Transcript Zero Episode 10: A Breakthrough on Loss and Damage

Christine Driscoll and Akshat Rathi
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(Bloomberg) -- For Episode 10 of the Zero podcast, Bloomberg Green reporter Akshat Rathi interviewed Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, at COP27, where they talked about what’s at stake for developing countries in negotiations over loss and damage. Listen to the full episode below, learn more about the podcast here, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Google to stay on top of new episodes.

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Archival News Tape 00:03

China's record breaking drought …

Archival News Tape:

Fires breaking out around London…

Archival News Tape:

Egypt is preparing to host the next COP summit in November…

Archival Vanessa Nakate :

An era of new commitments, pledges…

Archival Bilawal Bhutto Zaradi 00:19

I want justice for my people. I want climate justice.

Archival Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly

We came forward to bear the responsibility of hosting COP27 in the fight against climate change.

Akshat Rathi 00:39

Welcome to Zero, I'm Akshat Rathi and this is the first of our special episodes coming from COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Over the next two weeks, we will be bringing you regular updates from the largest climate conference in the world. Joining me for the first episode is Bloomberg contributing editor Allegra Stratton. Hi, Allegra.

Allegra Stratton

Hi

Akshat Rathi

Now it's a big first day at COP27. What's your experience of COP been like so far?

Allegra Stratton 01:06

Well, it's very different from the COP26 that I worked for the UK Government and the environment is very different, and I think it's importantly different. In Glasgow, do you remember how wet and cold it was for two weeks?

Akshat Rathi

Yes.

Allegra Stratton

And also, it was on the River Clyde. And the relevance of that is that it was for a long time, the center of shipbuilding, a very carbon heavy industry. And that was a COP that was about mitigation. It was about many things. And there were obviously other aspects to it. But there was the drive to get countries to sign up to net zero, three quarters of the world's countries did so. And mitigation was really the push. And now here in Sharm el-Sheikh, you are in the desert. It's incredibly beautiful. We're very close to mountains, we're also very close to the Red Sea. And there's just much more of an emphasis on the damage to the natural environment. And it is an extremely beautiful surrounding but it is uncomfortable wondering where the protesters must be. At COP 26 there were protests, and they were valuable. And they reminded everybody in that conference room. And in the plenary sessions, and in the very airless, windowless rooms, they did remind people that that society cares about this agenda deeply. So they had a value.

Akshat Rathi 02:31

And we've been hearing from different activists and environmental groups also that they arrived here in Sharm el-Sheikh, their room rents were raised and they didn't have places to go. And they had to scramble on Saturday night. And they are struggling to find places. So it's also been just logistically difficult for many activists. Now you were the spokesperson for COP26 for the UK government. Set the scene coming out of COP26 into now. How have things changed?

Allegra Stratton 03:06

Well, how have things changed? We have Russia invaded Ukraine. And so everything changed, you suddenly had the world’s diplomatic shoulders being put to the wheel of dealing with not only the invasion of Ukraine, but also the effect that that had on gas supplies and energy supplies, with an impact on the kind of energy where every country is going to be using to heat its people this winter. That might have meant that it was the least auspicious environment in which to go into a COP and trying to deal with climate change and trying to change how we will use our energy. Actually the IEA, the International Energy Agency, the week before COP started, produced a report that showed quite the contrary, that our energy consumption, that fossil fuels being used over the last year has not gone up as much as everybody thinks, I think the figure they use is actually 1%. And that 90% of the new energy that has been procured – you're nodding Akshat, you know the stuff inside out, but some listeners don't – 90% of the new energy that has been procured around the world is renewable. We're all so focused on he war effort, but actually when you look and you see the IRA in America, you've then got the EU's Fit for 55 pre the invasion of Ukraine, they wanted a renewable mix at 55%. They now actually have upped that. And then in the UK, we've also had our energy security strategy, which also upped the amount of renewables that the UK Government wants in its mix. And there's others. There's South Korea, there's Japan, there's others. So the context felt gloomy A and felt like it would be hard for progress to be made. But it does look over the last 12 months that that transition to a lower carbon economy has been continuing apace.

Akshat Rathi 05:05

This COP has been set up as both the African COP and it's been called the implementation COP, which is about taking all the promises - many promises made over the years and making them work. What are the big things that you are keeping an eye out on over the next two weeks?

