With delegates gathered in Egypt for the COP27 climate conference, one topic will be on many minds but low on the formal agenda – the mounting debt crisis facing lower-income countries.
Rich industrialised countries will have arrived in Sharm El-Sheikh with new tactics to delay and avoid taking responsibility for the vast costs of the climate crisis that they have caused. As they block and procrastinate, increasingly massive debts are being piled onto countries in the Global South, which are on the receiving end of devastating floods, storms and droughts.
Global South governments will demand progress on addressing loss and damage, the requirement that countries should be compensated for the harm that the climate crisis is already causing them and that cannot be prevented.
