TF Regular Contributor Sanket Jain Among Top 10 Finalists for Oxfam Journalism Award

What left many grumbling at the 26th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP26) held in November in Glasgow was rich countries like the United States and those in the European Union striking down the Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility, a body created to address how to compensate developing countries for climate change-related losses and damages. Wealthy countries have been found to be most responsible for causing the climate crisis and face litigation as well as ensuing liabilities and payouts. 

But the demand to recognize loss and damage remains alive. A good indication being many climate-vulnerable developing countries have referenced loss and damage in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries are required to submit NDCs to detail their national action to address global climate change, including steps to adapt to a changing climate and the form of financial assistance needed to undertake such action. 

Small-Income and Developing Countries Hard Hit

A report published in October, 2021 found one-third of the 250 NDCs that were analyzed explicitly mentioned loss and damage. Most were from small-island developing states and least developed countries in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. The report was supported by the European Research Council’s Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) project. 

“NDCs are political documents and not just technical submissions [under the Paris Agreement],” said Elisa Calliari, a co-author of the report. 

Developed countries tend to focus on mitigation action, like the deployment of renewable energy. But that hasn’t been the case for the majority of the world’s states.

“Developing countries have pushed hard for the inclusion of adaptation in NDCs because, for them, this is more of a priority than mitigation,” Calliari pointed out. “So you can see the politics.”

For people living in an island nation like Sri Lanka, “key loss and damage impacts are felt in food systems and other vulnerable sectors, like the coastal and marine sector and water resources. These impacts have already resulted in migration interlinked with or induced by climate change among vulnerable communities,” said Vositha Wijenayake, executive director of the SLYCAN Trust, a non-profit think tank working in Asia, Africa and Europe. Its work focuses on climate change, biodiversity and ecosystems, sustainable development, and social justice. 

Sri Lanka is classified as a lower-middle income/developing country. Given that it is also an island, its exposure to climate-related risks is high. These two factors make it extremely vulnerable to climate impacts and the ability to withstand them.

So, Wijenayake added, it is important for countries most vulnerable to climate change that loss and damage is a “key component” in addressing climate change processes, both negotiations and climate action. And this is why Sri Lanka was among the first countries to have a separate section allocated to loss and damage commitments included in its first NDCs submitted in September 2016. Building on this, the updated NDC of Sri Lanka submitted last July includes a separate section on loss and damage.

Interestingly, the report says upper-income countries like Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay also have cited loss and damage in their NDCs. 

And outside of NDCs, many developing countries have explicitly stated loss- and damage-related demands. For instance, consider India’s environment ministry laying out ahead of COP26, “There should be a compensation for expenses incurred, and it should be borne by developed nations.”

How to Fund Loss and Damage

A question that usually rears its head with respect to addressing loss and damage is how to “operationalize” it, or what processes and institutions could be set up at the global and national levels to address loss and damage. 

“[One way would be] to look at NDCs for a bottom-up approach to understand how countries themselves are looking at loss and damage,” Calliari said. 

Of the NDCs that explicitly mention loss and damage, around half specify loss- and damage-related responses and initiatives like data gathering, analysis and assessment, and institutional capacities to address loss and damage. For example, Sri Lanka’s NDC has a whole section on loss and damage. It mentions strengthening its weather and climate forecasting systems, plus improving data management to record loss and damage. Meanwhile, Honduras’ NDC puts forth a “gender-responsive agricultural insurance mechanism for loss and damage.”

Wijenayake also stressed “inclusive and participatory processes,” in which the voices of those vulnerable to climate change are taken into account in the national and international policy-making processes. As is “ground-level implementation,” she added. 

And so, country-specific NDCs could potentially be a good starting point to determine how to put mechanisms in place to address loss and damage on a global scale. 

Getting Polluting Countries to Pay

The other gap that exists today is how finance can be mobilized to fund efforts that compensate for climate change-related loss and damage. A recent study by the Stockholm Environment Institute offers potential solutions. 