Allegra Stratton 05:26

I really like the Implementation COP. That phrase is up around the conference center. The reason I like it is that they’re right. There were an awful lot of pledges made in Glasgow, and the job for everybody is to see them translated into action. The thing I'm most excited about is this phenomenon or mechanism mechanism is the better word of JETPs, just energy transition partnerships. It's really complicated stuff. These are high emitting coal nations, trying to support them [to transition] across [to] lower carbon energy sources. But at the same time, making sure that if you're going to help this big transition over to lower carbon, you're going to try and help them with jobs and so on. I think we are also going to need to see more on cash and I think cash as a bucket, as they call it in diplomatic speak, but cash around the $100 Billion which was promised essentially 100 years ago. I mean, it was promised in 2009. I think it was then by Gordon Brown, which gives you some sense of quite how much life has been lived.

Akshat Rathi 06:32

Six Prime Ministers ago.

Allegra Stratton 06:35

Six Prime Ministers. But $100 billion, that pledge was to be met by 2020. COP26. Last year, it became obvious that it will be met in 2023. That's money that climate vulnerable nations really need pronto. They also then want clarity on what that money looks like post-2025. They also want a sense of more money for adaptation within that pot of money. So I think these are all reasonable questions for them to be asking at a time when their actual country is changing before their eyes.

Akshat Rathi 07:11

Money is going to be talked about a lot because loss and damage is on the agenda for the first time here at COP27. This is the first time they're talking about how to compensate developing countries for the damages caused by climate change.

Allegra Stratton 07:28

Yes. The reason I’m hesitating is that for somebody like John Kerry, the US Special Envoy, to be as set against loss and damages he is, I think, tells you [that] with all his years of experience politicking that he feels that it is a bridge too far for America domestically. It’s probably the case for the UK domestically. Interestingly,Ed Miliband, the Labour minister, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and COP26, COP27 and so on. He has said that there is more responsibility of countries like the UK to help with this issue. I just think that in the context of a huge spending reduction exercise in the UK in 10 days time. It is important that the UK appears from the comments that have been released ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s visit. It's important that $11.6 billion on climate finance, that is ring fenced, that's protected money for this purpose, that that still stands. I think that's important. At a time when the government will have been examining every expenditure item from first principles.

Akshat Rathi 08:43

Wonderful. Thanks for coming on the show, Allegra.

Allegra Stratton

My pleasure.

Akshat Rathi 08:52

After the break we'll be hearing from one of the leading voices on loss and damage at COP 27 Professor Saleemul Huq.

Akshat Rathi 09:11

Joining me now is Professor Saleemul Huq. He's the director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development and one of the loudest voices championing climate vulnerable countries. We recorded the conversation in the beating heart of COP 27 in the blue zone, so please forgive us if you hear planes in the background, people talking or somebody just walking past.

Akshat Rathi

Saleemul Huq. Welcome.

Saleemul Huq

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Akshat Rathi

You've been at every COP meeting since the first one in 1995. In fact, you were at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, where the UNFCCC, which is the convention under which the COP meetings were created, happened. Do you think cop meetings over the last 27 versions have made any progress?

Saleemul Huq 09:57

They've certainly made progress. So what we are dealing with is a planetary scale problem. Without a planetary government, we have 200 governments around the world on planet Earth. Something that is a global problem, like climate change requires every country to come together. And the only way that can be done is under the United Nations. And the good news is that 30 years ago, we came together. And we agreed. We have a treaty, every single country agreed to take actions to tackle climate change. And then every year we come together at these conferences of parties to take stock of where we are in terms of fulfilling the agreements that we made. Unfortunately, we're not doing enough. We're not doing everything we said we would do. And so these meetings are opportunities to see how we can accelerate action, how we can do better, how we can do more, how we can go faster. And we are expecting that to happen here in Sharm el-Sheikh as well.

Akshat Rathi 10:57

So the Egypt presidency says as many as 45,000 people are registered to come to the COP meeting here in Sharm el-Sheikh. How have cop meetings changed that 45,000 figure is a large number. But from the time that you've been coming to COP meetings, what has been the visible change for you?

