{"id":126516,"date":"2021-04-18T15:37:04","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T15:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=187715"},"modified":"2021-04-18T15:37:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-18T15:37:04","slug":"youth-demand-us-action-on-climate-induced-loss-and-damage-in-global-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/18\/youth-demand-us-action-on-climate-induced-loss-and-damage-in-global-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth Demand US Action on Climate-Induced Loss and Damage in Global South"},"content":{"rendered":"
With a day of action and an open letter<\/a> to the White House and congressional leaders, youth campaigners on Sunday urged the U.S. government to take steps to address “loss and damage,” or severe climate impacts, in developing countries.<\/p>\n The efforts were coordinated by members of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition<\/a> (LDYC), a new international alliance of young people.<\/p>\n “The current extent of climate change impacts result from the past climate injustice that the world designed,” said<\/a> LDYC co-founder and co-director Ineza Umuhoza Grace of Rwanda. “We are a generation that doesn’t want only to blame; we want to influence concrete change on the political, community, and society level.”<\/p>\n Fellow co-founder and co-director Sadie DeCoste, of Canada and the U.K., explained that the coalition is asking the U.S. government to break from its historical pattern of blocking action and finance on loss and damage, and instead provide support for developing countries and communities already experiencing it.<\/p>\n The coalition’s letter has been signed by at least 45 other groups and 91 individuals.<\/p>\n “The climate crisis is already causing severe impacts, leading to the loss of lives and livelihoods, and damage to homes, schools, roads, and hospitals,” the letter says. “This loss and damage is occurring around the world, but disproportionately affects those who did the least to cause it\u2014vulnerable people, communities, and countries in the Global South.”<\/p>\n “In 2020, we saw some of the most severe climate impacts on record,” the letter notes, highlighting destructive tropical cyclones, severe wildfires, flooding, and extreme weather events. “Researchers have warned that storms, floods, and other extreme weather events will continue hitting the planet more frequently.”<\/p>\n The letter argues that “in the face of these issues, we need to protect people’s rights to live in a safe climate, to meet their basic needs, and to migrate freely and safely when they want or need to,” then calls out governments across the globe for “ignoring the scale of the problem.”<\/p>\n Loss and damage has its own article in the 2015 Paris agreement and its own mechanism in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but it “still does not have its own dedicated stream of climate finance,” the letter explains. “Developed countries, who fueled the climate crisis through decades of willful negligence and inaction, have done very little to help the billions of people in developing countries who suffer the effects of loss and damage.”<\/p>\n