The researchers propose finance should be provided based on the following:

• Solidarity,
• “polluter pays” principle that is based on “historical responsibility,” and 
• the established notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (or CBDR-RC, for short) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

CBDR-RC means that while climate change is a shared concern, rich countries with a history of emitting carbon—like the United States and those in Europe—have a greater responsibility to take climate action than the poorer countries.  

The “polluter pays” principle has only been used to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for environmental destruction. It implies more strict liabilities than “historical responsibilities,” which outlines broad principles based on past emissions. 

The authors stress a combined approach that deploys the principles of solidarity, polluter pays and historical responsibility, as well as using the framework of CBDR-RC, to finance loss and damage. 

A strictly liability-based approach would be “politically infeasible and communities cannot wait for years to prove the liability,” said Zoha Shawoo, an associate scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute as well as one of the authors of the SEI report. 

The research team also looked at methods of recovery and rehabilitation that communities would need after financing efforts to cover losses and damages. Those efforts can include planning the relocation of communities, assisting with migration and providing affected people with alternative livelihoods. Here, too, NDCs could help with granular details like national-level entities and processes that could assist local communities with issues like displacement and loss of livelihood. 

Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India. She had reported for Toward Freedom from COP26 in Glasgow.

Only after collapsing did Reshma Koli realize she had been working amid heat waves. The temperature had soared to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in April , but the only thing on Reshma’s mind was the monthly repayment of 3,000 Indian rupees ($38 USD) that helped her family meet everyday needs.

A 37-year-old farm worker, it takes her over 120 hours of bending and squatting in the fields to earn that money. An hour’s delay could cost her daily wages and incur interest.

While working in this scorching heat for over two months, all she had was a piece of cotton cloth wrapped around her head. Four fellow women farmworkers rushed to offer lemon juice as she collapsed. Koli then resumed her work in 20 minutes. But this is not a story of resilience.

“Even if we die, no one will notice. Every day, when we leave for work, we consider ourselves lucky if we return alive,” says fellow farmworker Akkatai Khot, 62, who tends to sugarcane saplings at a nursery in the Khutwad village of the western Indian state of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district.

India witnessed the hottest March in 122 years. With temperatures several times crossing 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) in northern India, heat waves amplified the existing fault lines between the few well-off and the ignored, unseen and unheard—women farm workers.

‘If We Take a Break, What Will We Eat?’

Koli, Khot and over 500 women agricultural laborers in Khutwad couldn’t afford to take a minute’s break in the heat waves.

“Ever since the 2021 floods, we barely get work for 15 days a month,” Koli said. “So if we take a break here, what will we eat?”

The number of working days for farmers is declining in India’s flood-affected regions because of the fluctuating regional climatic patterns. For example, what followed after the 2021 floods in Kolhapur district was an extended dry spell, a sudden drop in temperatures, incessant rainfall, and now heat waves.

‘Relocation Should Be Last Solution’

The Maharashtra government has proposed a plan to move people from the flood-affected areas, which scares Koli even more.

“Where will the government relocate us when almost all the villages here are facing the same conditions?” she asked. “At least there’s farmland in this area. What if the relocated place has no source of earning a livelihood?”

For communities that rely on agriculture, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll suggested information on drought and flood-resilient crop varieties should be made accessible.

“Relocating should be the last solution because these events will further intensify in several areas,” he said.

After the floods ravaged Reshma Koli’s house in 2019, she started experiencing a severe headache that persisted for two months. From analgesics to indigenous balms, nothing helped. Then, one afternoon as she felt dizzy, she was diagnosed with extremely high blood pressure and was immediately prescribed medications that she says will continue for a lifetime.

Community healthcare worker Maya Patil explains why chronic illnesses are rising in rural women in flood-affected villages.

“After the floods, almost every family took out a loan, as there was no farm work for three months,” she said. “Now, with the changing climate, farm productivity is falling rapidly, and they aren’t getting enough work to repay. The wages have dwindled, forcing their children to join the workforce, and this adds more stress.”

