They called it a breakthrough for climate justice, but three years later it feels more like a broken promise written on glossy paper — and now, with COP30 convening in Belém this month, the urgency is clearer than ever. The grand declarations made at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh about helping the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations now echo hollow in the corridors of power. The much-touted Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage was hailed as a moral milestone, a recognition that those least responsible for the crisis deserve real help. Yet what has followed since then is mostly performance: big words, little money, and even less action.
The fund was meant to deliver hope to nations reeling from climate-driven devastation — from vanishing coastlines to floods, droughts, and crop failures. Instead, it has become a textbook case of how political theatre can replace tangible responsibility. At COP27, world leaders applauded themselves for agreeing to “new funding arrangements.” Civil society celebrated what seemed to be a historic moment. Developing countries dared to believe that justice, long delayed, might finally be served. But as the dust settled, the glow of triumph faded into the old, familiar shadow of bureaucracy and indifference.
So far, the record is dismal. Out of the trillions needed each year to cover loss and damage, barely a few hundred million dollars have been pledged — and even less disbursed. Many commitments were one-off gestures, some repackaged from old promises, others never formalized beyond press statements. The supposed fund has remained a fragile concept: present on PowerPoint slides but absent where it matters most — on the the ground, in disaster-hit communities still waiting for relief. It is not exaggeration but fact that the global North, after centuries of carbon indulgence, now appears content to pay pennies for the catastrophe it helped create.
Procedural confusion has only deepened the frustration. Who qualifies as “vulnerable”? Which losses count? Who will administer these funds, and how fast will they reach the affected nations? Every question seems to have spawned another committee rather than delivering answers. The decision to temporarily place the fund under the the World Bank has raised further concerns, especially from developing countries wary of fees, conditionalities, and slow-moving bureaucracy. A mechanism born of moral urgency risks being strangled by procedural lethargy.
For Pakistan, the disappointment runs especially deep in light of recent disasters that sharpen the stakes. In mid-2025, torrential monsoon rains triggered flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s mountainous regions, causing deadly landslides and inundations in districts like Swat, Buner and others, damaging thousands of houses, roads and isolating communities. Millions were impacted by floods across multiple provinces. Meanwhile in Punjab, flooding along the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers — exacerbated by heavy rainfall and upstream water releases from dams — inundated large swathes of farmland, villages and low-lying settlements, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, destroying crops on millions of acres, and causing food shortages. The scale of damage underlines how acute the vulnerability is, and how real the losses already are for ordinary Pakistanis.
Communities in Punjab lost large areas of rice, sugarcane, cotton and other staple crops; agriculture — a sector contributing about a quarter of the Pakistan economy — took a serious hit. Food inflation spiked, supply chains were disrupted, and the country’s already fragile fiscal position was worsened by the disaster costs. Many rural households were pushed deeper into poverty, while urban migrants and small farmers struggled to recover. The flood devastation added heavy pressure on the economy, dragging down growth and increasing public debt as emergency relief and reconstruction demands soared.
This is not just about numbers and policy. It is about families whose homes were swept away, farmers whose fields turned into lakes, children whose harvest earnings vanished overnight. After the catastrophic floods of 2022 that submerged much of the country, Pakistan had hoped the world would keep its promise. Yet three years later, the promised funds are still hanging in limbo.
Meanwhile, many Western countries have not only been slow to fully deliver but have also put up active roadblocks. The United States, long the biggest historical emitter, has taken ambiguous and contradictory stances: at times pledging only nominal amounts, or refusing to accept liability or compensation for losses. Civil society critics have argued that rich countries, led by the US, insisted on hosting new climate loss and damage mechanisms under institutions that they control, undermining independence and limiting access. There has been resistance to treating loss and damage finance as a binding obligation rather than voluntary aid. Some negotiations were deadlocked for years because developed nations raised procedural and legal concerns, effectively delaying outcomes.
Now, with COP30 upon us, there is no room left for empty declarations. The world again prepares for speeches, panels and polished rhetoric. But if this conference is to mean anything, it must break with the tradition of theatrical diplomacy. Accountability, not applause, is what climate-vulnerable countries demand. The fund must be made functional, properly funded, and swiftly operational. Its governance must be transparent, access simplified, and commitments treated as binding, not voluntary.
If COP30 is to deliver, it must turn promises into disbursements, empty pledges into timely relief, and political theatre into genuine justice. Otherwise, the world risks writing yet another chapter of shame. Because the planet is burning, the waters are rising, and lives are being lost while pledges gather dust. The promise of loss and damage finance was never meant to be a gesture — it was supposed to be an act of justice. The choice is clear: breathe life into those paper promises, or accept the shame of having written them in disappearing ink.
