The Board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) had a tall task for its fourth meeting (B.4) in the Philippines. It took place after COP29 not only yielded a new global finance goal that is at least a trillion dollars short on public finance but also failed to have a target on financing actions to address loss and damage (L&D).

In a year marked by more record-breaking temperatures and extreme weather events, the pressure is on the Board to set its workplan on operationalization with both urgency and diligence. It also had to determine how to directly involve the stakeholders whose needs it was created to respond to in the first place: the most vulnerable countries and communities.

And similar to the outcomes of many other climate conferences in recent years, B.4 resulted in a mixed bag of decisions indicating both meaningful progress and a lack of it.

The observations

There is now a concrete plan for the Board’s strategy, starting with its “Phase One” or setting up of its operationalization during the first six months of 2025. The FRLD will prioritize developing inclusive, country-led processes for assessing their needs related to L&D, with technical and financial support. It would also assess options for rapid disbursements to countries hit by climate-induced extreme weather events, with an example being the Philippines that was recently hit by six storms in just four weeks.

Other aspects of its operationalization were also decided during this meeting. Among these are on additional rules of procedure for the Board, an allotted budget for the current interim secretariat, and details on transitioning to the independent secretariat. 

Another key action under “Phase One” is the preparation of a long-term resource mobilization plan, which would include “supporting converting current and future pledges into contributions to the Fund”. Such language was the result of a critical discussion among Board members, with implications for “Phase Two” or the second half of 2025 that would focus on scaling up operations and other actions.

Another key issue was the plan for conducting the Annual High-Level Dialogue on complementarity and coherence. Launched at COP29, this session taking place next April is critical to ensuring the stronger integration of L&D-related financing into other funding entities and opening more opportunities for developing countries to avoid worsening climate change impacts.

This dialogue does not discount the importance of having more contributions under the FRLD itself. No matter how comprehensive the workplan is, it will only be as effective as the actual money it has. At the moment, most of the nearly USD750 million pledges remain mere promises instead of funding that can already be disbursed to support vulnerable countries and communities. 

The issue of resource allocation was also a subject of the meeting. Concerns over a direct-access window for indigenous peoples and minimum allotted funds for the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States were repeatedly brought up. To address these, a proposal for an allocation framework will be produced during “Phase One”.

The observers

The civil society and community representatives present at B.4 made a notable impact in the decisions made by the Board. For example, they succeeded in preventing the rushed adoption of proposed policies on Active Observers and consultative forums.

Such decisions that concern the direct participation of the most vulnerable stakeholders in this process must only be made with their inputs. Deferring the decision-making to B.5 in April will give sectors more time to conduct more comprehensive consultations to determine their insights on the proposed policies.

During B.4, Active Observers also conducted a workshop with the Board to inform them about their principles and examples on community access to climate financing. It is a session that was welcomed by many of its members and an example of how non-government stakeholders can engage in its decision-making process going forward.

However, concerns arose from the Board’s decision on a “blanket” accreditation approach, which would allow observer organizations under other financing mechanisms, including those under the UNFCCC, to become accredited by the FRLD. It will take effect at the end of B.5 and is intended as an interim arrangement of no more than three years.

While intended to help speed up the work of FRLD, this also raises the issue on how to reach out to community-based organizations, which often lack legal status yet are among those that it is supposed to prioritize. With grants-based disbursement likely to be the priority during the next year, there seems to be a mismatch between initial access modalities and who gets to actually benefit from them.

It is also clear that Board members have a lot of work to do to understand the perspective of non-government stakeholders. They need to understand that the private sector is not part of civil society. They also need to understand that scale is not the only measurement of the magnitude of impact, especially regarding the potential direct access modality. 

The next one

In some ways, B.4 may be regarded as the first major stop on the road to COP30 in Belem. While not intended to be a platform for negotiations, the Board members directly or indirectly tackled some lingering issues from the Baku climate summit, especially on the matter of providing and mobilizing L&D financing and turning pledges into actual funding.

Credit has to be given to the new Executive Director, Ibrahima Diong, and his team for spearheading the formulation of the FRLD’s workplan in a short period of time. That said, the challenge remains to make this momentum sustainable, not just in substance but also in procedures. From timely communication to Active Observers to coordination within its own structure, the FRLD has a lot of work to do.

As understandable and pragmatic as it is, the bottomline is that it is simply not enough for the FRLD to make do with what it has. For the sake of the most vulnerable, we need more from them and the developed countries.