Rev. John L. McCullough
Photo: T.Abraham/CWS |
From the Executive Director's Desk...
A Matter of Just Compensation
April 16, 2008
By Rev. John L. McCullough, Executive Director and CEO, Church World
Service
Developing nations, and particularly people with limited means within them, are beginning to experience the harmful effects of climate change. As Congress begins to formulate much-needed climate change legislation, our legislators must ensure that it contains strong financial provisions to assist developing countries with adapting to the various challenges they now face.
Biblical reflection
“When someone causes a field or vineyard to be grazed over, or lets livestock loose to graze in someone else’s field, restitution shall be made from the best in the owner’s field or vineyard. When fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that the stacked grain or the standing grain or the field is consumed, the one who started the fire shall make full restitution.” -- Exodus 22:5-6
Scripture makes it clear that harm to another’s property and livelihood requires just compensation. We do well to keep this in mind as we consider the responsibility of the United States to provide adaptation funding.
The need for adaptation funding
According to a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report, people living in developing countries are now 20 times more likely to be affected by climate-change related weather disasters than people living in industrialized nations.
Adaptation refers to steps people and countries are taking and will have to take to live with various permanent changes in weather and environmental conditions, and their associated economic, social, and cultural consequences. These steps will cover a wide range of efforts that address far more than just disaster-related measures and will depend on the particularities of each situation. The UNDP estimates that adaptation funding for developing countries will cost about $86 billion annually.
Some forms of adaptation may be incremental and modest, and fairly easily undertaken by households and communities experienced in being flexible to the vicissitudes of life. An example of this could be people raising up their homes on higher foundations or water-proofing communal food storage facilities in a flood-prone area.
Many forms of adaptation will require collective planning and implementation and more foresight and money because they call for a sizeable, structural response. Some, like the permanent relocation of entire peoples and nations as a result of rising sea levels may involve very painful and difficult decisions. Already the government of Tuvalu in the South Pacific has negotiated a phased relocation of its population to New Zealand. No amount of adaptation funding can adequately compensate for such a loss.
Our Ethical Frame
Given the fact that many of the most effected and vulnerable countries are those which have contributed the least to the problem, and given the fact that the United States has disproportionately produced the greenhouse gases causing climate change, our ethical response clearly needs to be one of justice when it comes to supporting adaptation.
Providing funds to help countries plan for and adapt to such things as changes in sea levels, harsher and more frequent weather-related disasters, water shortages, and food supply problems should be viewed as compensation for damages incurred, not an optional response that depends on how the donor government feels during any particular funding cycle.
The current international debate about contributions towards adaptation funds proposes that countries contribute funds in proportion to their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. For the United States and carbon dioxide, this figure is about 25-27% -- meaning that about one-quarter of global adaptation funds needed would come from the U.S. – at least in some initial period.
The legislative challenge
Legislators tend to view adaptation funding as another form of foreign aid. They see it as another form of charity -- perhaps as a matter of enlightened self-interest -- subject to the political and economic dynamics of the day.
This was made clear during the fall of 2007 and this spring. Members of Congress demonstrated that they do not have a consistent or strong commitment to adaptation funding. At times, adaptation provisions have been dropped in negotiations. In the current Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, for example, Friends of the Earth estimates that 97% of all funds generated would be spent inside the U.S. while a mere 3% would be allocated for international adaptation funding.
Many people involved in the current debate around the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill feel that it is serving as a “dry run” for legislation that ultimately will be passed once a new president and new Congress take office in 2009. Even if this proves to be the case, it is important for people of faith to set the tone and frame the debate now by talking with the legislators about the moral imperatives behind sufficient and consistent adaptation funding.
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