At a United Nations climate conference Wednesday in Germany, the call was renewed for a host of taxes on the U.S. and European nations designed to transfer wealth to economies confronting “the cost of drought, floods and superstorms made worse by rising temperatures,” according to the BBC.
Developing country participants argue that the climate change they are experiencing is more severe than on the richer nations and has been caused by historic carbon emissions that originated in those nations. They say Europe and the U.S. have a responsibility now to make significant funding transfers to pay for these losses and damages. The amount demanded would top $300 billion annually by 2030.
“We are already living with loss and damages for the last 25 years,” said Adriana Vasquez Rodriquez from the Association La Ruta del Clima, a Costa Rican environmental group. “We have families who have lost their houses, their crops, their lives, and no-one is paying for that, we are running out of resources, and at the same time, we are depending on debt.”
“Vulnerable nations are being betrayed by rich countries. The E.U., U.S., others have been blocking progress on loss and damage finance,” tweeted Tasneem Essop from CAN International.“We are extremely disappointed at what’s happening at the negotiations at Bonn.”
This is not the first time a demand for reparations from successful economies has been made or for special concessions to be granted to “climate refugees.” Green groups at the United Nations COP25 climate change conference in Madrid back in 2019 heard the same plea. Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is one who has previously implied the West owes a “historical debt” to countries in the Global South