The disaster risks setting back the indebted nation by years and its shocking scale, inundating a third of the country, is testament to the growing impacts and costs of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable nations – which are least to blame for global warming.
Rich nations are under pressure like never before to pledge more money because they are most responsible for the emissions that are heating up the planet and triggering more extreme floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms. “Failure to act on loss and damage will lead to more loss of trust and more climate damage,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said earlier in October.
“Forty-three per cent of countries in Africa are now classified as highly distressed, and this has implications for adaptation. This means these governments are spending significant amounts on servicing their debts, and they have less flexibility, less fiscal space to invest in resilience activities,” said Dr Arjuna Dibley, a researcher at the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme and co-author of a 2021 UN report on adaptation funding.
It is precisely these sorts of reforms the V-20 Group of finance ministers from 58 climate-vulnerable economies are calling for. A view of a flooded area following heavy rain in Naushahro Feroze District, Sindh province, Pakistan, on Oct 14, 2022. According to the authorities, around 160 bridges and 5,000km of roads have been destroyed or damaged. PHOTO: EPA-EFEThe International Monetary Fund , in a recent blog, underlined the need for “massive global investments to address the climate challenge and vulnerabilities to shocks”.