Saleemul Huq 11:16

The original conferences of the parties were meant for government officials to come together and review progress and agree on new actions that they would take together. It [involved] a few thousand government officials. And they'd meet most of the time behind closed doors and negotiate over very arcane language, which is unintelligible to the rest of the people. But then over time, many more people started coming. I myself am not a negotiator. I come as an observer. And there are many such observers. And we do lots and lots of side events and activities. There are networks of young people, networks of scientists, networks of farmers and indigenous people and women's groups, and many, many more, who come to the COP to network. And so what you find nowadays, is that in addition to the core negotiators, there are a periphery of many other coalitions of the willing. And that really is what you should keep your eyes on because [since] the Paris Agreement, the key about the Paris agreement is that we needed governments to come together to agree [to] it. But we don't have to rely on governments alone to do everything. A few governments together with other actors, companies, CEOs, mayors of cities, can get together and decide to do something and we have many such coalitions. Every day they will be making announcements on what they are doing. And to me that's really the message from Sharm el-Sheikh is the doers, the actors, telling you what we are doing, telling all of us what they're doing, and hopefully we can stimulate them to do more. And then the negotiators have to come to a decision on what everybody can agree to. One of the design flaws in the process is that a decision in the COP requires consensus. And so we can only get consensus around the lowest common denominator to take a little bit of action, not the kind of action that we really need from everybody.

Akshat Rathi 13:23

One of the biggest topics that's going to be talked about here and where government action is going to be crucial, because there has been none so far, is the subject of loss and damage. What does loss and damage mean?

Saleemul Huq 13:43

Loss and damage is now a new phenomenon that is taking place, which adds to previous actions that we needed to take for mitigation that is reducing emissions, and then adaptation, which is preparing for the impacts of climate change, both of which are being done, assuming that we can prevent climate change. Unfortunately, we failed. Climate change is now happening. As of this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess the science have given unequivocal evidence that they can detect climate change impacts and losses and damages due to those impacts happening as we speak. A good example is the floods in Pakistan that took place just recently. Fifty percent of that has been attributed to have been caused because of human induced climate change.

Akshat Rathi 14:32

And under the Paris Agreement, governments have agreed to do something about loss and damage, not specifically what, but since that agreement in 2015, nothing has happened on loss and damage, right?

Saleemul Huq 14:48

Not that nothing has happened, some things have happened. There are three ways in which loss and damage we have agreed to address. The first is what we call “averted”, which is prevent it from happening. And that maps on to “mitigation”: reduce emissions, so we won't have impacts of higher temperatures. The second one is “minimize” which maps on to adaptation. If you adapt, you minimize. The third one is “address” and that we have not done. We have done work on averting and minimizing but we now have to address and address boils down to money. The people who are suffering, the impacts need to be given some sort of funding to recover from those impacts. And that's what we are demanding here.

Akshat Rathi 15:35

Over the next two weeks, what would be your best outcome on loss and damage?

Saleemul Huq 15:44

So the best outcome we hope we will achieve is negotiate an agreement to set up what we are calling the Finance Facility for Loss and Damage. It does not have to be detailed out in any detail. But we do need to agree to set it up. Then we can take another year, come back in COP28 in Abu Dhabi, and work out the details. There are very valid questions to be associated with it. Namely, where would money come from? How much money is needed? Who would handle the money? Who would get the money? All legitimate questions, which would need a fair degree of research and options to be put together. And those we can then come back in COP28 and work out the details and negotiate something that makes sense for everybody.

Akshat Rathi 16:31

Now, the first two steps were averting and minimizing and towards that there was going to be $100 million being given, broadly called climate finance. Not really explained. That $100 billion dollars has never happened annually. They're getting close to $100 billion dollars, but they've never reached it. This is, rich countries having to give that money to poor countries. If they can't give $100 billion, which they agreed upon many years ago, why do you think they will be able to agree upon even more money to be given for addressing loss and damage?

Saleemul Huq 17:07

Well, we are hopeful that they will do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do. And not be miserly because they feel that they don't have enough money to spare. And so we are appealing to them out of a sense of responsibility to take that responsibility and accept that responsibility. And then talk to us about how they can fulfill that responsibility. At the moment they're refusing to take responsibility. That's not acceptable.

Akshat Rathi

Moral outrage does work sometimes. But at the scale at which we are talking, where it's 200 countries where there's hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money to be talked about, will moral outrage be enough?

