioritise cuts to carbon emissions on the back of promises that richer nations would finally set up a compensation process this year. It was a compromise they hoped would pay off. But despite two weeks of discussions here in Bonn, they have been unable to get the issue of a funding facility on the agenda for the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November.

"The climate emergency is fast becoming a catastrophe," said Conrod Hunte, lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). "Yet within these walls the process feels out of step with reality, the pace feels too slow," he told delegates at the end of the meeting.

Adriana Vasquez Rodriquez from La Ruta del Clima, a Costa Rican environmental group, explained, "We have families who have lost their houses, their crops, their lives, and no-one is paying for that, we are running out of resources, and at the same time, we are depending on debt."

Developing nations say they need money to deal with the impacts of climate change because they suffer the effects more than richer nations and have the less financial capacity to cope. They argue that the climate change they are experiencing has been caused by carbon emitted by richer countries as they developed their economies. They say that Europe and the US have a responsibility now to compensate them for this. The US and Europe fear that if they pay for historic emissions it could put their countries on the hook for billions of dollars for decades or even centuries to come.

"The EU consistently blocked discussions on finance for loss and damage in Bonn," said Harjeet Singh, from the Climate Action Network International. "The last two weeks exposed its hypocritical stance, with major countries like Germany sourcing new fossil fuels abroad while denying support to developing countries facing devastation from climate-induced superstorms and rising seas."

Climate change: Bonn talks end in acrimony over compensation - BBC News