As Caribbean nations tallied the destruction caused by the passage of Hurricane Beryl, the board of the fund set up to compensate for such devastating loss and damage held its second meeting this week.
“The level of damage is apocalyptic,” said Henrietta Elizabeth Thompson from Barbados, among the countries worst hit by the natural disaster, at the start of the four-day session in Incheon, South Korea.
The board needs to create a fund that “reflects the scale of the magnitude, of the risk, the damage and devastation faced by people across the world and the urgency required to respond to it,” she added.
But before the fund starts handing out any money in future, board members have to agree on procedural matters.
A name and a place
On the opening day, the Philippines was picked as the host of the fund’s board in a secret vote by members. The Southeast Asian nation defeated bids from seven other candidates: Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Barbados, Eswatini, Kenya and Togo.
Selecting a host country was one of the most pressing priorities for this week’s meeting. It represented a first necessary step for the board to take up a legal personality and enter into formal agreements with the World Bank, set to host the loss and damage fund on an interim basis.
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While the administrative staff of the fund will be based at the World Bank, the board will carry out some of its meetings in the Philippines in the future, likely in the capital Manila. The country’s proposal scored particularly high thanks to its abundant transport options and accommodation facilities and its visa free entry for short stays for most visitors, according to a background paper.
A man stands in a home where the roof was ripped apart, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, July 5, 2024. REUTERS/Maria Alejandra Cardona
The somewhat thorny issue of what to officially call the fund also landed on the table in South Korea.
For nearly all climate talks participants, it’s simply been the “loss and damage fund” since it was adopted at COP27, but the United States have made various attempts at a rebrand. At COP28 in Dubai, for example, then U.S. climate envoy John Kerry kept referring to the “fund for climate impact response” – a more neutral label that softened the suggestion of developed countries’ historical responsibility.
In consultations ahead of the meeting, the co-chairs of the board collected various options, from the minimalistic “the Fund” to the highly technocratic “Fund referred to in decisions 1/CP.28 and 5/CMA.5”.
Ultimately, members decided to go with “Fund for responding to Loss and Damage”, abbreviated as FLD, without spending much time debating the matter.
Beware the ‘billions’
Divisions cropped up when the discussion turned to the process of selecting the executive director (ED). Hoping to announce the name of the executive director at COP29 this November, the board had to agree at this session on the criteria for picking the fund’s boss, including the roles and responsibilities.
Several board members from developing countries wanted the ED’s job description to mention efforts to find additional money for the fund at the scale of billions. “If you have someone running a fund of 100 million, this is totally different from 10 billion, 55 billion, or 100 billion,” said Egypt’s Mohamed Nasr, “the scale of this fund is not confined to where it is”.
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Countries have pledged around $700 million to the fund so far, with Italy, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates among the biggest contributors. The United States has pledged only $17.5 million. South Korea pledged $7 million at this week’s meeting. The residual costs from loss and damage is projected to reach a total of $290 billion to $580 billion by 2030, according to a 2018 study.
But some developed country board members, including the US, rejected the proposal of including a reference to “billions”, according to observers.
“It is clear that developed nations…remain non-committal about scaling financial mobilisation,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, who attended the meeting. “The initial commitments of a few hundred million dollars are merely a drop in the ocean compared to the real and escalating costs of climate change that developing countries endure,” he added.
Eventually, board members found a compromise wording. The ED will be asked to lead efforts to grow the fund’s resources “towards contributing to a response at scale to respond to climate-induced loss and damage”.
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The recruitment process will now go underway with the goal of putting a shortlist of candidates in front of the board by the next meeting scheduled for September 18-20 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Legal agreements
Between now and then, there will be little time for a summer break.
After approving last June the conditions of hosting the fund, the World Bank now has until August 12 to share with board members the draft text of the agreements detailing how that will work in practice. It will include things like provisions to handle the money and give access to recipients and the rules governing the relationship between the board and the World Bank.
Developing countries and civil society groups are eager to see guarantees that communities in hard-hit countries will be able to access funds directly without going through various intermediary agencies.
“Agreeing and certifying these agreements will be the most important decision at the next board meeting”, said Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich in Washington who attended the board meeting. “The World Bank has shared an outline of what they will include, but we are talking about legal agreements so the devil is in the detail”.
The post In Hurricane Beryl’s shadow, loss and damage fund makes progress on set-up appeared first on Climate Home News.
In Hurricane Beryl’s shadow, loss and damage fund makes progress on set-up
In a Q&A with Climate Home News, the head of sustainability at global lighting company Signify explains how the firm is doubling down on its efforts to protect the climate and strengthen resilience.
In March, Signify launched its latest corporate sustainability programme, “Brighter Lives, Better World 2030”.
The programme is the third iteration of a project that started in 2016, aimed at shifting how the company – and its customers – can reduce their environmental impact.
