Loss and damage fund approved at COP 28 summit (GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- On the opening day of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, a loss and damage fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the impact of climate change has been officially launched.
- The initial funding is estimated to be $475 million; host UAE pledged $100 million, the European Union promised $275 million, $17.5 million from the US, and $10 million from Japan.
Background:
- The loss and damage fund was first announced during COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022.
- However, it was not until a few weeks before COP 28 that rich and poor countries managed to iron out some of their differences and agree on key points of the fund.
What is the loss and damage fund?
- The loss and damage fund is a global financial package to ensure the rescue and rehabilitation of countries facing the cascading effects of climate change.
- The term refers to the compensation that rich nations, whose industrial growth has resulted in global warming and driven the planet into a climate crisis, must pay to poor nations, whose carbon footprint is low but are facing the brunt of rising sea levels, floods, crippling droughts, and intense cyclones, among others.
- The changing climate has impacted lives, livelihoods, biodiversity, cultural traditions, and identities.
Loss and damage is often categorised as either economic or non-economic:
- Economic loss and damage are negative impacts that we can assign a monetary value to. These are things such as the costs of rebuilding infrastructure that has been damaged due to a flood, or the loss of revenue from agricultural crops that were destroyed due to drought.
- Non-economic loss and damage are negative impacts where it is difficult or infeasible to assign a monetary value. These are things such as trauma from experiencing a tropical cyclone, loss of community due to displacement of people, or loss of biodiversity.
How much damage has been caused by industrialisation?
- The Industrial Era started in 1850, disrupting Earth’s natural mechanism for the production and absorption of greenhouse gases.
- Today, the US, the UK and the EU are considered to be responsible for 50% of all emissions. Bring Russia, Canada, Japan, and Australia into the picture and it jumps to 65%, i.e. two-thirds of all emissions.
- Compared to them, India is responsible for only 3% of historical emissions. Meanwhile China, the world’s biggest emitter in the last 15 years, is responsible for 30% of global emissions every year.
- Greenhouse gases comprise methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour, and carbon dioxide (CO2) — with CO2 responsible for most of the global heating.
- Carbon particles are being released in extremely large quantities and they have the ability to linger in Earth’s atmosphere seemingly endlessly, at least for a millennium or more, and warm it.
How much loss and damage is the world facing?
- Research shows that 55 vulnerable countries have suffered $ 525 billion combined climate crisis-fuelled losses in the last 20 years. The number is estimated to reach $ 580 billion per year by 2030.
- Global warming has changed the way the world lives, with vulnerable communities being the worst affected.
- According to the IPCC, losses and damages will increase in future as global warming continues to rise. It will be unequally distributed and impact developing nations the most and, in them, the socially and financially weaker sections.
How the fund will operate?
- The World Bank will oversee the loss and damage fund in the beginning, with the source of funds being rich nations, such as the US, the UK and the EU, as well as some developing countries.
- The scale or the replenishment cycle of the fund remains unclear, but the need of the hour is several trillion dollars.
- Previously, the developing nations were not keen to have the World Bank manage the fund as they saw this as a means by which richer nations could have more control over the finances. They have accepted this term now.
India recorded most malaria cases in South & Southeast Asia in 2022, WHO
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Why in news?
- According to World Malaria Report 2023, India accounted for 66 per cent of the 5.2 million malaria cases recorded in 2022, the highest for any country in the South East Asia region of the World Health Organization (WHO).
- This is even as cases reduced by at least 55 per cent in India since 2015, where the disease is endemic.
- Climate change can directly interact with the sensitivity of the malaria pathogen and the vector (female Anopheles mosquito) to temperature, rainfall and humidity, and make it easier for the contagion to spread and infect.
Global scenario:
- A total of 249 million cases were recorded in 2022. This was five million more than the previous year and significantly more than 2019, which is considered a benchmark year.
- Pakistan recorded the largest rise in cases in 2022 compared to 2021, with 2.1 million additional malaria infections. It was followed by Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda and Papua New Guinea.
- India, along with Indonesia, also accounted for 94 per cent of all the deaths that occurred due to malaria in 2022.
- The South East Asian region, overall, accounted for only 2 per cent of the global malaria burden and managed to contain the disease in the last two decades, the authors of the report observed. Since 2000, total malaria cases as well as deaths in the region dropped by 77 per cent from 22.8 million and 35,000 respectively, they added.
- Apart from India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nepal, Thailand and Timor-Leste also managed to reduce their malaria incidence by 55 per cent or more since 2015.
- Of them, Bhutan (for the first time), Timor-Leste (for the second time) and Sri Lanka reported zero malaria cases in 2022. Nepal, for the first time, didn’t record a single indigenous malaria death.
- The trend was reversed in Myanmar, however, where cases increased seven times from 2019-2022, from 78,000 to 584,000 “fueled by political and social instability.
- Africa was the worst-hit, with 94 per cent of all malaria cases (233 million cases) and 95 per cent global malaria deaths (580,000 deaths) in 2022. About 78 per cent of all malaria deaths in the Region were among children under the age of five.
Climate change major health threat:
- It poses a direct health hazard and also acts as a 'threat multiplier' by impairing healthcase systems and creating financial strains.
- In the case of malaria specifically, meteorological anomalies wrought by climate change can aid disease transmisssion and exacerbate the global crisis both in the short-term and the long.
- For instance, the ideal mosquito breeding and survival occurs at temperatures ranging from 20-27 degrees Celsius, with mortality increasing above 28°C. Conversely, a slight warming in cooler, malaria-free zones could lead to new malaria cases.
Natural disasters:
- Floods, cyclones and other extreme weather events that have been made more intense and frequent by the planetary crisis also lead to outbreak of infectious diseases such as malaria.
- Natural disasters destroy health infrastructure and can cause a breakdown of the supply chain of critical medication, vaccines as well as mosquito nets.
- They also displace people in large numbers. This not only gives rise to socio-economic challenges but also can expose new population groups to the infection by forcing them to move into endemic areas from places where malaria wasn't prevalent.
Containment goals:
- In the path to malaria eradication, WHO had identified graded targets of reducing case incidence and mortality rates by 75 per cent in 2025 and 90 per cent in 2030.
- The world is 55 per cent off track to reach its 2025 target of reducing malaria case incidence and 53 per cent off track to achieving the 2025 target of reducing malaria fatality rate.
- Without drastic measures, these gaps will widen for the ultimate 2030 goals. Despite this, the funding gap for malaria control grew from $2.3 billion in 2018 to $3.7 billion in 2022.
- Funding for research and development saw its steepest fall ever, to $603 million. This is the lowest in 15 years.
Way Forward:
- The WHO called for sustainable and resilient malaria responses that align with efforts to reduce the effects of climate change.
