COP27: What is ‘loss and damage,’ the climate summit’s key issue

CNN
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Aftab Khan felt helpless when torrential floodwaters submerged a third of Pakistan, his home country.

Khan’s hometown was completely underwater. His friend rescued a woman who had walked barefoot, carrying her sick child, through stagnant floodwaters for 15 miles. And Khan’s own mother, who now lives with him in Islamabad, was unable to travel home on washed-out roads to check if her daughter was safe.

“These are heart-wrenching stories, real stories,” Khan, an international climate change consultant, told CNN. “I was heartbroken.”

Pakistan became the clearest example this year of why some countries are fighting for a so-called “loss and damage” fund. The concept is that countries which have contributed the most to climate change with their planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries to recover from the resulting disasters.

Earlier this year, Pakistan cooked under a deadly heat wave that climate change made 30 times more likely, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Now it is reeling from the aftermath of the worst floods in living memory.

The South Asian country is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s planet-warming emissions, but it is paying a heavy price. And there are many other countries like it around the world.

Loss and damage will be center stage at…