The Climate Justice Movement in Madagascar is calling for action in five (5) key areas at COP29, which comes at the end of a year of devastating climate events around the world, with estimates showing a current warming trajectory towards 2.5° to 2.9°C by 2100, which will be devastating for humanity and the planet. Finance is the only way to unlock global climate action that will put the world on a path to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, enable adaptation, and address the unavoidable loss and damage from climate change impacts on those least responsible.

Addressing the impacts of the climate crisis in the Toliara II District – Madagascar: Some Facts and Figures*

The Climate Justice Movement in Madagascar is calling for action in five (5) key areas at COP29, which comes at the end of a year of devastating climate events around the world, with estimates showing a current warming trajectory towards 2.5° to 2.9°C by 2100, which will be devastating for humanity and the planet. Finance is the only way to unlock global climate action that will put the world on a path to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, enable adaptation, and address the unavoidable loss and damage from climate change impacts on those least responsible.

Madagascar is currently among of the world’s top 10 vulnerable countries impacted by climate change. The island is considered as a cyclone hotspot, where six cyclone events landed during the 2021/ 2022 cyclone season alone. The loss of lives and material damage had been very significant, with thousands of housing units, schools and road infrastructure damaged, and irrigation works and perimeters flooded. The frequency and intensity of such extreme weather events is anticipated to increase over time with climate change.

The island is currently facing a situation of loss and damage sustained by climate change, which cannot be avoided by mitigation, adaptation or sufficient disaster risk management. While the 85 percent of its people living in poverty are unjustly captive to the adverse effects of climate change, the country is also trapped in vicious cycles of odious debt it will be forced to take on to recover from sustained disasters and their socio-economic ravages. According to the IMF, « under a climate-adjusted macroeconomic scenario that includes all humanitarian and post-disaster reconstruction needs, and assuming that the government fully covers these needs, debt would rapidly become unsustainable and exceed 85% of GDP by 2040 ».

The costs estimates of climate actions in the framework of the INDC of Madagascar (period 2015-2030) give a total of US$42.099 billion, including US$28.713 billion for adaptation.

CRAAD-OI in partnership with WoMin conducted a participatory research in four (4) communes of the District of Toliara II to assess both the visible and hidden costs of the climate crisis which are mostly borne by rural women. The research findings show that the main costs that could be quantified in monetary terms include the cyclone-induced Loss and Damage; the costs of adaptation; the losses in livelihoods and income; the costs from crop failure; the costs from food insecurity and malnutrition; and, the costs from increased reproductive work. The compensation owed to the affected rural women for all these externalised costs is estimated at a total of US$11 836 544 per year.

*Source: CRAAD-OI 2024. Ecofeminist Cost Analysis of the Climate Crisis in Toliara. Case study report

2. Doubling finance for adaption to climate impacts in developing countries.

• With half the world’s population now living in the climate “danger zone,” where people are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts, doubling finance for adaptation is imperative. Adaptation finance must be equitably distributed in ways that do not impose additional constraints.
• Commitments for providing adaptation finance required at CPO29 must meet adaptation needs set to grow to more than $300 billion dollars a year by 2030. In Madagascar for example, the costs of adaptation were estimated at USD1 billion per year in 2021, while the total cost of adaptation Is currently about 30.1 billion.
• Rich countries will have to commit to providing massive and real additional funding for developing countries to ensure a just energy transition. This can be done by redirecting fossil fuel subsidies to these countries; by cancelling unfair sovereign debts and taxing the super-rich; and by transforming the global financial architecture in a truly democratic way.
• The current energy crisis in developed countries must not be solved by supporting the exploitation of fossil fuels in developing countries rich in oil and gas reserves. In developed countries, the current and potential impacts of decarbonization and energy transition on developing countries must be taken into account, as in the case of the exploitation of rare earths, which arestrategic minerals in high demand for the energy transition, but with enormous social and environmental costs for countries like Madagascar, which would thus become sacrifice zones.

3. Loss and Damage (L&D)

A global fund to secure contributions towards the Loss and Damages caused by climate impacts was established at COP27, and then operationalised at COP28. This year, a board for the fund has been established which is now working out the details of how the fund will operate, but none of the $700 millions pledged to the fund at COP28 has yet been distributed. A high-level dialogue will be convened during COP29 to engage political leaders in commenting on how it is developing. Crucially, there remains much concern amongst developing countries that the newly titled “Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage” could yet fall short of the scale of ambition required to truly meet the need.

 Many developing countries and civil society organisations are pushing at COP29 for a defined target for L&D to be set under the NCQG. The money for this loss and damage “sub-goal” in the NCQG should predominantly come from public and grant-based money.

• With extreme weather events in developing countries having already caused more than $109 billion in losses by 2022, according to experts about $580 billion a year until 2030 is required for this Loss and Damage Fund, which must be set to grow in line with needs.
• The money would have to come from developed countries, but also from the tax that fossil fuel companies have to pay on their windfall profits.
• The Multilateral Fund should be designated as an independent fund for the people and by the people, within the framework of the UNFCCC. The Fund must focus exclusively on loss and damage, and ensure meaningful public participation and representation of indigenous peoples, women, youth, other affected groups and civil society.
• The debt burden of developing countries to remedy the loss and damage caused by the climate crisis, of which they are the victims and not the perpetrators, implies a double injustice. Consequently, the Loss and Damage Fund should provide grants, not loans, which would only increase the debt burden of countries affected by the climate crisis and the misery of their communities.