In contrast to the G-20, the world’s biggest economies, the V-20 is made up of the 20 vulnerable countries with a collective population of nearly 700 million and ranges from small Pacific nations, such as Vanuatu, to Bangladesh and the Philippines.
The V-20 says rich countries must urgently develop a plan to assist countries suffering the ravages of extreme weather, as failure to take early action on the climate crisis. It has set out its proposals for how rich countries should pay for the “loss and damage” caused by the climate crisis and these demands are likely to be a key issue at the Cop27 UN climate summit, which starts in Egypt on 6 November. Loss and damage refers to the most disastrous impacts of climate breakdown, such as hurricanes or severe floods like those that recently hit Pakistan.
Shauna Aminath, the minister of environment for the Maldives, told the Guardian it was the failure of the world’s richest nations to help poor countries build their resilience to extreme weather, for instance through constructing seawalls or preserving natural flood barriers, that had forced them to address loss and damage.
“The reason we are talking about loss and damage is that we have failed on adaptation finance for years,” she said. Aminath pointed out that rich countries had found cash to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic, and to help Ukraine. “So it’s very obvious that it’s not a lack of money, or a lack of technology, that is the problem,” she said. “The issue is the lack of political will and the refusal to see the climate crisis as an emergency.”
The longstanding pledge by rich countries to provide $100bn a year by 2020 in climate finance to poor countries has still not been fulfilled, and most of the money that does flow goes to emission-cutting projects in middle-income countries, rather than helping the poorest to adapt to climate impacts.
Helping poor countries with the loss and damage they faced also had to go far beyond the standard disaster responses to the immediate impacts of extreme weather, added Aminath. When climate-related disasters, such as hurricanes or floods, hit they cause damage not just to physical infrastructure, which donors often concentrate on, but also on social wellbeing, including health and education.
“These are the social issues that are left behind after the donors leave [in the aftermath of disaster],” she said. Many countries are already spending an increasing slice of their budgets on climate protection, which could otherwise be spent on health, education and lifting people out of poverty.
The V20 points out that it is the G20 made up of both developed and rapidly industrialising nations produce about 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So far, the G20 has made limited progress on cutting carbon.
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