For more than three decades, the developing world has demanded that wealthy countries pay up for the "loss and damage" that vulnerable nations are already experiencing due to climate change. Those calls were finally met early Sunday morning when the 27th United Nations climate change conference, or COP27, came to a close in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
A new global pact establishes a fund "for responding to loss and damage" and creates a transitional committee to work out who will contribute to the fund, which developing countries will be eligible to draw from it, and how it will be governed. Negotiators for developing countries and nonprofits cheered the decision, noting that it was long overdue.
