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  • NEWS FEATURE

A giant fund for climate disasters will soon open. Who should be paid first?

More than three billion people stand to benefit from a historic climate loss-and-damage fund. But spending it involves agonizing choices about who has suffered most.
  1. Gayathri Vaidyanathan

    1. Gayathri Vaidyanathan is a science journalist based in Stuttgart, Germany.

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People collect drinking water while floating and paddling on a handmade raft in the Shadarpar area of Sylhet, Bangladesh in 2022.

Heavy rains caused major flooding in Bangladesh in May 2022. Climate change might have contributed to the unusual weather. Credit: Md Rafayat Haque Khan/Zuma Press/Shutterstock

In May 2022, unusually heavy rains swelled two rivers in north-central Bangladesh and triggered devastating flash floods. The deluge submerged farmers’ fields, destroyed crops and affected around 2 million people — a disaster compounded by gradually rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, which climate change had probably helped to drive.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00149-x

References

  1. van Schie, D. et al. Centring Local Values in Assessing and Addressing Climate-related Losses and Damages. Working Paper (IIED, 2023).

  2. IPCC. In Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (eds Pörtner, H.-O. et al.) 3–33 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022).

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