Developing deadlock – Will the promised Loss and Damage climate finance funds materialise?

As the 30th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP30) gets underway in Bélem, Brazil, this week, the negotiations concerning Loss and Damage (L&D) stand out as an area to watch for the South African delegation. L&D refers to the unavoidable and irreversible negative impacts of climate change that remain after all possible efforts have been made to mitigate and adapt.

The global climate negotiation process has already published a clear, quantitative target for survival: the mobilisation of $1.3-trillion annually for climate action in developing countries by 2035, starting with $300-billion annually from 2025 (the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) - the largest UN financing goal in history.

This goal was established during COP29 last year, as the “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3T”. The long-awaited report on this Roadmap was finally published last week, containing short-term targets, medium-term targets and long-term targets to achieve the 1.3T climate financing goal. 

However, translating this massive financial expectation into actual, equitable outcomes requires confronting the political and structural deadlocks already witnessed on the negotiation floor - especially since it’s not legally binding and not an official item on the agenda at COP30.

The tension lies in bridging the grand architectural designs of the Roadmap with the urgent, specific needs articulated by vulnerable nations, particularly concerning L&D.

South Africa’s chief negotiator, Maesela Kekana – the deputy director-general of climate change and air quality management at the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) – said that when the report was published, it would be important to then have discussion space for it at the COP.

Now, while the report has been published, there is no specific space allocated for its discussion and negotiation on the agenda during the COP this year. But developing nations, including South Africa, will be pushing for discussion space on the Baku-Belém Roadmap to $1.3T.

At this stage, it is viewed as a political matter to be discussed by heads of delegations and ministers – and could be a cover decision.

“We have our take on the Roadmap, how it should look, and how it should lead to immediate implementation of certain things, and then certain things that can be medium-term and all sorts of things. There’s various views and in actual fact, you don't know what the other side [developed nations] are thinking about the Roadmap.

We might be sitting here thinking that this is something that will assist us when it comes to practical implementation, and the other side could just be thinking, oh no this is just a tick box exercise. So you really don’t know, Kekana told Daily Maverick.

Formalising Loss and Damage

A central focus for developing countries, and for negotiators like Kekana, is securing finance for averting, minimising and addressing the impacts of climate change that adaptation alone cannot cover: L&D. 

This COP is deemed important because one of the goals is to formalise L&D as the third pillar of climate action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), sitting alongside the existing pillars of adaptation and mitigation.

The framework for addressing L&D is now institutionally sound, putting the world in a good position to begin dispersing technical assistance and financial support. This framework is built upon three main institutions.

While the institutional structures are largely in place, the struggle now involves two components: materialising financial pledges and ensuring countries can access the funds without undue bureaucracy.

While the Roadmap recognises that finance for adaptation and addressing L&D is a critical priority for developing countries facing growing climate risks, an anonymous L&D expert from South Africa said that initial drafts lacked sufficient commitment. 

They said that the current COP is essential for putting “a stamp on L&D” because the Roadmap process is ongoing for climate finance. Therefore, many negotiators are pushing for an explicit connection of L&D in the Roadmap. 

Climate Home News reported that despite pledging $768-million to the L&D fund, only $495-million has been signed for governments in contributions, and only $321-million actually been paid.

Kekana confirmed to Daily Maverick that there was a difficulty in converting the initial pledges made into actual funding, with much still outstanding in terms of finance.

The recently published report addresses L&D in the context of scaling up finance to meet the goals of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) - which looks to close the gaps in climate finance by providing a more realistic and ambitious financial framework, this was a commitment in at COP29 with developed nations committing to deliver at least $300-billion annually for developing countries’ climate action by 2035. 

Read more: SA’s chief climate negotiator on Belém — South Africa demands action, not debt, at decisive COP30

A global blueprint for $1.3T?

