- Formal negotiations
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With just $69 million in the bank account of the fledgling loss and damage fund so far, its new executive director was urged to keep running costs as low as possible at his first board meeting this month.
Board members from 26 governments around the world questioned the fund’s current and planned spending on consultants, business-class plane tickets and the need to have a deputy executive director, at the four-day meeting in the Philippines.
Harjeet Singh, a climate activist who was at the meeting, told Climate Home the fund’s secretariat “must exercise the utmost caution and prudence in utilising resources intended for vulnerable communities recovering from climate impacts. It bears a profound responsibility to make decisions judiciously, particularly concerning its size and travel expenditures.”
Climate survivors’ fund
Governments agreed to set up the fund, which aims to help people whose lives have been shattered by extreme weather and rising seas fuelled by climate change, at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, after three decades of advocacy led by island nations.
Negotiators on the fund’s board – 12 from developed and 14 from developing nations – have spent the two years since then discussing the details of how the fund will work and, in September, they chose Senegalese-American banker Ibrahima Cheikh Diong to be its first executive director.
Senegalese banker Ibrahima Cheikh Diong picked to lead new loss and damage fund
At his first meeting with the board last week in Manila, Diong laid out his plan to get the organisation up and running so that it can start giving out money by the end of 2025.
The plan involves extensive use of external consultants – but some board members pushed back against the costs involved. Diong presented a budget that set aside nearly $0.7m to pay consultants in the first six months of 2025, out of a total budget of $4.3m.
Sudanese board member Sumaya Zakieldeen said the organisation – whose full name is the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage – should move towards getting in-house staff to do as much of the work as possible, as fast as possible next year.
She said she found the prospect of waiting until 2026 to get most of the staff hired “a little bit scary” because it would mean using external advisers and consultants in the interim – “and we know the cost implications of that”.
Fiji’s Daniel Lund, however, said he supported the use of short-term consultants so that the fund can stay on track. “We don’t see any other way to deliver that substance in the time-frames that we put in place,” he said.
World Bank raises $100 billion for poor nations in boost for climate finance
Business-class controversy
A further $0.6m will be spent on staff travel in the first half of 2025. As the fund is hosted by the World Bank, it has taken on the bank’s human resources policy, including its travel policy which allows staff to go business class if the flight is over five hours.
Denmark’s Jens Fugl said the $0.6m was “substantial”, adding that “travel should be on a need-to basis” and “not everyone from the secretariat needs to be at all board meetings, because that would really be a significant cost that we should try to avoid”.
Diong replied that he wanted to develop a “bottom-up approach” by engaging with a range of groups around the world and “you can’t do that from Washington DC”, where the fund is based at the World Bank’s headquarters.
He added that travel was necessary to persuade governments to give more money to the fund. But, he promised, “we will be extremely sensitive in making sure that we don’t over-travel”.
How can governments tackle loss and damage at the national level?
The board members are not employed by the fund, which means they are not bound by the World Bank’s rules and can set their own travel policy. The board decided that developed-country governments will pay for their own representatives to travel to meetings while the fund will pay for developing-country board members, their alternate member and one adviser each.
They decided to copy the policy of the United Nations and the Green Climate Fund, which is that flights should be economy class unless they are nine hours or longer, when personnel can chose business class but are “encouraged to voluntarily downgrade”.
This policy was resisted by the US and Denmark, who wanted more economy travel to reduce spending and emissions. The US’s Rebecca Lawlor said that flying business class produces three times as much greenhouse gas as economy class, while Denmark’s Fugl said officials’ mode of travel is “something there is a lot of scrutiny about”.
But the Philippines’ board member Mark Dennis Y.C. Joven – whose country is the board’s legal host – questioned why the fund’s developing-country board members should follow a different travel policy from the fund’s staff. He asked if that would cause “administrative inefficiencies and delays” and “raise the issue of unfair treatment or discrimination”.
