Rich countries argue their populations don’t support loss and damage – but European young people do

The concept is relatively new in European media coverage of climate change, if not in the halls of the UNFCCC – where poorer countries have been calling for years for compensation for the harm they are suffering but didn’t create. The recent horrific experiences of flooding in Pakistan and the placing of the latest COP in one of the most vulnerable countries in the world in Egypt have perhaps played their part in finally pushing it into the newspaper headlines of the rich world. 

So it may be relatively unsurprising that fewer younger people in Europe have encountered the ideas behind ‘loss and damage’ before – even those that are worried about climate change. When it was presented in focus groups with young, more left-leaning Europeans who were concerned about climate change, many were immediately supportive of the idea. 

These workshop participants often recognised the concept of ‘polluter pays’ or ‘ecological debt’, or as one young adult memorably put it, cleaning up after your pet:

“In the same way that we can be fined if, for example, we don’t clean up after our dog, companies and individuals who have been overexploiting natural and human resources must also be fined or there must be a way of providing redress on a social level.”

Others, however, asked relevant and important questions about reparations – does paying loss and damage costs mean a government has permission to continue harming in the future? Who pays and who decides who pays? What form will compensation take and who decides what form it takes? Can money really make up for losses of livelihood, land and lives? These are good questions that could have an impact on how well supported a loss and damage financing facility ultimately is, should it come into being. 

Advocates for climate justice and loss and damage reparations also have another job to do. Very few of the participants in this research could spontaneously draw any connections between global history and the current reality of climate change. Understanding the need for reparations at its deeper level means acknowledging how the roots of climate change trace back through the global fossil fuel-based economy to a history of colonialism, inequity and exploitation, they argue. The links were explored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest report. But it is a leap that few politicians are willing to make, for fear of the costs they could truly be liable for. 

Even so supporters and advocates of loss and damage should take heart. Media commentators and politicians often argue that the citizens of the rich world will never be willing to make sacrifices for people in other countries. In this research, across different cultures and nine different European countries, many young people embraced the idea of establishing responsibility for past harms, and for applying an ethical and moral lens to discussions about the climate crisis. 

These conversations of course become more difficult as reality sets in. The survey was undertaken before the cost of living crisis really kicked into gear in European countries. But it could also be that the elite commentators in the ‘climate debate’ are underestimating younger generations’ deep concern about climate change and understanding of the way societies around the world need to adapt and change in the years to come.