Saleemul Huq

It certainly isn't enough now. There is no moral responsibility taken by the rich countries at all. So that's the first step. Money comes a long way after that. Responsibility you have to start with, and they have to take it. And I'll give you an example. Last year in Glasgow, inside the UNFCCC and COP 26, not a single country inside the COP offered any money, Mr. Biden came and offered zero dollars. Angela Merkel came and offered zero euros. Boris Johnson, the host of zero pounds, but outside the COP, in the city of Glasgow, in the country of Scotland, which has its own government, its own parliament, its own First Minister, Ms. Nicola Sturgeon, she actually put 2 million pounds on the table for loss and damage. She's not a party to the UNFCCC, but she is a government. She took responsibility. She said Scotland benefited from the Industrial Revolution, became rich because of it. But it also recognizes that there are ancillary impacts that were unintended that happened because of the emissions of their greenhouse gasses. They take responsibility, and they offer 2 million not a huge amount of money, but more than every other leader offered, to provide to the victims of climate change. They accepted moral responsibility, and they invited other governments to do that. Now the only other government while we were in Scotland that rose to the occasion was the province of Wallonia in Belgium, They offered a million euros. Since then, one of the parties to the UN Framework Convention, Denmark, has actually broken ranks with the European Union and offered 100 million kronor. So that's what we want, more countries to come forward and take responsibility.

Akshat Rathi 19:37

Let's come back to loss and damage. You said something that's very important. Pakistan had about $30 billion of damage caused by the flooding that happened over the summer. How much of that should rich countries be paying for and how is that calculated?

Saleemul Huq 19:52

So the calculations are done by a branch of the climate scientists called attribution scientists. It used to take them a long time to make these calculations. And they come back a year later saying how much additional damage was attributable to human induced climate change. They're getting much better now. And they can now produce their calculations within a matter of days of fast moving events like floods and cyclones. And they have attributed half the damage in Pakistan to the fact that global temperature is already raised over one degree centigrade attributable to human induced climate change. So the point we're making is that what used to be 100% natural events are no longer 100% natural events. They are being exacerbated, not caused, but exacerbated by the fact that global temperature has gone up by over one degree attributable to human-induced emissions and therefore there is a responsibility of the polluters who emitted those greenhouse gasses to offer some support to the victims of their pollution. So pollution [is] not victimless. There are victims, and they exist, they're happening today. So there's a responsibility to help them.

Akshat Rathi 21:08

These global negotiations require 200 governments to come to a consensus. That means that just by design, that progress is slower than it needs to be. How is the climate change negotiation doing relative to other types of negotiations under the United Nations? Is there more progress or less progress on climate change?

Saleemul Huq 21:29

Well, I think the UN Framework Convention is a very good example of all countries coming together and agreeing to do things. It's a bad example of them actually doing what they promised to do. So they make promises and then they fail to keep those promises, sometimes for legitimate reasons, sometimes less legitimate reasons. But there are other fora as well. There is the United Nations General Assembly, where all countries come together. In the General Assembly, unlike the UN Framework Convention, decisions can be made by a majority of countries. In the UN Framework Convention, it has to be unanimous, it has to be by consensus. So we always end up by having the lowest common denominator as decisions and progresses over slower

Akshat Rathi 22:11

And the UN General Assembly they also have the Security Council which can vote down or veto a decision even if the majority of countries have made them.

Saleemul Huq 22:21

Absolutely. So one of the reasons why the Conference of Parties is particularly important for the more poor or vulnerable countries. Release is that it's the only forum in which they have a seat at the table. Security Council does not include them. The G7 does not include them. The G20 does not include them, they're not even invited as observers. The UNFCCC COP, once a year, is the only place where they can sit around the table with all the big guys and actually say something, they may not listen. But at least we get to say it, sometimes we actually get to persuade them to do something.

Akshat Rathi 22:57

Now, one moment where that persuasion worked was at the Paris Agreement, where before countries were agreeing to a two degree Celsius warming goal. But because of persistent and motivated individuals, especially from island nations, it was possible to add the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal to the Paris Agreement. Seven years on there are conversations that 1.5 degrees Celsius might be impossible. Do you think so?

Saleemul Huq 23:25

Well, the 1.5 degree goal was, I would say the pinnacle of achievement of the vulnerable countries, including the island countries and the least developed countries to persuade both the rich countries, and even the big developing countries like China and India, to agree to a 1.5 degree goal because they were not actually in agreement at the beginning of the COP21. Over the two weeks [that] we were in Paris, we managed to persuade every single country to agree to adopt 1.5 as a target. That was a great achievement. We hope that would drive action, it did drive some action, but not enough. And every single day, now, we are slipping away from being able to stay below 1.5. But even if we don't manage 1.5, every fraction of a degree counts. So it's not as if two is another magic figure. 1.51 is a magic figure. 1.52 is a magic figure. 1.53 is a magic figure, every incremental amount of temperature rise means lots and lots of people dying, losing their livelihoods and being forced to migrate. So the impacts of climate change and now are real, they're happening, they will happen at bigger and bigger scales. Unfortunately, in the near term, we can still prevent the huge scales in the long term. But in the near term, midlevel scales are inevitably going to happen.

