Wealthy nations risk undermining the loss and damage fund’s plan to deliver $250 million in aid next year to climate-vulnerable countries hit by extreme weather, board members from developing nations said this week.
While rich nations have pledged $789 million, they have only transferred $348 million so far to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), which all governments agreed to set up two years ago and is now in its start-up phase.
Speaking on behalf of developing country board members, Honduras’s representative Elena Cristina Pereira Colindres expressed “concern” during a press briefing, adding that “transparency and predictability” on when the money would be paid is lacking.
Pereira did not name individual countries but Italy, the European Union and Luxembourg are the three donors that have promised money but not said when it will be given.
Other nations – like the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Sweden – are drip-feeding their promised pledges, only giving a part of them each year.
Pereira said that these “mutli-year disbursement schedules” severely limit the fund’s board’s ability to determine how much money they can spend and reduces “overall confidence in our partner’s commitments to long-term capitalisation of the fund”.
“Lemonade stand money”
While the fund’s board has agreed to spend $250 million next year, Pereira said that this “must not be used or considered as an indication of the future scale of the fund” because the needs are in the “hundreds of billions”.
A 2024 study in Nature found that climate change is causing $395 billion of loss and damage each year. Developing countries have called for developed nations to provide $100 billion of loss and damage finance per year by 2030.
Daniel Lund, Fiji’s representative to the fund, told an FRLD board meeting held in the Philippines on Wednesday that the amount the fund currently has is just “lemonade stand money”, adding that it was about a quarter of what it costs to build a coal-fired power plant.
Scientists hail rapid estimate of climate change’s role in heat deaths as a first
The fund’s board is drawing up a strategy to get more money – known as a resource mobilisation strategy – by the end of 2025. “It is of crucial importance to the constituency that this fund that was established for all developing countries serves their collective needs at the scale that is needed”, Pereira said.
In April, the fund approved a strategy for the initial $250 million start-up phase, in which it agreed to give out grants of between $5 million and $20 million to project proposals submitted by developing countries.
Priority for private finance?
With funds scarce, the secretariat which runs the FRLD has proposed that projects which bring in extra sources of funding like private-sector finance should be judged favourably by the fund’s board.
But some developing country board members and climate campaigners pushed back at the board meeting against adding this practice, known as leveraging, into the criteria.
Egypt’s representative Mohammed Nasr said he had “a very strong concern” about this. “This should not be part of any criteria when we deal with loss and damage funding”, he said.
The head of Climate Action Network (CAN) International Tasneem Essop said she was worried that the fund’s secretariat were pursuing “typical World Bank approaches”. The World Bank was chosen to host the fund – at least on an interim basis – despite opposition from some large NGOs like CAN.
Nigeria’s push to cash in on lithium rush gets off to a rocky start
Essop said she opposed leveraging and derisking. It’s “as if what we are setting up here is an investment fund,” she said, “no it’s not – this is a solidarity fund. This fund needs to benefit the people that are suffering from the climate crisis”.
Speaking after her, Nasr said he agreed. “A fund is not a bank. Solidarity is different to investment. Loss and damage is different to development”, he said.
When will funds be given out?
Despite funding constraints, board co-chair Richard Sherman said he expects the first projects to be approved early next year.
Sherman said he expects the fund to put out a call for proposals at the next board meeting in October and the first projects to be approved at the following meeting in February 2026.
The board is still working out the fund’s financial architecture, meaning how the money is banked and disbursed to countries, Sherman said. If done correctly, he added, a unique fund can be set up to deliver a “rapid disbursement in time of disaster or extreme event”.
“We are working wholeheartedly to make sure that (rapid disbursement) happens,” Sherman said during a press briefing, adding that he strives for the fund to “almost be a hotline for communities” facing loss and damage events.
In a statement read out by a minister before the board meeting, the president of the Philipines Ferdinand Marcos called for urgency, saying that “every delay means more families without shelter, more livelihood disrupted and worse – more lives lost”.
The post Wealthy nations accused of delaying loss and damage fund with slow payments appeared first on Climate Home News.
Wealthy nations accused of delaying loss and damage fund with slow payments
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.
In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits