Reps. Omar and Bowman Lead Letter Calling on Biden Administration to Support Loss & Damage Funding for Developing Countries at COP27
WASHINGTON—Today, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) led a letter to Special Envoy John Kerry urging the U.S. to support loss & damage (L&D) funding to help developing countries recover from climate disasters. This fund should channel new public funding from developed to developing countries to help them recover from climate disasters. This L&D proposal could be a small yet important first step in pushing U.S. policy towards transformative climate and economic justice globally.
“The United States is the world’s largest historical contributor to climate change,” the Members wrote. “Yet as we’ve seen with the historic flooding in Pakistan, the fourth consecutive drought in the Horn of Africa, the painfully slow recovery from hurricane damage in Central America, among many other examples, it is the Global South that disproportionately suffers the harms. We have both a moral and a strategic responsibility to provide comprehensive support for countries facing climate disaster, including debt forgiveness and reparations.”
In October, the Biden administration accepted formal discussions of loss & damage at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27. In his speech at United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), President Biden pledged to work with Congress to increase U.S. international climate finance and urged accelerating new and expanded domestic and global efforts in supporting developing countries. Developing countries often pay the highest price for climate change while contributing very little to greenhouse gas emissions.
The letter is also signed by Reps. Bush, Carson, Cohen, García, Grijalva, Levin, McCollum, Ocasio-Cortez, Pocan, Schakowsky, and Tlaib.
You can read the full letter here and below.
November 16, 2022
The Honorable John F. Kerry
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Special Envoy Kerry,
As you know, the United States is the world’s largest historical contributor to climate change. Yet as we’ve seen with the historic flooding in Pakistan, the fourth consecutive drought in the Horn of Africa, the painfully slow recovery from hurricane damage in Central America, among many other examples, it is the Global South that disproportionately suffers the harms. We have both a moral and a strategic responsibility to provide comprehensive support for countriesfacing climate disaster, including debt forgiveness and reparations. While we work toward those crucial goals, there are also smaller but no less important mechanisms we should be supporting.
One specific step we urge you to take immediately is to throw the United States’ support behind the establishment of a Loss & Damage Finance Facility under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the purpose of channeling new, grant-based public finance from developed to developing countries to help them recover from climate catastrophes.
We are encouraged that the Biden administration has accepted formal discussions of Loss & Damage at the UnitedNations Climate Change Conference COP27. We hope you will build on that commitment and continue engaging in good faith discussion to ensure the world’s most vulnerable communities receive life-saving resources in times of crisis.
Ad hoc humanitarian assistance flows, insurance schemes, debt-based financing, and neglected existing funds under theUNFCCC are wholly insufficient to address the current reality in which countries are facing billions of dollars in loss and damage needs. A collaborative international effort is needed to make more high-quality, accessible, and fit-for-purpose financing available, especially to account for losses and damages caused by climate emergencies. Such financing must be supplementary to climate financing for mitigation and adaptation and should be unconditional public funding that does not deepen the debt crises faced by many vulnerable countries.
We believe that a new L&D fund that is carefully designed and negotiated could both urgently address such funding gapsand fully embrace a transformative global climate justice framework. We have a momentous opportunity to bring other partner countries to the table and shape an equitable path forward – as you know and have proven repeatedly in your own career, when the United States leads, others follow. Our leadership in supporting loss and damage financing would pave the way for transformative improvements in the global response on climate.
We look forward to working with you, your team, and the rest of the Administration in pushing for the most effectiveglobal climate action, beginning with U.S. leadership on a loss & damage framework.