"Drive for Climate Compensation Grows After Pakistan’s Floods"

"DADU, Pakistan — Every part of Rajul Noor’s life has been wrecked by this summer’s massive monsoon-driven floods. The 12-year-old girl’s family home is destroyed, as is the school that she loved. The friends she used to walk to school and play with are scattered, finding refuge elsewhere.

“Our whole world is underwater, and nobody has helped us,” she said, speaking in the tent where she, her parents and four siblings now live in Dadu district in Pakistan’s Sindh province.

Almost 100% of the district’s cotton and rice crops were destroyed. More than half its primary and secondary schools were fully or partially damaged, local officials say. Boats laden with people and their belongings crisscross Dadu, past buildings still partially submerged, weeks after the rains stopped. This level of damage is repeated in towns and cities across Pakistan.

The destruction has intensified the debate over a question of climate justice: Whether rich countries whose emissions have been the main driver of climate change owe compensation for the damage that change is inflicting on poor countries like Pakistan."

Riazat Butt and Adil Jawad Khan report for the Associated Press October 10, 2022.

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"How Could Help For Rising Climate 'Loss And Damage' Be Funded?" (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Source: AP, 10/11/2022