Activists hold a rally on stage at the UN COP25 climate negotiations in Madrid, calling for more aggressive cuts to emissions and more international aid to vulnerable countries. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
In September, Hurricane Dorian rapidly intensified and stalled over the Bahamas, striking at Category 5 strength. The storm, which scientists said was worse because of global warming, killed at least 70 people and caused $3.4 billion in damages.
Dorian was one of the most tragic examples in 2019 of how climate change has a disproportionate impact on poor countries that have contributed so little to the problem. Bahamas is responsible for just 0.02 percent of global emissions, and yet it keeps falling victim to extreme weather, and slower moving threats like sea-level rise.
Along with other island countries like Vanuatu and Tuvalu, the Bahamas is demanding that wealthier countries with a longer record of greenhouse gas emissions stop blocking programs to help defray the costs of climate losses, whether that’s through aid, investment, or direct transfers of money. The argument is simple: Countries such as the United States, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, whose economies benefited greatly from burning fossil fuels, are morally obligated help less developed, more vulnerable countries cope.
This was one of the core issues at the highly fraught United Nations climate talks in Madrid, Spain known as COP25, that wrapped up on Sunday. The negotiations ultimately allocated a paltry amount of money for climate-related losses and left critical questions unresolved on who will pay for damages, according to a coalition of 44 island countries known as the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
It’s a frustrating outcome for a high-stakes issue that affects the very survival of some countries, especially when scientists are warning that the window to limit climate change is rapidly narrowing.
Activists and some delegations said that the solution is simple. Those responsible for the crisis must pay up, said Harjeet Singh, the climate lead for the global activist group ActionAid. This COP has failed the people and the planet.
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