It centres on enhanced targets to improve energy efficiency, cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote the circular economy. In addition, Signify has set itself a challenging goal to source 41% of its revenue from solutions “that support benefits beyond illumination” by the end of 2030, up from 31% in 2024. Those benefits include efficient food production and increased access to solar lighting.
Signify is aiming to save 60 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity for its customers; achieve a 35% reduction in the CO2 emissions intensity of its portfolio; and grow its circular product business from 10% to 27.5% of revenue.
Climate Home News spoke with the company’s global head of sustainability, Maurice Loosschilder, to find out how the Netherlands-based multinational plans to reach its targets despite a tough political landscape for green action.
Q: How does Signify’s new sustainability programme build on lessons learned from previous versions?
A: If we look back a little bit, it is a natural next step. Signify [formerly Philips Lighting] became a standalone company roughly 10 years ago and in 2016 we launched our first “Brighter Lives, Better World 2020” programme at the same time.
The first programme mirrored developments in the lighting industry and was very much based on our own operations: reaching 100% renewable electricity, zero waste to landfill in our manufacturing facilities, increasing the energy efficiency in our own portfolio.
Since then, we’ve moved on to think about our entire value chain and the wider social contributions we want our work to be making. But we still want to be thinking about how to improve our own business. Our continued target to double the amount of women in leadership positions is an example of that.
Q: Looking at the political climate, both in the US and Europe, there isn’t the same concern for environmental issues as there was a few years ago. Many corporates are perceived to be rolling back on their environmental commitments. How are you as a company navigating some of these challenges?
A: This is not something new. If we look back on the last five to 10 years, we’ve seen a lot of disruption and change in the market. We’ve had a global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, energy insecurity. At the same time we’ve seen the increased impacts of climate change and all of that is changing the dynamics of doing business right now.
I think these changes have really tested resilience – the resilience of companies, the resilience of people, the resilience of societies. We really believe that resilience is becoming more and more important to businesses right now. And if you look at what a resilient company is, it is one that decarbonises faster, invests in people, invests in circular solutions and makes its business model more circular. And that’s exactly what we have focused on. It’s about making sure we can cope, and help our customers cope, with changing market circumstances and the geopolitical tensions we see in the world.
Q: Turning to your own commitments, do you feel you have set the right balance between ambitious and achievable?
A: Yes, we strongly believe this programme is the right one for us and our customers, and has been informed by a thorough double-materiality assessment. It is built on three pillars: benefits beyond illumination, energy efficiency and resource efficiency. These are supported by new initiatives, such as Signify Circle, which will support professional customers with their circular economy ambitions.
If we just look at the first pillar, it’s about the positive impact that lighting brings, in terms of productivity, in terms of safety, in terms of food availability, health and well-being, and now we have added solar in there. This is what we mean by “benefits beyond illumination”.
Q: If we take one of your targets to save 60 TWh of electricity for your customers, that seems quite hard to work out. Do you find data availability to be an issue?
A: Data is a challenge in sustainability, but we have been measuring our avoided emissions for years, so we know the data requirements behind it. We’ve done all our homework and with that we have set this target.
The 60 TWh figure is about the annual electricity usage of Switzerland so it is a substantial amount. But it also reflects the role that lighting plays in general. If you look at a typical city, street lighting alone accounts for about 40% of electricity use. So the potential is enormous.
The International Energy Agency reports that about 8% of global electricity use comes from lighting, and this translates into 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s really significant and why the opportunity here is so big.
Q: How has the new programme been informed by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
A: Our strategic compass is the Sustainable Development Goals. We committed to six SDGs in the previous programme. The new one has been expanded to cover eight and we conducted a mapping exercise for each of the commitments. I’m hoping that, by the end of this programme, we will see a new version of the SDGs to replace the current goals when they expire in 2030. We remain committed to making our contribution to the SDGs.
Q: Are you seeing higher demand for circular products? What is it that attracts businesses to that option?
A: Yes, we do see an increased demand. For example, we see greater interest in “remanufacturing”, which is a circular business model where we take down the lighting, send it back to our manufacturing site, and upgrade it to the latest technology, but keep the majority of the hardware intact.
I think customers are becoming more and more aware of the fact that regulation is pushing resource efficiency on businesses. And in some countries we see incentives to use circular products, and penalties around sending certain material to landfill. More businesses are becoming aware of this and we strongly believe there is a market for circular products.
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Q: Do you have customers that are facing real resource pressures, in terms of scarcity, increased costs or supply chain constraints that are making them think more about circular issues?
A: The whole market is currently impacted by geopolitical tensions and the disruptions that come as a result. Light as a Service, for example, could be a way for businesses to de-risk because there is no capital expenditure involved. Customers see real value in only having to pay to keep it running.
If we look longer term, then resource and material efficiency is something the whole world should be thinking more about. How can we decouple economic growth from the increased use of natural resources? We believe the circular economy is the answer.
This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.
Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.
The post Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now” appeared first on Climate Home News.
Signify: “We believe resilience is becoming more important to businesses right now”
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