Developing countries hit by extreme weather, rising seas and other climate change impacts have been asked to submit proposals for support from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) for the first time, three years after its birth at COP27 in Egypt.
Under the debut call for proposals launched at COP30 in Belém, the fund’s board said $250 million would be available for projects seeking to address a wide range of climate-related losses – from damaged infrastructure to the loss of cultural heritage, or community displacement.
Announcing the launch of the fund’s activities, FRLD Co-Chair Jean-Christophe Donnellier said the initial call for funding requests would help “test, learn and shape the fund’s long-term model”. Fellow Co-Chair Richard Sherman said it “sends an important signal to developing countries that support is available”.
Countries will be able to submit their proposals starting in mid-December for six months through to mid-June, with funding approvals beginning in July next year.
Evans Njewa, chair of the Least Developed Countries Group at the climate talks, hailed the call for proposals as “a practical step toward justice, long awaited by communities on the frontlines”, adding that the loss and damage fund “must now deliver fast, simple and accessible support”.
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Demand set to outpace resources
Activists fear that could be difficult, however. They say the fund is badly short of resources and will not be able to meet the enormous needs of developing countries.
By 2030, they could require $200 billion-$400 billion a year to address loss and damage caused by storms, droughts, flooding, extreme heat and rising seas made worse by climate change, according to an Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance.
However, developed countries have only pledged $788 million, signed commitments for over $560 million, and actually transferred less than $400 million of that total.
Tax luxury air travel to fund adaptation and loss and damage
Climate activist Harjeet Singh, founding director of India’s Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, said that as climate impacts wreak havoc on countries including the Philippines and Jamaica – where Hurricane Melissa is estimated to have caused up to $7 billion in loss and damage – the FRLD “is starting with a fraction of the scale required”.
Singh said the operationalisation of the fund three years after it was agreed showed it had failed to function as a rapid response mechanism.
He called for the fund to correct its course to match “the scale of the crisis, not the scale of political convenience”.
“The countries and communities facing the worst consequences – those who had no role in causing this crisis – deserve more than an empty shell. This is not climate justice,” Singh said.
Acknowledging the need for more resources to meet the vast scale of need on the ground, Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, the FRLD’s executive director, said the fund will keep working “to mobilise additional resources to support our long-term ambitions”.
Rising call for L&D support in climate plans
Demands for the fund to expand support are reflected in the national climate plans (NDCs) submitted by developing countries to the UN climate body in the run-up to COP30.
South Africa, Vanuatu, Mauritius and Liberia are among those that have laid out demands for loss and damage support from the FRLD, emphasising that climate impacts in their countries have exceeded the limit to which they can adapt.
South Africa – which suffers prolonged droughts, destructive floods and heatwaves – said climate change is already causing “irreplaceable loss”, damaging cultural heritage sites and hurting Indigenous knowledge systems. It is also shrinking farmland, hitting economic growth and worsening health outcomes, including more heat-related illness and deaths, the country said in its NDC.
A damaged submerged area is seen after flash floods in Sunamganj, Bangladesh on June 23, 2022. (Photo by Kazi Salahuddin Razu/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect)
A damaged submerged area is seen after flash floods in Sunamganj, Bangladesh on June 23, 2022. (Photo by Kazi Salahuddin Razu/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect)
With support from the FRLD, South Africa plans to improve how the country records and understands the full impact of climate disasters, including collecting detailed information on who is affected, with particular consideration for women and marginalised groups, so that relief and rebuilding programmes can be more effectively targeted, its NDC said.
For Mauritius, climate-related disasters in 2024 caused losses equivalent to 0.07% of gross domestic product (GDP), and the country plans to seek support from the FRLD for recovery and disaster response systems in sectors including agriculture, fishing, housing and health.
The island country said it planned to use the resources to implement a Climate Compensation Fund mechanism to compensate for loss and damage in terms of personal belongings, loss of lives and inability to work due to climate-related disasters. It also plans to improve the country’s disaster response capacity by equipping emergency relief centres with food and other vital supplies.
The inclusion of loss and damage in countries’ NDCs “makes it clear that there is a cost, which must be covered”, said Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead at DanChurchAid, a Danish NGO.
“We can decide if we want to invest in [emissions] mitigation and adaptation, but when it comes to loss and damage, there is no option. When climate-related disasters happen, communities will have to respond,” he added.
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