Storms Pass, the Law Remains: Pathways to Climate Reparations – Center for International Environmental Law

Printed February 17, 2026

By Lien Vandamme, CIEL Senior Campaigner on the Local weather and Vitality Program.

When Cyclone Ditwah struck Sri Lanka only one week after the local weather negotiations in Belém (COP30), it ripped by means of houses, farmland, roads, and energy techniques with devastating velocity. Whole communities have been left with out shelter, livelihoods, or entry to fundamental companies, exposing how unprepared the world is to confront escalating local weather hurt.

Now, as Sri Lanka prepares to hunt help from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Harm (Loss and Harm Fund or FRLD), one actuality is obvious: the injury runs over 4 billion USD, however the establishment created to handle such hurt worldwide doesn’t even have a fourth of those sources readily available. Cyclone Ditwah uncovered with brutal readability the boundaries of adaptation and the fragility of a world local weather regime that also treats local weather hurt as charity, not duty. 

The storm spotlighted in actual time how the local weather talks have lengthy didn’t reply basic questions: when local weather hurt destroys lives and violates human rights, who’s accountable for repairing the injury and making certain that funds attain impacted communities?  Recognition of the necessity to deal with loss and injury has slowly elevated, however COP selections placing that recognition into observe – particularly by means of the availability of finance – are nonetheless missing. 

Whereas diplomatic fora, such because the UN Framework Conference on Local weather Change (UNFCCC), fail to ship significant options for local weather hurt or pathways to accountability, the Worldwide Court docket of Justice (ICJ) started answering a few of these questions final 12 months with a groundbreaking Advisory Opinion. 2026 presents key alternatives to maneuver the needle additional. 

A Fund That Exists — Totally on Paper

On paper, the Loss and Harm Fund was created exactly for this function: to offer finance to climate-vulnerable international locations and communities that have local weather hurt. In actuality, the hole between wants and response is staggering. The Fund’s preliminary part – launched at COP30 — is supposed to disburse 250 million USD in whole, an quantity that might barely scratch the floor of Sri Lanka’s losses alone.

This mismatch is the results of the worldwide local weather regime’s failure to create enforceable mechanisms to make sure States uphold their authorized obligations, together with in relation to local weather finance. Whereas public local weather finance provision generally is missing, that is notably true for loss and injury, for which rich international locations have lengthy denied their duty to pay. This grew to become as soon as once more clear when States agreed to a brand new local weather finance objective at COP29: it acknowledges the pressing want for enhanced help for loss and injury, however as soon as once more accommodates no new commitments to fill this hole, together with by offering cash to the FRLD. 

Past underfunding, the Loss and Harm Fund additionally faces severe challenges in its operationalization. The FRLD has but to ascertain simplified, fast, and direct entry modalities that may attain affected communities in a well timed method.  As local weather impacts intensify, the FRLD dangers changing into disconnected from the very communities it was designed to serve.

The most recent local weather negotiations failed as soon as once more to sign a shift: There have been no binding commitments to scale up loss and injury finance, no ensures that such finance could be grants-based, and no push to ascertain clear pathways for funds to achieve climate-vulnerable communities instantly. The end result displays a well-recognized sample – political recognition of loss and injury has superior; upholding authorized and monetary obligations has not.  

This failure is particularly consequential as a result of the FRLD is getting into a decisive part. In 2026, its Board is predicted to make vital progress on creating long-term operational modalities (how the Fund will really work), in addition to finalize its technique to gather sources (its Useful resource Mobilization Technique). With out sturdy steering, that technique dangers being constructed on the identical voluntary, contributor-driven logic that has undermined the supply of local weather finance for many years. 

The absence of economic commitments underscores a widening hole between States’ political positions underneath the UNFCCC, their authorized obligations underneath worldwide regulation, and the realities confronted by frontline communities.

When Negotiations Fail, the Courts Step In

As local weather talks proceed to stall, international locations and communities are more and more turning to courts to hunt what political processes have didn’t ship: true reparations for local weather hurt. 

Final 12 months’s ICJ local weather Advisory Opinion (ICJ AO) marked a watershed second, affirming that the local weather disaster is a human rights disaster and that States have authorized obligations not solely to stop additional hurt but additionally to handle injury already triggered, together with by means of cures and reparations.

The ICJ AO affirmed that addressing loss and injury is binding regulation, not charity. Fragmented or symbolic financing shouldn’t be sufficient. Significant reparations require acknowledging duty, stopping the hurt, and absolutely repairing what was misplaced. That recognition has given much more authorized weight to what affected communities have lengthy understood: when political techniques fail to ship justice, accountability have to be sought elsewhere.

A brand new local weather case introduced by 43 Pakistani farmers towards two main emitters, RWE and Heidelberg Supplies, illustrates this shift powerfully. The farmers are in search of compensation for losses suffered through the 2022 floods — floods that have been among the many important political triggers for the institution of the FRLD at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh. It’s telling that greater than three years later, the communities affected by these floods have determined to hunt recourse elsewhere.

