Wamuyu Manyara is country director for Trócaire Malawi and Tarcizio Kalaundi is its climate resilience officer.

This week, the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) faces a significant decision that will determine its ability to address the harms being done by climate change.

Discussions on the Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must get the scale and accessibility of the Fund right. Failure to do so would risk undermining its role to channel finance to countries ex­periencing loss and damage, and undermine obligations to climate justice and human rights.

This discussion could not come at a more pressing time. As loss and damage (L&D) continues to escalate globally, and as the world teeters perilously close to the Paris Agreement’s critical 1.5C warming limit, the FRLD also faces the very real danger of running out of funding in 2027.

As Nigeria rails at loss and damage “mirage”, fund boss assures money is coming

Experts calculate that in 2025, L&D finance needs for climate-vulnerable countries may have reached USD$937 billion. Last year’s major impacts included a series of extremely destructive cyclones that hit the Philippines, estimated to have caused over $5 billion in losses, while in Jamaica, the losses and damage caused by Hurricane Melissa were estimated at $12.2 billion.

The bill for just one of these disasters would exhaust the Fund’s existing resources many times over. While the costs and human rights violations rack up, almost four years after being agreed at COP27, the FRLD remains critically underfunded.

Pledges to the Fund ($822 million) are just a fraction of 1% of annual loss and damage needs, and only around half of those pledges ($448 million) have been paid into the Fund so far.

Meanwhile, those who have done nothing to cause the climate crisis are facing its worst – and intensifying – impacts and are being left to foot the bill for the damages already incurred, not to mention the severe non-economic costs to communities. It is therefore crucial that the FRLD’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy urgently brings in far more L&D finance.

Contributor conundrum

Many developed states will claim that additional countries should provide L&D finance. This, however, is a distraction – particularly considering the deep abyss between the contributions of developed states that are obligated to pay and their fair share as calculated according to their wealth and historical emissions. Furthermore, some states and regions that are currently not obligated to contribute are already doing so.

Analysis reveals that, even in the highly inequitable scenario where all states including those who have contributed nothing to causing the climate crisis were to pay towards L&D finance, wealthy countries would still be responsible for the vast majority of L&D finance.

New loss and damage fund could run out of money next year

The Fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy must focus political discussions on the ability of rich and highly polluting states to raise public, grant-based L&D finance that is new and additional to existing climate finance obligations and overseas development assistance.

Developed states have the means to pay and the FRLD should introduce mandatory and progressive mechanisms to make the biggest polluters, including the ultra-rich and fossil fuel corporations, pay for their climate harms.

African impacts

Increasingly unpredictable seasons and more frequent and extreme events are driving food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement and other human rights risks in climate-vulnerable countries, and communities facing these escalating and compounding impacts must be centred in FRLD policies.

In Ethiopia, 2023 saw 24 million people affected by five back-to-back failed rains leading to severe food and water shortages, including a 90% crop loss in drought-affected areas. Eleven million people required food assistance, and over 500,000 people were displaced. Meanwhile, the 2023–24 floods and the 2024 Gofa landslide disrupted or destroyed health facilities, displaced thousands, and led to outbreaks of cholera, malaria, and measles.

Comment: Let’s tax luxury air travel to fund climate adaptation and loss and damage

Today, Somalia is facing one of its most severe drought emergencies in recent history driven by climate extremes. Malnutrition rates continue to exceed projections and previous devastating records, with 1.9 million children in Somalia acutely malnourished.

In Malawi, child stunting had significantly reduced, but climate impacts are now affecting children’s growth and development. Tropical Cyclone Freddy in 2023 was one of the worst on record, causing over 1,200 deaths, displacing half a million people, and causing damages exceeding $500 million. Recovery needs for four major disasters between 2015 and 2023 are estimated at $1.7 billion, equivalent to more than a quarter of Malawi’s 2026-2027 budget.

Funding for communities

Access to community grants in the southern African country, however, has catalysed local responses to L&D that coordinate around immediate and long-term needs and restoring livelihoods.

Direct access to the FRLD for climate-vulnerable countries and communities, with community-centric planning, is essential to ensure that the Fund can respond to the needs of people experiencing the worst impacts of climate change, through prompt and flexible mechanisms that do not hinder recovery options.

Stepping up to fill the FRLD through an ambitious and needs-based Resource Mobilisation Strategy is the bare minimum that wealthy states can and must do. It is, after all, an obligation that flows from the international duties of cooperation and prevention of harm, and from the obligation to provide reparation when harm occurs. Failure to do so would further erode climate justice and human rights for communities on the frontline of loss and damage.

The post The loss and damage fund needs far more finance to deliver climate justice appeared first on Climate Home News.

The loss and damage fund needs far more finance to deliver climate justice

SYDNEY, Thursday 9 July 2026 — Greenpeace Australia Pacific has condemned Woodside’s legal pursuit of concerned community members for their 2023 climate protest, calling it an attempt to silence and intimidate growing opposition to plans to drill for oil and gas at Scott Reef. 

Woodside has revived litigation against Western Australian community members in the Supreme Court of Western Australia relating to a three-year-old protest to bring attention to the harmful effects of Woodside’s gas expansion on climate and cultural heritage.

It comes as public opposition to Woodside’s plans to drill over 50 gas wells at Scott Reef continues to mount.

David Ritter, CEO at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “In the face of growing opposition to Woodside’s plans to drill over 50 gas wells at Scott Reef, this smacks of Woodside trying to intimidate and bully everyday Australians into submission.

