THE final round of this year’s United Nations (UN) climate talks, COP27, were held this past week, and while world leaders and their negotiators battled over much-needed funds to help small, developing states recover from the climate crisis, I couldn’t help but think about the grim outlook for us in the Caribbean.

I pen this column days before the end of this year’s talks. Right now, it is still unclear whether the richer, developed nations of the world and the international financial institutions (like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) will agree to new financial deals in the interest of protecting smaller countries and their people. The hesitancy those countries and bodies had all these years is seemingly enduring.

And it is worrisome.

Days before this year’s conference got underway, I was part of a community hangout on climate change. There, journalists who are interested/experienced in climate change reporting discussed the upcoming conference, and listened to stakeholders explain some of the expected outcomes and shortcomings of COP27.

As Caribbean journalists, the “loss and damage” conversation was an important consideration for us. Our leaders have been among those from the Global South advocating for loss and damage funding, simply because we are battered yearly by the increasingly harsh effects of the ongoing climate crisis.

For context, loss and damage funding is a concept that underscores that poorer, developing countries affected by climate disasters (think the recent horrific flooding in Pakistan and similar events that frequent Guyana and the wider Caribbean) should receive funds from the larger, developed countries whose gas emissions have contributed to the climate crisis in the first place.

A draft text from COP27, reported on last week, indicated that countries were considering this fund, but were still hesitant to commit. This is certainly unsurprising. Funding and financial arrangements agreed to at previous climate talks did not materialise fast enough, if they did materialise at all.

But this time, there is a growing sense of despair. Unless those smaller, poorer, developing countries get the funds to rebuild from the disasters that battered them and strengthen their defences against the effects of the climate crisis (again, for illustrative purposes, a massive flood or rising sea levels), their very existence is threatened. This isn’t some unimaginable, dystopian reality. Simulations from international climate change reports indicate that Georgetown, Guyana, could be among nine cities underwater by 2030, unless the climate crisis is slowed. Yes, 2030 is literally about seven years away. Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley warned of a billion refugees by 2050, unless governments act now to solve the climate crisis.

Yet, this funding, viewed as the most crucial part of solving the crisis, remains a contentious issue. It’s not that countries don’t believe that with adequate funds, countries can diversify their economies, or transition from harmful fossil fuel use to more natural sources like wind, solar, and hydropower. It’s not even that richer countries don’t believe that they have unfairly benefitted at the expense of the very existence of smaller states.

Rich countries, like the United States for example, believed that agreeing to lose and damage funding could open up countries to legal liability. Essentially, if the richer countries agree that they have been contributing significantly to the climate crisis (which they are) and they voluntarily provide financing to mitigate the effects of the crisis on developing nations (which they are hesitant to do), then, what’s stopping them from being legally compelled to do more? It’s similar to the refusal of European nations to apologise for enslavement, instead issuing statements of regret. Funny how diplomacy and those things work.

Fortunately or unfortunately, an experienced Caribbean climate negotiator advised the group of journalists against hoping for sweeping changes. Multilateralism, he said, just doesn’t work that way.

After internalising it, I realised that I did know this. Expecting widespread social change, like complete agreement with the need for loss and damage funding and immediate monetary contributions from developed countries was not realistic. Sure, agreeing to these things seems almost painfully logical to me, yet the major players remain seemingly unsympathetic to the plights of possibly millions, if not billions of people.

So, I participated in that engagement, and followed COP27 religiously, hoping our world leaders would ‘ketch some sense’. Until now, we await the finer details of their agreements, and we march towards COP28, wondering how much time we have left before the crisis obliterates Guyana’s coastal plain, or sinks small islands in the Caribbean.

If you would like to connect with me to discuss COVID-19, this column, or any of my previous works, feel free to email me at vish14ragobeer@gmail.com