This is part of a series of blog posts from the UN Climate Summit (COP 25) here in Madrid, Spain. Today is my third day of the conference which I got the privilege to talk to Mr.Vicente Yu, Coordinator for G77 and China for the Warsaw Mechanism for Loss and Damage. He graciously shared his views on the issue and the main elements of the negotiation.
Question: Mr. Vicente, thank you so much for your willingness to share your experience on issues related to climate change loss and damage in the international negotiation agenda.
Can we start by introducing yourself to our readers?
Answer: Well, I am, Vicente Yu. I am here at COP 25 representing the delegation of Palestine and coordinating the G 77 and China group which is the biggest group in this process. We are here to see if we can get together common positions on loss and damage so that we get something from this process for developing countries. I’m a lawyer by background. And I’ve been involved in this process since 2007. Long-time helping developing countries mostly.
Question: Can you give us some background about the loss and damage initiative within the UN Climate Negotiations?
Answer: Loss and damage have been a long-standing issue which many developing countries have been pushing? For almost 20 years now. And there have been work programs in the past in the UN Triple C on loss and damage. And then finally, we have Article 8 in the Paris agreement, which talks about loss and damage.
So at this session, what we are looking for, I think as G77 is to make sure that the mechanism that was set up by parties back in 2013, called the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (WIM) will be an effective mechanism that will help channel resources to developing countries in order to help developing countries increase their ability to address the losses and the damages that they will get out of climate change from extreme weather events, slow onset events, non-economic losses, population displacement and those kinds of other things. So, that’s the whole objective that we have here.
We do not want the Warsaw mechanism to be simply to be just a talk shop among experts. We want it to be a mechanism really that the international community can use to help developing countries address when loss and damage to have money, technology, and the skills and infrastructure and other things that we need as developing countries, so that when these kinds of climate events hit us the loss and damage that we experience will either be avoided or be recovered or will be reduced.
Question: So, what are the elements of the negotiations undergoing in this mechanism and what you hope to achieve?
Answer: Here at COP you have these two big views, I guess, you know, mainly developed countries have the perspective that the current mechanism is sufficient enough whereas developing countries think that it is not enough that more needs to be done, especially on supporting action and support in relation to loss and damage in developing countries. So, that seems to be like the big dividing line in terms of positions. I’m positive that with the spirit here, at least within the group of G77 and China that we all recognize this to be a very important issue for all of us developing countries that we will be in a strong position to actually push this here at the COP 25.
Question: What are the main challenges you are facing right now in terms of coming to a common ground?
Answer: The main challenges we face definitely will be getting our developed country partners to understand what is it that we want? Why do we want it? And how do we get to the point where we find the Warsaw mechanism to be useful for us and effective for us? I think this is a big challenge. And I think the reason why it’s such a challenge is because developing and developed countries are from two different perspectives, we suffer loss and damage, many of us are not able to react to those whereas, developed countries when they do suffer loss when they do suffer from this loss and damage they can they have the money and technology to respond.
Yared: Well, I have finished my question. Thank you so much for your time.
Vicente: Thank you so much, guys.
By Yared Hurisa, Rotary Peace Fellow
MIDP, Sanford Public Policy School, Duke University
Dear Yared thank you in advance. It’s interesting even though it’s an ongoing processes and hoping it finally brings good results for the si called Developing countries as a whole. Thanks again