“But the community won’t be silenced on this. Woodside’s plan to drill for gas at the pristine, magnificent Scott Reef, risking precious marine wildlife like turtles and whales, oceans and the climate, is a disaster waiting to happen.

“This SLAPP* suit is part of an alarming global trend of corporate bullies using bad-faith legal tactics to intimidate and silence people exercising their democratic right to protest. Companies like Woodside should not be allowed to use the courts to suppress public participation.

“WA has a proud history of civil protest to establish many of the rights, freedoms and benefits that we now celebrate. The whales that West Australians now love so much would not have been saved without protest. This kind of action by Woodside is intended to silence such protest. A healthy democracy depends on everyday people being free to speak out without fear of corporate intimidation.”

-ENDS-

Notes for editor

*SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation”. It is a legal tactic used by powerful corporations, particularly within the fossil fuel industry, to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the high costs of a legal defense until they abandon their environmental advocacy or protests.

Media contact

Lucy Keller on 0491 135 308 or lucy.keller@greenpeace.org

Woodside “SLAPP suit” against climate campaigners an attempt to silence growing opposition to drilling at Scott Reef

As governments and institutions pledged billions for offshore wind, cleaner shipping and marine protection at last month’s Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, countries are increasingly turning to the ocean as a source of jobs and climate action.

But civil society groups warn that the push to expand the “blue economy” may reproduce familiar inequalities unless coastal communities have a greater say in how projects are designed, financed and governed.

Neville van Rooy from The Green Connection in South Africa, which works with coastal communities who rely directly on the ocean for their livelihoods, said local people were frequently unaware of proposed developments until civil society groups alerted them.

“Communities need to be taken seriously,” van Rooy told delegates at the Mombasa conference held on the shores of the Indian Ocean.

“Just because they are often struggling does not mean they do not have a vision of development. Inclusivity needs to be at the centre and development pathways must build on communities’ own experience, including indigenous knowledge systems rooted in harmony with nature.”

Ocean investment flowing in

The value of the blue economy—the sustainable use and protection of marine resources—doubled from $1.3 trillion in 1995 to $2.6 trillion in 2020 and is projected to quadruple by 2050, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The scale of ambition in Mombasa was clear, with governments, institutions, companies and civil society groups announcing 320 commitments worth $6.4 billion.

The largest share went to sustainable blue economy projects, with 86 commitments worth $2.86 billion, followed by sustainable fisheries with $1.75 billion and ocean-climate action with $1.18 billion.

The pledges included support for ocean startups in Africa, coastal ecosystem restoration across the Indian Ocean, marine research and policy, recycling discarded fishing nets, sustainable livelihoods in Timor-Leste and planning tools for offshore wind.

Cynthia Barzuna, global deputy director of the Ocean Program at the World Resources Institute, said there are signs that blue finance and ocean planning are moving closer to coastal communities, particularly through the development of sustainable ocean plans.

In 2020, a group of 14 countries – co-led by Australia and Chile – pledged to manage their oceans sustainably, by jointly drawing up plans with coastal communities to shape how marine resources are managed and where investments should go.

“Once communities are involved in the planning, bring in their knowledge, and participate in designing, developing and implementing a sustainable ocean plan, it puts us on the right path,” Barzuna told Climate Home News on the sidelines of the conference.

Yet some of those countries – including Kenya, Australia and Mexico – have embarked on a new wave of offshore oil and gas projects, threatening key biodiversity hotspots, according to a recent report by a group of environmental NGOs.

When projects go wrong

Civil society groups say lessons need to be learnt from failed blue economy projects too.

In Kenya, a proposed coal-fired power plant at Lamu Port – a fragile coastal ecosystem and a UNESCO World Heritage site – was challenged by residents and campaigners who cited little consultation and threats to fishing, tourism, culture and public health.

In 2019, Kenya’s National Environment Tribunal revoked its environmental licence, citing inadequate public participation and flaws in the environmental assessment – a decision later upheld by the courts.

“It is not enough to say that whatever you are doing is in the name of the communities, their livelihoods and whatever else you want to improve”, but that they should be directly involved in projects from the start, said Omar Elmawi, a Kenyan climate activist and Convenor of the Africa Movement of Movements. 

He said another lesson learnt was that environmental impact assessments must not only be completed, but “must be done rigorously” and that the process has to be transparent so that people feel involved and that their views are being counted.

Blue transition

Blue carbon schemes can also attract finance, but campaigners said communities that have long protected mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes must be treated as rights-holders, not just beneficiaries. In some past projects, they said, communities were asked to provide labour, attend consultations or receive small payments, while outside developers retained control over carbon revenues and decisions over how ecosystems were managed.

Similarly, offshore wind and marine protected areas can bring climate and conservation gains, but if poorly planned, they can disrupt fishing grounds, marine species and small-scale fishers’ access to the sea, added campaigners.

Farida Aliwa, executive director of Natural Justice, said the answer was not to halt ocean-based development, but to put in place stronger safeguards before projects are approved, financed and expanded.

Aliwa said legal frameworks across Africa were evolving, with strategic litigation increasingly being used to hold governments accountable for environmental, climate and human rights impacts related to new projects.

But she warned that communities and coastal defenders still face shrinking civic space, and said any shift to renewable energy must be designed responsibly.

“As we work on alternatives, we need to ensure that renewable projects benefit communities,” she said.

The post As blue economy gathers pace, communities must benefit from ocean boom, activists say appeared first on Climate Home News.

As blue economy gathers pace, communities must benefit from ocean boom, activists say