The fund plans to spend $261,000 next year, mainly on getting its developing-country board members, alternates and advisers to a board meeting in Barbados. Several developed-country board members called for more virtual meetings, but developing-country members largely opposed this, citing problems with internet connectivity and anti-social hours.
Late payments
Diong’s proposal to hire a deputy executive director early next year was also questioned. Board members Sudan and Honduras asked for more justification for the position, while the Democratic Republic of Congo’s member said the board should not micromanage.
Diong said his deputy would focus on operations, advocacy and communications which would free up Diong to work on raising money, particularly pressuring wealthy nations to convert their pledges into actual financial transfers.
While rich nations have promised $749m to the fund – most if it a year ago at COP28 – just $69m has landed in its coffers to date, with the World Bank expecting this to rise to $150m by the end of the year. The UAE, UK, France and Italy between them owe over $350m.
In Baku last month, COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev pushed governments to pay up. “All countries that have pledged money must complete their contribution agreements,” he said. On top of that, “we need more pledges so we can meet the urgent needs of climate change victims,” he added.
(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post New loss and damage fund boss urged to keep costs down appeared first on Climate Home News.
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Prepared by a coalition of nine Western Australian union, industry, conservation, and community organisations—including UnionsWA, the Conservation Council WA, and the Smart Energy Council—the WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan provides a practical roadmap to transform Western Australia into a clean energy powerhouse while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
Western Australia stands at a pivotal crossroads: lead the global clean energy economy or watch investment, future industries, and secure jobs go elsewhere. The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan outlines a transformative blueprint to harness the state’s world-class solar and wind resources. Discover how legislated renewable targets, green iron manufacturing, and a dedicated regional training strategy can generate tens of thousands of local jobs, lower household bills, and build a resilient, net-zero future for all Western Australians.
WA needs a clear and forward-thinking plan if it is going to become a competitive renewable energy powerhouse and maintain its economic strength through the energy transition.
“Western Australians know a faster renewable energy transition will lower their household expenses and prevent harmful climate pollution. But the community also needs clear direction to ensure this transition will create jobs, lower costs and not cause undue environmental harm.
“Here, sectors representing a broad range of interests have laid the groundwork for those outcomes, clearly outlining what is needed to create a future for WA that is good for the environment, for the climate, for workers and for the economy.
Summary
The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan sets out a strategic roadmap to position Western Australia as a global clean energy superpower while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
The report establishes three overarching goals:
- Creating local employment.
- Maintaining industrial competitiveness.
- Lowering household energy costs
To realize this vision, the framework details actionable measures to follow on from the recent WA Government announcement of a 75% Renewable Energy Target by 2031 for the South West Interconnected System. This includes developing a statewide Renewable Energy Target, coordinating statewide workforce and training pipelines, strategically planning regional infrastructure to safeguard high-value biodiversity and cultural heritage, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing through household electrification incentives and First Nations equity partnerships. Ultimately, the plan highlights that establishing clear policy and regulatory certainty will unlock lower energy bills, boost power reliability, and secure the state’s global competitiveness in emerging green commodity export markets.
Key Findings
- Statewide Renewable Energy Target and Emissions Reduction Targets: The report calls for a statewide RET and 1.5°C aligned emission reduction targets to remove policy risk, lower capital costs, and attract clean energy investment.
- Transformative Job Creation: Accelerating the transition offers massive employment prospects, including up to 8,800 solar and battery jobs by 2050, as well as 24,000 ongoing and 11,000 construction jobs in a commercial green iron industry.
- Industrial Electrification & Competitiveness: Requiring large gas users to adopt binding electrification timetables and providing concessional financing will protect existing energy-intensive manufacturers from rising energy costs and impending domestic gas shortfalls.
- Green Commodity Export Leadership: Western Australia can build new export markets in green iron, green ammonia, and offshore oil/gas decommissioning by constructing shared common-user infrastructure and setting dedicated Green Commodity Export Targets.
