Denmark is doing something great. Everybody is at loss when it comes to facing the climate change. Not only economically, but also physically and mentally we are exhausted for being under the threats. Let alone when we are told that future generations may face even worse conditions to nowadays.

Having some kind of compensation from the loss must be good, but it seems like too far-fetched since not everyone actually accepts this condition. There are still many people who deny it, and unfortunately some of those are people in power.

Nevertheless, try to imagine if the people in power are fully pledged to take responsibility of the effects of climate change. Let’s hear about what happen in Denmark, where the government itself specifically the loss and damage caused by climate change by allocating special funds.

How can the compensation funds make things better? How can the government of the country be so open minded about climate change? Here, in this article we are going to talk about it.

The Smaller, The Worse

The battle with climate change is actually a race that we can win. However, we can only win it when we join the race. There sure are rewards we can get if we win the race, but if we lose, we also have to pay for the tolls.

Therefore, it is only reasonable to try our hardest to win the race no matter what. However, eventually even joining the race is not that easy job, thanks to ignorance about climate change by a lot of people in power.

Even when scientists have stated that climate change is a horror that future generation have to face unwillingly, the ignorance level is too high. In this case, we only have to witness the bad things to start happening all around the world.

Small archipelago countries like the ones in Oceania are the ones who have to be the first victims. The problem is, they are not the ones who have the biggest contributions to human-induced climate change happening nowadays.

Biggest countries, the more developed ones, are the ones who have more responsibilities in this scenario. Regarding this case, Denmark which belong to the more developed countries with bigger responsibility try to start a positive trend.

The Loss from Climate Change

What are actually the disasters that human-induced climate change can cause? Why the smaller countries are the ones that suffer the most? One of the most prominent examples is rising sea level that swallows the smaller islands.

Due to greenhouse gas emission by bigger countries for their industries and development of infrastructures, the temperature of this planet is warming. The warming temperature results in the melt of icebergs in the planet’s poles.

Because of the melt, sea level is rising constantly, and thus it results in smaller islands being swallowed by the sea. This problem exists in every single country located in the seaside experience it already, including big countries like Indonesia.

Jakarta is sinking to the ocean right now at alarming rate; therefore, the country is planning to move its capital city to Borneo. But what about Micronesian countries like Samoa, Tonga, and Palau that have no other option?

Their only hope is for the sea level to at least stop rising that significantly. Some are even trying to lobby other countries for refugee in case the rising process is unstoppable and they have no land left to live on.

The Denmark Responsibility Funds

So, what actually Denmark’s innovation and why is it exceptional? Denmark just released a global financial mechanism that would allow the country directly contribute to the loss caused by climate change as a result of its own activities.

The fund is estimated to reach up to $13 million (or 100 million Danish Crowns) and is aimed to those most affected countries to help them mitigate and adapt with disasters caused by climate change. It will be called as ‘loss and damage funds’, to address that the loss and damage actually exist even though the developed countries do not directly feel it.

“I saw for myself in Bangladesh this spring that the consequences of climate change need increased focus,” said Denmark’s development minister Flemming Møller Mortensen. “It is grossly unfair that the world’s poorest should suffer the most from the consequences of climate change to which they have contributed the least.”

The funds would be allocated into four different directions. The first 35 million Crowns would go to Frankfurt-based organization that will subsidize insurance in poorer countries. Another 32,5 million would go to the ministry’s strategic partnership that focuses on Sahara Desert region in North Africa.

Finally, the rest of the funds would go into strategic efforts for negotiations about climate change in COP27 and civil society actors in developing countries to increase awareness. It is hoped that the initiative would begin a positive trend among developed countries to do the same thing.

Mission That Denmark Brings to COP27

COP27 is the 27^th conference of the parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since it talks about climate change, it is also important to address the responsibilities of bigger developed countries.

And because of that, Denmark brings the mission to introduce the loss and damage funds to the whole world. Because, even though it is the biggest government official investment yet to address climate change and its effects, if only the country alone is doing that, it would not be enough at all.

The damage that climate change does is far more than what a single country can contribute, thus we need support from every single country in the world. In example, the cost of recovery from flood in Pakistan caused by climate change alone was about $10 billion, far more than what Denmark has allocated.

Knowing that climate change costs us a lot, we should also wonder what we can do ourselves to tackle the problem. We can start small by reducing our fossil fuel consumption and rely more on green energy. Our small contribution, even though seem unlikely to give anything, is also important to inspire more people around us to do the good things.