United Nations, Sep 26 (IANS) Climate-vulnerable countries have told the United Nations (UN) General Assembly they should not be forced deeper into debt to rebuild from disasters they did little to cause, demanding grants and faster access to international finance.
Leaders from the Caribbean, Pacific, Indian Ocean and Himalayas said the system often answered storms, floods and rising seas with expensive loans and years of paperwork, transferring the cost to its least responsible victims.
Samoan Deputy Prime Minister Mulipola Anarosa Ale Molioo said money intended for education, health, water and social protection was being diverted to disaster recovery.
“Small nations are being asked to finance both development and survival. No nation should have to borrow its way out of a crisis it did so little to create,” Molioo said.
Saint Lucian Prime Minister Philip J Pierre said eligibility for finance should reflect climate vulnerability as well as national income.
“We must stop confusing loans with solidarity,” Pierre said. “A loan is not justice when a small vulnerable nation is forced to borrow to repair damage it did not cause.”
Nepal made a similar case after catastrophic flash floods killed at least 1,400 people and left more than 6,000 missing. Initial assessments placed physical recovery needs at about 10 per cent of its gross domestic product.
“When a climate-driven disaster destroys the infrastructure of a poor country, the answer cannot simply be another mega loan or a patchwork of small grants,” Prime Minister Balendra Shah said.
He called for adequate grant-based support and said the Loss and Damage Fund and other environmental financing mechanisms remained grossly inadequate.
“When the house is burning, we do not ask the family to complete fifty forms. We act,” Shah said.
Palauan President Surangel Whipps said countries facing severe sea-level rise should not be burdened with debt “simply to purchase a life jacket for their survival”.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Godwin Friday said small states could not keep borrowing to replace infrastructure repeatedly destroyed by climate disasters.
“We cannot continue to walk up the down escalator, pretending it is development,” Friday said.
Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader said climate finance should be delivered as quickly as storms strike the Caribbean. He called vulnerability a lived reality rather than a statistical category.
The Maldives said resilience required finance to reach vulnerable countries without delay.
“At the scale. At the speed. And on the terms needed to build resilience,” Vice-President Hussain Mohamed Latheef said.
Seychelles said its climate ambitions were being blocked by structural economic barriers and demanded affordable long-term finance and meaningful debt relief.
“Mitigation, adaptation, technology transfer, and loss-and-damage funding are not acts of charity—they are legal obligations,” President Mathew Antonio Patrick Herminie said.
Fijian President Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu pointed to the Pacific Resilience Facility, a Pacific-owned climate and disaster-financing mechanism whose first grants were reaching communities.
“It exists because a village seawall does not need a three-year accreditation process. It needs money that arrives,” Lalabalavu said.
The Bahamas said lending rules could leave island states too prosperous for help until a hurricane made them poor. Nauru called for vulnerability, rather than income alone, to determine access to development finance.
–IANS
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