- Coordinated Workforce & Training Pipeline: To address critical skill shortages the plan recommends establishing a WA Clean Energy Jobs Plan 2050, three regional training hubs, and dedicated pathways for female and under-represented apprentices.
- Environmental Safeguards & Community Benefits: Fast-tracked development must be paired with State Planning Policies that avoid high-biodiversity and cultural heritage lands, mandate new data centres to run on additional renewable power, and deliver household electrification rebates and First Nations equity partnerships.
What you can do
WA has an opportunity to lead on sustainable, clean energy and associated industries. You can help by:
- Sending an email to Environment Minister Murray Watt and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, calling on them to reject Browse.
- Sharing this story to help more Australians understand what’s at stake.
- Encouraging your friends and family to take action.
Countries have completed the first “global review” of their progress towards reversing nature loss by 2030 at the COP17 biodiversity talks in Yerevan, Armenia.
The review “notes with deep concern” that, unless action is “rapidly accelerated”, the goal to reverse nature loss and meet a set of 23 targets by 2030 “will not be achieved”.
It “urges” countries to accelerate action, including by “increased ambition in addressing the gaps”.
Much of the discussions in Yerevan focused on how to raise the necessary funds to help developing countries protect nature.
Some major economies pushed to expand the range of nations that are expected to provide finance, with countries agreeing at the end of the two weeks of talks that non-donors that want to contribute can “signal interest” before COP18.
This came after developed countries failed to meet a target to significantly ramp up nature finance over the last few years.
It also came as a landmark fund agreed at COP16 in Colombia to pay communities for the genetic resources derived from nature stands nearly empty two years on.
The Yerevan talks marked the halfway point of the “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF), the “Paris Agreement for nature” first made in 2022 and due to be achieved by 2030.
During the nearly 12-hour-long final plenary, countries voted for Quito, Ecuador, to host the COP18 nature talks, which will be held in 2028.
Countries managed to sign off on all the major negotiation texts, marking a stark contrast to COP16, which ran so far over time that the Colombian presidency lost “quorum”, forcing talks to resume in Rome months later.
Below, Carbon Brief has detailed analysis of all of the key outcomes from COP17.
Formal negotiations
Finance
Finance, predictably, was at the heart of the discord and deadlock at the Yerevan talks.
At COP17, discussions on finance had to achieve several outcomes.
The first part – to take stock of biodiversity finance mobilised so far to meet the nature deal’s goals – fell under the global review.
As the global report noted, developed countries failed to meet their commitments to raise “at least $20bn a year by 2025” for nature. Delegates pointed to falling aid levels and a sharp 27% decline in environmental funding for the 2026-30 period.
The second part was to agree on how to mobilise resources for the next four years, to meet the GBF’s goals and targets.
Calls to “broaden the contributor base” of who pays to protect nature – and whether that should include emerging economies – became the most fraught element of the talks.
Eventually, countries agreed on what Switzerland described as a “super, mega-delicate” text. It hinged on major “political compromises”, with “no major winner or loser”, according to Kenya.
Per the decision, countries that want to be included on a list of developed country donors can “signal interest” through bilateral, confidential consultations before COP18 and every alternate COP after.
Finally, countries also agreed on criteria to shape and resource a new, permanent financial mechanism to protect nature after 2030.
However, this did not immediately take the form of a new fund under the COP that biodiverse countries have demanded since 2022, deferring the mechanism’s institutional structure to COP18.
Resource mobilisation discussions at the GBF’s halfway mark were supposed to agree on how to close the “biodiversity finance gap” and to “increase resources from all sources” to “at least” $200bn per year by 2030, as set out in target 19 of the GBF.
The talks were largely dominated by a push, led by the JUSCANZ bloc of developed countries, to “broaden the contributor base”. This could see emerging economies, such as Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia and India, being added to the list of countries that pay to protect nature.
Article 20 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) states that developed countries “shall provide new and additional financial resources” to developing countries to meet the costs of implementing measures to protect nature.