Realising Climate Reparations: Towards a Global Climate Stabilization Fund and Resilience Fund Programme for Loss and Damage in Marginalised and Former Colonised Societies

Abstract

In response to global climate breakdown and the financial and macro-economic instability that underpins the current era of the Anthropocene, climate reparations represent an important remedy for the Global South. While not a new concept, climate reparations offer an appropriate encompassing philosophical and policy apparatus for first coming to terms with the magnitude of climate breakdown associated with the fallout from the climate crisis, and second for mounting a response that applies a framework that has history and ethics at the centre. This policy paper offers analysis of the current and historical factors that give rise to the necessity of, and an action agenda for realising climate reparations, namely the interrelated effects of colonialism and the disproportionate role of former colonising powers in greenhouse gas emissions. Through an examination of the macroeconomic character and repercussions of the climate crisis, relevant data and financial needs associated with ongoing long-term loss and damage especially of formerly colonised regions and marginalised societies, the paper offers two policy solutions - a Global Climate Stabilization Fund that effectively replaces any role the current International Monetary Fund have regarding climate change governance and a Resilience financing scheme for loss and damage. Ex-colonial regions face an extremely uncertain and volatile future and because of their economic and institutional vulnerabilities, current mechanisms and policy tools have fallen far short of their needs and fail to recognise the historical condition of their colonisation as cause for growing social and economic inequities borne and aggravated by the climate crisis. In response, this paper sets out the argument for a global climate stabilisation and resilience programmes through which climate reparations can be materialised. In addition, climate stabilization requires appropriate democratic and institutional structures at the multilateral, regional and national levels. As such, the paper discusses governance arrangements and fund and programme leadership comprising civic groups and developing-country governments and organisations. At the national and regional level, central banks and regional development banks will play a critical role to localise the institutional relationships and fast-track funding disbursements in response to climate-induced events and disasters that affect livelihoods, agriculture, increased displacement, and a range of other needs and social and economic support systems. This paper thus explores and offers a starting point for a policy framework around macroeconomic effects and financial instability borne and aggravated by climate change that offers an important case for climate reparations for the Global South.