Climate Reparations - What Is Owed?

Special guests Dr. Jeffrey Sachs and Dr. Lisa Dale of Columbia University are joined by Paul Beckwith and Regina Valdez at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to discuss the topic of climate reparations.

The world’s industrialized countries gained their wealth through the burning of fossil fuels, which has heated the world to 1.2°C above pre industrial levels, letting loose a tsunami of climate impacts. These impacts are felt by those nations that have contributed the least to warming the planet. Wealthy countries committed to financially assisting the nations they have put in danger have failed to meet their commitments they promised just last year in Glasgow.

A report from the UN Environment Program estimates countries in the global north need to give 10 times more than prior commitments, 200 billion a year, and by 2030, 300 billion a year. Absent this, countries in the global south will face untold suffering in the form of continued climate catastrophes, climate migration, starvation, and death.

With the world set to warm 2 to 3°C in the next 80 years, we aimed to discuss climate, reparations, what is owed, and to whom?

This video was recorded on November 10th, 2022 and published on November 27th, 2022, and represents the opinions of the discussion participants.

Links:
- Farmers' Suicides in India

- Loss and Damage: What Is It, and Will There Be Progress at COP27?

- A Guide to Climate Reparations

- 5 Things to Know about Climate Reparations

- Pakistan: Flood Damages and Economic Losses Over USD 30 billion and Reconstruction Needs Over USD 16 billion - New Assessment

Special Guests:
Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs - University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Chair of the Lancet COVID19 Commission, Co-Chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, and Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Honorary Distinguished Professor at Sunway University. He has been Special Advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary General António Guterres. His most recent book is The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020).

Dr. Lisa Dale - Co-Director of the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development. With a background in political science, her courses include: Environmental Policy & Governance; Challenges of Sustainable Development; Public Lands in the American West; Climate Change: Adaptation and Resilience; Science Communications; and Qualitative Research Methods for Sustainable Development. Her research on environmental policy focuses on climate change adaptation in two distinct landscapes: rural agricultural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and federally managed public lands across the American West.
.
Regular Panelists:
Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa in the Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University

Regina Valdez - Program Director, Climate Reality Project, NYC. GreenFaith Fellow and LEED Green Associate

Video Production:
Charles Gregoire - Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth & the Climate Emergency Forum; Climate Reality Leader

Heidi Brault - Video production and website assistant, Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP27 team lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum; BA (Psychology); Climate Reality Leader

Acknowledgement
We'd like to acknowledge these two organization without which our attendance at COP27 would not have been possible.
- Sustainable Population Australia (SPA)
- The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE)

Our Website:

Attributions:
Background Music:
- Title: Through the City II
- Author: Crowander
- Source: Free Music Archive
- License: CC BY-NC 4.0

[pauleaton]

Why isn't everyone watching this channel? All quite sobering. Well done guys.

[davidgunnar]

Thank you. How we talk about climate change is so important. All of us are members of multitudes of communities. Ideas such as as "loss and damage" are interpreted with those communities' own epistemologies, their own ways of knowing. As Regina explains, the terminology is purposive, it enables certain agendas to invade critical agendas - which seek to limit or restrain - or otherwise.

[rajendratayya]

Systematic is curing - Sensitive is prevention.

[terencefield]

India has a massive military, vast expenditure on its ruling class, a space program, and gold reserves of scale. A population that has grown fro 400 millions when I was a boy to 1.45 BILLION now, itself a disgrace. Obscene to suggest that the west should pay a cent to them, and ridiculous to assume the effects of climate change will not reverse the population size to a capacity of the land, its climate to come and its agriculture to sustain, whilst giving the rest of life on the subcontinent a small chance of survival.