Philippines among 4 countries set for first climate loss and damage fund grants

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is among four countries whose projects have been cleared for the first grants from an international fund set up to help developing nations recover from climate-related losses and damage.

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage is expected to award a total of $92 million in December to projects in Jamaica, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Haiti. Each project can receive between $5 million and $20 million.

The projects were deemed ready for approval during the fund's board meeting in July in the Philippines, following the submission of 176 requests earlier this year amounting to $2.8 billion.

The fund recently set aside $20 million to help Nepal recover from deadly floods in August. The allocation was a first for the mechanism but required a special request, pressure from developing countries and an extraordinary board meeting.

Georg Børsting, one of the fund's co-chairs, said the decision on Nepal did not necessarily set a precedent for future requests.

"The precedent that was set was that the board proved that it was able to do this type of extraordinary meeting," he told Agence France-Presse shortly before the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) in Turkey.

The fund's other co-chair, Camila Minerva Rodriguez Tavarez, said the mechanism was still determining how to support longer-term recovery efforts.

"We are not an emergency response fund. This is not humanitarian aid," she said.

Wealthy countries have pledged $822 million to the fund since its establishment at COP27 in Egypt in 2022, but no money has yet been disbursed.

Rodriguez Tavarez said the available resources remain far below what vulnerable countries need to recover from climate-related disasters.

"The needs are absolutely in the billions," she said.

Børsting added that a single fund would not be enough to meet the growing demand for assistance. — with a report from Agence France-Presse

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