National Family Health Survey’s latest report confirms her analysis.

It shows a 151 percent rise in hypertension cases amongst rural women in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district alone from 2015 to 2020.

Relying on Medicine to Labor in the Heat

With the onset of monsoon season, Ujjwala Chavan’s stress keeps mounting.

“Earlier, we waited for rain, but now every rainfall scares us,” she said. Chavan and her sister-in-law, Sampada—both in their 40s—collectively took out a loan of 400,000 rupees ($5,150) after the 2021 floods to sustain their joint family of more than 14 people.

Repaying this hefty amount had its impact. Chavan was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and Sampada with hypertension. Moreover, Chavan has taken a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug every alternate day for close to a year now. “If I skip this, I won’t be able to work because of the body pain and weakness,” she said.

The ongoing heat waves have aggravated the existing medical conditions of several flood-affected women. Thirty scientists from the World Weather Attribution Network found climate change has made the current heatwaves in South Asia—especially in India and Pakistan—30 times more likely.

Despite drinking five liters of water daily, Sampada said she still feels thirsty and dizzy.

“I couldn’t understand what was happening,” she said. “There’s no alternative to facing a heat wave when you can’t make ends meet.”

In July, as the floodwater started reaching Khutwad from the nearby Krishna river, 10 farm workers—including Sampada—rushed to save over 800,000 sugarcane saplings.

“Meanwhile, floods washed away everything in our house,” Sampada said.

A split-second delay could have cost their lives as the water gushed speedily.

“In both of the floods, I collectively lost over a million sugarcane saplings, three sugarcane-bud cutting machines, and 50 metric tons of coco peat,” said Amol Mahatme, 34, the owner of the sugarcane nursery.

During the heat waves, too, several saplings couldn’t germinate, further affecting everyone in the farm cycle. Women farmworkers are the most affected, as they remain the least paid and most overworked.

Rising Chronic Illnesses

For the first time, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report mentioned climate change has “adversely impacted” mental health. It warns, “Mental health challenges, including anxiety and stress, are expected to increase under further global warming in all assessed regions, particularly for children, adolescents, elderly, and those with underlying health conditions.”

Dr. Madhuri Panhalkar, the only public doctor for 8,000 people in three villages in the Kolhapur district, has been treating many flood-affected patients. She says, “Even if the patients eat healthy food, that isn’t enough,” she said. “The stress levels are rising rapidly as the climate keeps fluctuating.” So Panhalkar is holding awareness sessions in the flood-affected villages, in an attempt to normalize conversations around mental health.

In 1990, non-communicable diseases (NCD) contributed to 37 percent of deaths in India. That figure almost doubled to 66 percent in 2019. Government figures reveal one in four Indians are at the risk of dying from NCD before the age of 70.

“We need gender-based village-level data on what kind of illnesses are rising rapidly in the region,” Koll said. “Then, based on this data, we can have early warning systems for health, also.”

In 2021, India lost 5.04 million hectares (12.45 million acres) of farm area to floods, cyclones, landslides, cloudbursts and other climate events. India has been experiencing 17 flood events every year since 2000, making it the second-worst flood-affected country in the world after China. This has impacted 345 million Indians, the equivalent of nine Californias.

An agricultural laborer for over two decades, Sampada said she had never experienced such devastation. But, with the rising incidences of heat waves, she has also experienced fading vision in her eyes, pointing to something serious. “If I go to a doctor, I’ll have to take a day off, which I can’t afford.” Women in sugarcane nurseries of the Kolhapur region are paid around $2 to $4 for 10 to 12 hours of work daily.

While medications have kept her going, she has been worried about overusing them and being unable to seek proper treatment in time. Her resort, though, can be fatalistic.

“It’s a dilemma, with suffering as the only answer,” she said, lifting over 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of soil on her head.

Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.