Commenting on the outcome of today’s FRLD Board meeting, ActionAid USA’s Director of Policy & Campaigns, Brandon Wu, said:
“The floods in Nepal demonstrated, in devastating fashion, the reason that the Fund for Responding to Loss & Damage (FRLD) exists: to support developing countries hit by the impacts of a climate crisis not of their making. The FRLD Board’s response to the floods is now demonstrating, in equally devastating fashion, the utter inadequacy of support from rich countries for countries like Nepal.
Today, the FRLD Board convened an emergency meeting on Nepal, but handcuffed by a lack of resources, it ultimately did very little. It decided to “set aside” $20 million in support for Nepal’s response to the disaster, with a formal proposal from Nepal, an assessment of that proposal, and a future Board decision needed to actually approve disbursement. No commitments have been made on the timing of these steps. The FRLD, despite being established nearly three years ago, has yet to send any money to countries hit by climate impacts.
These delays are a direct result of the fact that rich countries have refused to provide money for the FRLD at any kind of reasonable scale. If the Fund were adequately resourced, disbursing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to Nepal would be an absolute no-brainer. But it seems rich countries are terrified that the Fund – which has received a paltry $500 million to date – will run dry, thus putting more pressure on them to provide the money they owe.
Notably, the money “set aside” for Nepal amounts to less than one-half of one percent of the Nepali government’s estimated cost of recovery. And the floods occurred nearly two months ago, with a request for support from Nepal coming shortly after. The FRLD must be able to respond to major disasters at a vastly larger scale, and within hours or days, not months.
There are genuine concerns about the fairness and procedural integrity of the FRLD, and democratic governance is often necessarily slow. Agreeing on the right policies to decide how to allocate FRLD resources in the most just and equitable way is important, but this is impossible without rich countries finally meeting their obligations to provide climate finance for the Global South.
Developed countries owe hundreds of billions of dollars in climate finance but have consistently refused to pay their fair share. The result is nothing less than unnecessary suffering and death. The FRLD response to the Nepal floods must be a turning point rather than merely an illustration of the broken status quo.”
Ends
Brandon Wu, ActionAid USA’s Director of Policy & Campaigns, is available for media engagement. For media requests, please email christal.james@actionaid.org or call 7046659743.
About ActionAid
ActionAid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. ActionAid USA is the U.S. member of the ActionAid federation, based in Washington, D.C.
