COP28: Climate Minister Jørgensen welcomes COP28 fund

The world’s countries at the UN climate summit COP28 have on Thursday agreed on the terms of a climate fund for loss and damage to the world’s poor countries. According to Denmark’s Minister for Global Climate Policy Dan Jørgensen, the agreement indicates an important beginning to the climate summit, which will continue until December12. “This means that one of the important decisions that COP28 must deliver has already landed. And delivering this fund early helps the negotiations on the world’s climate an important step along the way,” he said in a written comment.
      COP28 chairman Sultan al-Jaber congratulated the parties on what he called “this historic decision”, according to AFP. UN countries were scheduled to discuss the terms of the loss and damage fund after they decided last year to set up the fund in connection with the climate summit in Egypt. Climate finance for the world’s poorer countries has been a topic that has been discussed for many years at the UN’s annual climate conferences.
      The Loss and Damage Fund has been one of Denmark’s major benchmarks before the conference, along with more renewable energy and energy efficiency. The fund is aimed at people in those areas of the world who are and have been exposed to massive damage due to climate change.
     “It is a victory for the world’s most climate-vulnerable societies, which now get a kind of global insurance once the accident has happened and they have lost everything they owned,” says Mattias Söderberg, climate adviser at DanChurchAid. The development and relief organisation Care notes that the fund can already take effect from 2024. But compromises have also been made, which, according to the organisation’s climate adviser John Nordbo, are less good: “The text’s biggest weakness is undoubtedly that it does not clearly state who should pay into the fund and how much. There is a call for rich, developed countries to pay, but there is no obligation.” /ritzau/