Another bleak day at COP25 began with another bleak report. Germanwatch, a thinktank from Bonn, said on Wednesday that between 1999 and 2018, about 5 lakh people died around the world due to 12,000+ extreme weather events. India had the third-most deaths in this period, more than Myanmar and fewer than Russia.
Indeed, in 2018 alone, 2,081 people died in India due to natural events the most in the world. (The toll due to the Kerala floods alone was 483.) Developing countries generally have a higher risk of fatalities in the event of a natural disaster because of their population density, lower quality of public infrastructure and healthcare systems that are unable to deal properly with subsequent epidemics, if any.
In the long term risk index calculated for the period from 1999 to 2018, seven of the top 10 are lower-income or lower-middle-income countries. India is at #17, in this case its large population working in its limited favour (because the number of deaths per lakh people is low).
At the same time, the intensity and increasing unpredictability of weather events hasn’t spared any developed nations either. Germany is one of the most developed countries in the world and the third-most number of people (1,246) died there in 2018 due to natural disasters, in this case dominated by the severe heat-waves in Europe.
Nonetheless, Germanwatch’s findings weren’t at all out of place at COP25, where it’s abundantly clear that the world’s developing countries are facing down the brunt of extreme weather events brought on by anthropogenic global heating, and by being in early stages of development, they have limited ability to deal with such threats.
The representatives of developing countries have come prepared to push their counterparts from developed countries hard at COP25. Sources told The Wire that a group of 49 least-developed countries 33 of which are from Africa have proposed a separate finance mechanism be set up under the WIM. The African states, which make up one of the five principal regional party groups at the UN, back the pitch. Such unity is arguably non-optional because, to no one’s surprise, developed countries are completely against the idea.
Developed countries have more negotiating power at the table because of their economic clout. Mostly developing countries need compensation for losses. Developed countries have been very reluctant to cede too many concessions on this front. With climate finance only becoming more important, COP25 has come pre-built with tension. In the first plenary, for example, just before the opening ceremony, Latin American countries had insisted COP25’s agenda include consultations recognising their particular vulnerability to natural disasters and the extent to which developed countries should assume responsibility for this turn of events.
Carolina Schmidt, the president of COP 25 and Chile’s environment minister, had to turn the Latin America group down but not before agreeing to hold similar informal consultations for the group of African nations. The Latin American countries are understandably miffed. According to sources, they met yesterday with Patricia Espinosa, the executive secretary of the UN FCCC, to object. The Latin American countries are certainly not backing down and you are likely to hear more on this in the coming days, a member of the Latin America group said.
The Wire