And Pakistan shouldn’t be alone. Many different circumstances have been filed in the previous couple of years, together with:

 Asmania et al. v. Holcim: 4 Indonesian islanders demanded compensation from the cement firm Holcim, a big discount in CO2 emissions, and participation in adaptation measures, and the Swiss court docket accepted the case. 
“Odette case”:  Sixty-seven Filipino survivors filed a lawsuit towards the multinational oil big, Shell, in search of damages for private accidents, property injury, and lack of life brought on by Tremendous Storm Odette.

These circumstances — all declaring the duty of firms —  are extra than simply litigation. They symbolize a motion demanding justice instantly from these most accountable and entering into the accountability vacuum left by stalled multilateral processes.

Towards a Reparations Regime Grounded in Justice 

Whereas these circumstances are essential, they don’t seem to be an answer in and of themselves: most climate-vulnerable communities don’t have the choice to go to court docket. Litigation is dear, sluggish, and procedurally advanced. It requires authorized experience, entry to proof, and the sources  to maintain lengthy authorized battles — all of that are out of attain for a lot of frontline communities.

Counting on courts alone dangers making a two-tier system of justice, the place just a few can safe cures whereas the bulk stays with out redress. That is exactly why structural mechanisms for reparations and accountability are indispensable and pressing. And whereas States are working to ascertain such new mechanisms, present cooperation-based mechanisms additionally stay key and must be strengthened. 

The principle present mechanism is the FRLD, and it should urgently be structured to satisfy the wants of frontline communities, requiring efficient and well timed aid and treatment.  Selections relating to the long-term operations of the Loss and Harm Fund should begin from the regulation – the responsibility to cooperate fairly than voluntary approaches – and rights: 

Prioritize community-led, rights-based options, and guarantee frontline communities have direct entry to funding;
Shut the hole between out there funding and assessed wants, together with by anchoring useful resource mobilization in  worldwide regulation, together with the polluter pays precept and fairness;
Present finance completely as grants to keep away from exacerbating debt misery.

Making the FRLD urgently operational at scale and aligned with human rights is a key a part of upholding authorized obligations associated to loss and injury, and ought to be a precedence in 2026. 

However it’s not the total image. On the insistence of climate-responsible international locations themselves, the FRLD shouldn’t be designed to handle States’ legal responsibility for local weather hurt or to ship compensation.  The ICJ made clear that States have the duty to offer reparations, in order that begs the query, the place will true compensation and reparation come from?  

In the course of the ICJ AO oral proceedings, a number of States proposed concrete choices, together with the institution of compensation funds, claims commissions, and damages registries. Varied choices may be explored, based mostly on present examples and past the creativeness of conventional local weather funds, to construct a extra strong local weather regime rooted in duty, accountability (of each States and firms), and justice. 

As Vanuatu — along with a core group of States — is main the cost for a UN Normal Meeting (UNGA) decision aiming to implement the ICJ AO, a key alternative arises to present consideration to those concepts. The aims of the decision will not be solely to welcome the Advisory Opinion that was requested by consensus in a earlier UNGA decision, but additionally to strengthen local weather motion in keeping with authorized obligations, and thru mechanisms driving the Advisory Opinion’s operationalization. A zero draft of the decision circulated in January 2026 contains vital proposals to ascertain an Worldwide Register of Harm, tasked with proof gathering on climate-related injury, loss, or harm, and an Worldwide Mechanism for Local weather Reparation. On the time of scripting this weblog, international locations will talk about this zero draft in New York, and a vote is predicted as early as the tip of March. 

Different processes can also help responsibility-based mechanisms and finance. Examples on the nationwide stage may be present in america, the place a number of States are advancing the institution of “Local weather Superfunds” to make the fossil gas business pay for local weather damages, and within the Philippines, the place a Local weather Accountability Act is proposed, aiming to do the identical.  On the worldwide stage, ongoing negotiations on the UN Tax Conference current a possibility to develop mechanisms to make polluters pay for the injury they’re inflicting.  Lastly, structural options for debt, as additionally highlighted by a number of States through the ICJ hearings, are important for significant restore. Requires a UN Debt Conference are rising louder to untangle one a part of the deeply colonial international monetary structure that retains World South international locations susceptible to local weather impacts. 

Whereas the overall outlook for 2026 appears bleak, these defending worldwide regulation can construct on these moments and alternatives to radically select to uphold human rights regulation and construct efficient pathways in direction of  reparations  for communities, whereas holding polluters accountable.  Within the absence of such accountability, the wave of litigation will solely develop stronger. For communities rebuilding houses and lives, the decision for local weather reparations shouldn’t be summary; it’s survival. Storms will hold coming. However justice is on the horizon. 

Image: Oil Change Worldwide, local weather negotiations, COP27, Sharm el Sheick