Loss, Damage Must Be Strongly Reflected In Katowice Agreement - CARE NGO Policy Lead

Loss, Damage Must Be Strongly Reflected in Katowice Agreement - CARE NGO Policy Lead

The issue of loss and damage should be reflected in the negotiated text of the Katowice Agreement at COP24 to protect countries vulnerable to climate change, Sven Harmeling, global policy lead on climate change and resilience for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) NGO, said during a press conference at COP24 on Friday.

KATOWICE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th December, 2018) The issue of loss and damage should be reflected in the negotiated text of the Katowice Agreement at COP24 to protect countries vulnerable to climate change, Sven Harmeling, global policy lead on climate change and resilience for the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) NGO, said during a press conference at COP24 on Friday.

"A lot of activities are already happening and many developing countries are already investing in adaptation to try to reduce the impact of climate change but we are already seeing that this is not enough and it's not going to be enough. That's where the issue of loss and damage comes in. We need to strengthen the work that is coming out of this conference, we need to strengthen the national system to really tackle loss and damage from climate change impacts because it affects so much the sustainable development of all countries, of vulnerable developing countries, but of all countries on this planet," Harmeling said.

He pointed out that developed countries needed to heed vulnerable countries' calls on the international community to pay more attention to the loss and damage issues.

"We've seen loss and damage being lost from the finance text, and that's quite concerning. We see loss and damage being put into a footnote into the global stock take ... If I look at the overall picture of loss and damage there are definitely different areas where we need to listen to the calls of the vulnerable countries to make this a stronger part of the entire package," Harmeling added.

The 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) kicked off in Poland's Katowice on December 2 and will end later on Friday.