By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The EU has announced a new funding plan worth €1 billion to assist African nations finance climate change adaptation and resilience, even as developed nations hope to create a broader fund to compensate those already affected by climate change at COP27.
This is part of the EU-Africa Global Gateway Investment Package.
The program seeks to improve cooperation between the EU and the African Union and will “bring together existing and new” climate change adaptation programs, according to a European Commission press release.
The EU said the four pillars of the project would be improving early-warning systems, developing and implementing climate “risk finance and insurance” systems, improving public sector readiness and international funding of climate adaptation projects, and more funding for data-driven risk assessment projects designed to improve responses.
EU’s commissioner for climate affairs, Frans Timmermans, said it would be funded by the EU and governments of Germany, France, Denmark and the Netherlands.
He also said that other countries would be welcome to join the initiative.
Timmermans said the fund’s size was a starting point and that a small share of it, around €60 million, would be earmarked for “loss and damage” spending.
The EU also said on Wednesday that it would “present ideas on how to bring take loss and damage negotiations forward” at the UN’s COP27 climate summit.
However, this came as leading politicians diluted hopes for a broad agreement on the idea of a global fund to compensate developing countries suffering the effects of climate change in Sharm el-Sheikh this year.
One of the main issues at the summit has been the question of “loss and damage” funding. This would involve wealthier nations compensating less developed countries facing the impacts of climate change despite having done comparatively little to cause it historically.
The Group of 77+ developing countries at the UN, alongside China, proposed the establishment of a global loss and damage fund, saying the need for one was “urgent and immediate.”
Recently re-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva also raised the issue during his speech at COP27 on Wednesday, saying “We very urgently need financial mechanisms to remedy losses and damages caused by climate change.”