Akshat Rathi 24:51

Now, one thing that happened after 1.5 degrees Celsius was agreed upon as a goal is that a series of big reports came out trying to explain to the world what a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming would look like because nobody had figured out what that would look like. And then they said what needs to be done to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius. And that's where net zero by 2050, the target comes through, where reducing carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 would allow the world to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. That target has then been taken as you explain by sub government actors. So it's not just national governments, it's also regional governments, it's also corporations. And that certainly has galvanized people to come up with plans to reach those goals. If 1.5 degrees Celsius is dead, should net zero by 2050 be dead, too?

Saleemul Huq 25:47

I don't, I won't call it dead. I'll call it on life support. And as I said, every incremental change matters, right? So it's not as if we're going to fall off a cliff at 1.5 will still be around, a lot of people will suffer. But then we can still manage to stop it at 1.51. And then 1.52. Alright, so we will keep on fighting to keep the temperature rising below two degrees,

Akshat Rathi 26:13

And at least the companies and the governments that have committed to net zero by 2050. If they meet those goals, then they would have done the morally right thing toward 1.5 degrees Celsius, even if the global goal is not met.

Saleemul Huq 26:26

Absolutely. So one of the outcomes of the Paris agreement is that while we needed the nearly 200 countries that are in the UN Framework Convention to agree to the agreement, we don't need all of them to implement it. Implementation can be done by anybody you and I can decide to implement a part of the Paris Agreement. Kids around the world are implementing parts of the Paris Agreement, companies around the world are doing it. Implementation can be done by what we call “coalitions of the willing”, who want to take action and net zero by 2050 is such a coalition, the race to zero that's taking place. We need to make it go faster. We need more people to join it. But it's certainly moving in the right direction.

Akshat Rathi 27:16

One other way to think about progress is that when the Paris Agreement happened, the world had the possibility of getting as much as five degrees Celsius of warming. If we think two degrees Celsius is catastrophic, five degrees Celsius is mayhem. Now, despite not enough action, the worst case outcome be talked about is three degrees Celsius, which is still pretty bad. But what does that progress feel like where you have avoided the worst of the worst possibilities?

Saleemul Huq 27:49

Well, I would put that to the achievement of the UN Framework Convention. Without it, we would be still heading for five degrees. Business as usual, from the time we started 30 years ago, would take us on a five degree pathway. A UNFCCC treaty followed by the Paris Agreement moved us theoretically towards the 1.5 degree and less than two degrees, we are heading above two degrees, maybe in the 2.5 to three degree range, business as usual today. But if we can ratchet that down, or ratchet up the actions to reduce emissions, we can certainly stay below two degrees. 1.5 may not be reachable anymore, politically, but two degrees is certainly reachable. And I'll give you one major advance that is outside the UNFCCC, but is relevant, and that is the global economy moving away from fossils. It's happening at speed. Now the renewable energy world is faster, more efficient, cheaper, and it's just going to blow out all the fossil fuel investments. Already coal is nonviable. Nobody can invest in coal and make money. Petroleum will follow and natural gas will follow that and that will be the big transition.

Akshat Rathi 29:09

That was a great conversation. Thank you for laying out the stakes and for giving us an idea of what to expect over the next few weeks.

Saleemul Huq 29:17

Thank you very much for having me.

Akshat Rathi 29:25

Thanks so much for listening to Zero. If you liked the show, please rate, review and subscribe. Tell a friend or tell a COP27 delegate. If you've got a suggestion for a guest or topic or something you just want us to look into get in touch at zeropod@bloomberg.net

Also, there's good news this week. For the next two weeks during COP27, the paywall on Bloomberg Green has been lifted. You can head to bloomberg.com/green to read all our latest climate coverage and everything in the archives for absolutely free.

Zero’s producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly.

If you want to hear more from Allegra and me, we'll be on our sister podcast in the city hosted by Bloomberg TV anchor, Francine Lacqua on Thursday this week. Listen and subscribe. I'm Akshat Rathi. Back later this week with more from COP27

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