“From the perspective of the African Group of Negotiators we do need to see immediate support for loss and damage on the continent,” Creecy said on the sidelines of the ongoing climate summit COP27.
“We have to make sure that developed countries, who are primarily responsible for the climate crisis, do not backslide on the commitments that they made at COP26,” she stated a few days ago.
“As developing countries, we are saying we can’t wait for some distant process of setting up a facility for the financing of loss and damage. And we need to see immediate action arising from this COP to assist developing countries to deal with loss and damage and to find a way out of the indebtedness that many of our countries face,” she stated.
“When the county faces a cataclysmic climate event, there needs to be debt restructuring, the multinational development banks need recapitalizing,” she indicated.
“Well, there’s a grant component, but the grant component is small and this was a concern that President Ramaphosa raised… Some of the money is in the form of concessional loans and our national treasury has really scrutinized those loans to make sure that we are being lent this money at a rate, which is significantly lower than the amount of money that we could borrow on the open market,” she said.