To transition to more decisive action, the Roadmap outlines five coherent action fronts, known as the 5Rs: 

1. Replenishing - Grants, concessional finance and low-cost capital
2. Rebalancing - Fiscal space and debt sustainability
3. Rechanneling - Transformative private finance and affordable cost of capital
4. Revamping -Capacity and coordination for scaled climate portfolios
5. Reshaping - Systems and structures for equitable capital flows

These fronts are predicated on the fact that “scaling up climate finance has become a matter of necessity, not merely an enabler of ambition, as responding to climate change demands urgency, not incrementalism”, according to the report.

Kgaugelo Mkumbeni, Climate Risk and Human Security research officer at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, warns that if the Roadmap fails to achieve its goal, we’re going to have bigger challenges with adapting to intensified climate risks, much more than we've already seen.

“Failure to implement a strong Roadmap is a risk to human security. When we talk about this Roadmap, these human security risks are going to be much more intensified. Vulnerable countries will really struggle to effectively adapt. We’re going to be seeing much more frequent weather events. That is inevitable… It will not stop at the weather. It will lead to worsening food insecurity, displacement, destruction of infrastructure, and worsened immortality. And this is even worse for countries that are already insecure,” said Mkumbeni.

The other thing, Mkumbeni said, was that the Roadmap was supposed to provide direction and capacitate countries with funding, so if this is not achieved, we're going to be seeing more rising debt and economic instability.

“When countries spend more on the climate crisis, particularly developing countries, it’s usually in the form of loans, and that triggers spillover effects globally on climate action,” said Mkumbeni.

There’s been a lot of criticism on the Baku to Belém Roadmap, and Mkumbeni — among others — believes it doesn’t have a strategic direction on how to achieve its target and raise this $1.3-trillion by 2035.

“The reason why I’m saying it doesn't have a strategic direction is that, yes, it sketches an idea of what we need to do instead of showing how. It is not practical enough and lacks operational clarity. And when you have a Roadmap that doesn’t do that … it would then undermine the goal that we're trying to achieve…” Mkumbeni said.

Read more: UN report reveals urgent need for climate adaptation funding in developing nations

The political deadlock in climate finance

The success of the Roadmap hinges not only on new mechanisms but also on fulfilling existing obligations — a point of tension in the current negotiations. 

The anonymous loss and damage expert from South Africa said the core friction in the finance discussions at the moment was the battle of materialising the pledges that have been made and to scale up that support. 

This mobilisation challenge is illustrated by the reluctance of developed countries to fully embrace Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, which puts a legal obligation on developed countries to support developing countries with their needs when it comes to mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and more, according to the anonymous loss and damage expert from South Africa.

Instead, developed nations tend to emphasise Articles 9.2 and 9.3, which encourage contributions from large developing economies (such as China and Saudi Arabia, which are currently categorised under the Paris Agreement as needing to receive finance) and focus on mobilising private finance. 

Is it possible to secure $1.3T?

Achieving the financial goal in the Roadmap is essential to making the Paris Agreement work faster. But Mkumbeni said that setting ambitious goals like this would be meaningless without a concrete plan detailing stakeholder action and ensuring procedural transparency. 

The current lack of a clear, enforceable action plan creates a deadlock, weakening the capacity of vulnerable nations, like those in Africa, to implement resilient climate strategies and eroding confidence in climate finance. 

To move beyond simply being a policy on paper, Mkumbeni said this Roadmap must be procedurally integrated into the COP agenda with strong mechanisms for accountability, equity and inclusion. 

The overall call from experts is for a decisive shift from planning to doing, with the immediate provision of both the mechanisms and the funding required for genuine implementation.

When we have discussions in these multilateral and intergovernmental processes, it has to be intentional in achieving real impact. It has to ensure that we’re moving away from the talking and we’re doing. Because communities that are experiencing these impacts and these climate risks don’t have time anymore. We are in a world where islands are literally sinking.

“There isn’t time. We can’t keep wasting time talking. This is the time to implement. This is the time to place real strategic impact for communities and developing countries,” Mkumbeni told Daily Maverick. DM

Kristin Engel is a freelance environmental journalist and a Danida Fellow participating in the Danida Fellowship Centre’s 2025 learning programme, ‘Reporting from the front line of the global climate crisis in an era of fake news’. The Danida Fellowship Centre is a public self-governing institution under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.