Lost and damaged in translation
Activists will converge tomorrow on the grave of the unknown soldier in Paris to commemorate past and future victims of climate change. Their two-minute silence for the victims of ‘climate crimes’ will occur as COP president Laurent Fabius reveals a final agreement on Saturday morning.
I wrote at the start of the COP that ‘loss and damage’ — the issue that comes into play when we fail with mitigation and adaptation — was expected to go down to the wire. Negotiations have indeed played out as predicted.
Loss and damage has survived in words, and Article 5 of the agreement looks like it will discuss insurance and a potential relocation mechanism.
But against the hopes of people whose lands may well disappear from the face of the planet this century, ‘compensation and liability’ was removed during tense talks last night as wealthy countries pressed home their unwillingness to deal with their creation of millions of ‘climate refugees’.
Tuvalu envoy, Ian Fry, remained hopeful today that the text — which seeks to cover losses and damages incurred by rich countries’ reckless profligacy with greenhouse gases — would be reinserted before an agreement is unveiled tomorrow. But it looks increasingly likely that the global ‘agreement’ will cement in historic injustices that leave low-lying lands shackled by the climate impacts that colonize their seas and force them off their lands.
As Adriano Campolina, Chief Executive of Action Aid Africa remarked:
“…by including a clause for no future claim of compensation and liability, the US has ensured people suffering from the disastrous impacts of climate change will never be able to seek the justice owed to them. This unfair and unjust draft deal will only serve to widen the chasm between rich and poor.”
Loss and damage, in rhetoric, may have made the cut.
But in translating the issue of ‘compensation and liability’ through the realpolitik of climate negotiations, our governments have eroded the meaning of an issue so crucial to the future of low-lying islands.
We may force millions from their lands this century. The Paris Agreement ensures that, as we do, we cast them as worthless of our compensation and consigned to fending for their own survival.
Climate justice is dead. Viva climate justice.
