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The COP30 conference in Belem, Brazil marked a significant milestone with the launch of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage's first call for funding requests.
This initiative is crucial for vulnerable regions in India, such as the Sundarbans, which face severe climate impacts.
However, experts stress the need for increased funding and improved accessibility for frontline communities.
On the opening day of the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) at Belem, Brazil, the ‘Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage’ (FRLD) took a historical step forward by launching its first call for funding requests under the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM).
BIM has been termed the Fund’s 'start-up phase' as it was approved at its fifth Board meeting in Barbados. A senior official from the fund secretariat, presently run by the World Bank, claimed that this call represents a significant milestone as “it signifies the fund’s transition from establishment to operationalisation”.
After a prolonged, and often bitter, fight between developed countries and developing and less developed country blocs, the UN agreed to establish a Loss and Damage Fund at COP27 in Egypt in 2022. The fund was formally operationalised at COP28 in Dubai the following year.
Many pointed out that the call is important for the survival of several regions in India, including states in north and central India, particularly Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and Madhya Pradesh as well as Assam, Kerala and West Bengal, with the Sundarbans standing out.
The Sundarbans is a great example, they added, since it has been continually suffering losses and damages despite contributing minimally to the global carbon cauldron. Such areas are in dire need of support from the global loss and damage fund.
Harjeet Singh, a frontline global climate activist and founding director of Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said: "While we welcome the launch of the Barbados Implementation Modalities — making the Loss and Damage Fund technically operational three years after its establishment — it is already failing the people it was promised to protect”.
"As we sit in Belem, devastating climate impacts are hammering Jamaica and the Philippines. They need help now. Yet this Fund is starting with a fraction of the scale required, it has no genuine access for frontline communities, and it has completely failed to function as a rapid response mechanism.”
Singh pointed out that the fund requires urgent course correction and demanded that the Fund matches the scale of the crisis.
“The launch of BIM represents a historic step towards delivering finance for communities already facing loss and damage. Just a week before COP30, the Philippines was struck by two powerful typhoons and the urgency for accessible and rapid funding could not be more real,” said Jefferson Estela, East and Southeast Asia Coordinator, Loss and Damage Youth Coalition.
“For young people on the frontlines, this is not just a policy milestone but a matter of justice and survival,” she added.
Experts, while welcoming the development, also raised questions about the procedural part apart from the scale of funding. One of them reminded that the current figures are not only inefficient to address the sheer magnitude of the climate crisis, but also the global financial architecture is not built with our frontline communities’ capacity in mind. The latest step of calling for fund request, he said, would hopefully be “a step towards more accessible, grant-based and efficient finance to create the living conditions that people deserve”.
Fred Njehu, global political lead, Greenpeace Africa, said, “We must recognise that the Loss and Damage Fund is not charity for Africa, it is a matter of climate justice. Africa is already losing 2-5 per cent of gross domestic product each year to climate impacts and faces adaptation bills of $30-50 billion annually and they keep increasing.”
For South Asia, already reeling from floods, heatwaves, and storms, the launch of the Loss and Damage Fund is overdue but welcome, said Sanjay Vashist from Climate Action Network South Asia. “Yet with only $250 million, it’s a drop in the ocean of needs. COP30 must scale it up and ensure funds reach frontline communities directly, no loans, no debt.”
Vashist insisted that this must be a justice-based, grant-driven fund rooted in transparency and accountability, and those who caused the crisis must pay their fair share.
“Take the case of Sundarbans. We have just published a report on the non-economic loss and damage in both Indian and Bangladesh Sundarbans that clearly underlined the magnitude of impact on around 5 million people only in the Indian Sundarbans. Adding the Bangladesh side, the figure will rise by another few millions. And this is leaving aside the more immediately impactful economic loss and damage,” added Vishist.
Sandeep Chamling Rai, global advisor on climate change adaptation, WWF International, said: “WWF welcomes the launch but $250 million is a drop in the ocean compared to what’s required. There is an urgent need to scale it up from millions to billions, if not trillions.”
