A new report from the Vulnerable Twenty (V20), a group of Finance Ministers from the Climate Vulnerable Forum, has confirmed that 55 vulnerable countries have been made poorer by the debilitating effects of climate change.
The report estimates that these vulnerable economies have lost approximately $525 billion over the two decades due to climate change’s temperature and precipitation patterns.
According to the Pan-African Media Alliance for Climate Change (PAMACC), the report establishes that climate change has eliminated one-fifth of the wealth of the V20 countries with primary evidence, indicating that the V20 would have been 20 per cent wealthier today if not for climate change and the losses it incurred for poor and vulnerable economies.
The report was presented on Thursday at an event on the sidelines of the ongoing talks on climate change holding in Bonn, Germany with Ghana assuming leadership of the V20.
“The economic losses cut GDP growth in the V20 by one per cent each year on average, which averaged 3.67 per cent in 2019 across the vulnerable economies,” the report said.
From 2000 to 2019, the report estimated economic losses due to hydro-meteorological extreme events are higher than in the previous two decades, and the world’s most vulnerable economies are also not adapting fast enough to cope with the changing climate as it currently stands.
Ghana’s Finance Minister, Kenneth Nana Yaw Ofori-Atta, said the report “Should sound alarm bells for the world economy since V20 are fast-growing engines of global economic growth, whereas the climate crisis has the potential to bring that phase to an end if the world fails to act.
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“The failure on the $100 billion of international climate finance delivery, particularly the failure to ensure a 50:50 balance for adaptation, has left us highly exposed,” Ofoi-Atta said.
Represented by Professor Seth Osafo, Ofori-Atta called for “An international financing mechanism for climate change loss and damage as a matter of pragmatism and justice.”
He said the V20 and Climate Vulnerable Forum are calling on COP27 “to establish this financing facility in solidarity with victims least responsible for, and least equipped to withstand the increasingly extreme physical shocks driven by climate change.”
In a discussion with PAMACC, Prof. Osafo said it was unfair that poor, vulnerable and least responsible nations continue to bear the brunt of costs from the inactions on the climate crisis by the world’s rich and responsible nations.
“It should fall on COP27 to decisively act on the void of finance for loss and damage in a clear litmus test for whether those fueling the climate crisis can truly begin to take responsibility for the breadth of damage that has been unleashed by it,” Osafo added.
The Bonn climate talks, which started on Monday, gained support for consideration of a financing facility for loss and damage as part of the agenda for the Sharm el-Sheik climate talks scheduled for November 2022 in Egypt.
Analysts say the calls became necessary following the failure to balance the insistence for the finance facility by poor nations and the veiled opposition from rich nations led by the USA and some European nations at last year’s Glasgow climate talks.
Equally of concern to the V20 report is the need for more stringent mitigation action to keep the global mean temperature increase below 1.5°C.
Given that warming is set to progress to within 1.5ºC in the next decade regardless of further mitigation action, it is believed that economic losses would continue to increase except adaptation accelerates at a phenomenal rate both to prevent loss and damage at current levels, as well as to offset the growth in economic losses and damage that will be generated as temperatures continue to rise.
Nearly all V20 economies have already warmed to mean temperatures that are far beyond what would be optimal for generating economic growth, and thereby instead incur economic losses – additional warming will only carry V20 economies further from the optimum, greatly increasing the risks of losses in the future.
The V20 Group of Finance Ministers of the Climate Vulnerable Forum is a dedicated cooperation initiative of economies systemically vulnerable to climate change. The V20 works through dialogue and action to tackle global climate change.
About 25 countries in Africa and the middle-east are members of the V20. These include Benin, Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, DR Congo and Malawi. Others are Eswatini, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen while 19 Asia-Pacific countries such as Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the island nations alongside 11 Latin America and the Caribbean countries of Haiti and Honduras make up the rest.
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Vulnerable countries have lost $525 billion to climate change in 2 decades ― Report
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Vulnerable countries have lost $525 billion to climate change in 2 decades ― Report
Vulnerable countries have lost $525 billion to climate change in 2 decades ― Report
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