PARIS: Countries on the frontlines of climate change have warned they cannot wait another year for long-sought aid to recover from disasters as floods and hurricanes wreak havoc across the globe.

The appeal came during a meeting of the “loss and damage” fund that concluded on Friday.

“We cannot wait until the end of 2025 for the first funds to get out the door,” Adao Soares Barbosa, a board member from East Timor and a long-standing negotiator for the world’s poorest nations, told AFP.

Nearly 200 nations agreed at the UN COP28 summit last November to launch a fund responsible for distributing aid to developing countries to rebuild in the wake of climate disasters.

Delegates met in South Korea for the second meeting of the loss and damage fund this week as Hurricane Beryl left a trail of destruction across the Caribbean and North America.

In an appeal for faster action, Elizabeth Thompson, a board member from Barbados, said Hurricane Beryl alone had caused “apocalyptic” damage worth “multiple billion dollars”.

Wealthy nations have so far pledged around $661 million to the loss and damage fund. South Korea contributed an additional $7 million at the start of this week’s meeting.

Some estimates suggest developing countries need over $400 billion annually to rebuild after climate-related disasters. One study put the global bill at between $290bn and $580bn a year by 2030, and rising after that.

In one example in 2022, unprecedented flooding in Pakistan caused more than $30 billion in damages and economic losses, according to a UN-backed assessment.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2024