The floods that devastated Pakistan in August 2022 caused $30bn in damage, affected 33 million people, and left more than 20 million people dependent on humanitarian aid. More than 2% of the country’s GDP was wiped out, and the economic impact will continue for years to come. Communities whose homes and crops were washed away will take much longer to recover – even if the economic damage can be repaired, the social upheaval will leave scars on people forced to uproot.
This is what is known, in the context of the global climate negotiations, as “loss and damage”. The phrase refers to the impacts of the climate crisis – floods, droughts, sea-level rises and heatwaves – that are too great for countries to be able to adapt to, and to the funds needed for their rescue and rehabilitation.
The climate economist and campaigner Saleemul Huq, who has died aged 71 of a heart attack, devoted most of the latter part of a distinguished career to an impassioned fight to have the loss and damage suffered by the world’s poor recognised and remedied. As the founding director from 2009 of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, in Bangladesh, he was one of the most prominent voices from the developing world on the climate crisis, an adviser to governments and a constant presence at the annual UN climate talks.
His death came just as it seemed that his long struggle might soon be won. At the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai, which began at the end of November, nations have finally endorsed a blueprint for loss and damage that will mean a new fund will be set up for the first time. Although there remain many flaws in the plans, including a failure so far to guarantee the financial contributions needed – likely to run to hundreds of billions and even trillions by the end of the decade – the steps taken to “operationalise” the fund are the most hopeful yet.
Huq attended the first “conference of the parties”, in Berlin in 1995, and was one of only a small number of people around the world to have been at every one since. But Cops – at which every government in the UN has an equal say and where agreement proceeds by consensus – are cumbersome and beset by conflicting interests, from the fossil fuel producers that want to continue their centuries-long bonanza, and from industrialised countries who are fearful of the increasing power of emerging economies such as China and India.
After years of Cops had produced little movement, Huq began to believe that issues of equity, social justice and the demands of poor countries were being sidelined. He was increasingly frustrated that smaller, developing countries were being taken for granted, or regarded as mere supplicants.
Another problem was that campaigners for economic development in poor countries were often hostile towards environmentalists, seeing their interests as opposed. Development groups felt that climate concerns were a distraction from, or inimical to, the overriding imperative to solve global poverty.
Huq sought to overcome these divisions and demonstrate that the climate crisis could only be solved if social justice, equity, the historical responsibilities of the rich world for their greenhouse gases, and the needs for development in the poor world were all recognised.
Along with other climate experts he began to work on “loss and damage”, which drew together these concerns and demanded that rich countries face up to the fact that the climate crisis was overwhelmingly caused by them, while the brunt of the suffering would be borne by the poorest. At the Copenhagen Cop in 2009, there seemed a prospect that loss and damage would finally be officially recognised. But that conference ended in chaos and dismay, and despite new pledges on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and on flows of climate finance from the rich to the poor, no fund for loss and damage was agreed.
Huq continued to work on the idea, aided by improvements in the complex science of attribution – linking the impacts of the climate crisis to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the early years of this century, all scientists could say was that it was probable that increasing temperatures, rising carbon dioxide levels and extreme weather events were linked. Today, our knowledge is such that just weeks after a major event such as a storm or flood, scientists can say with a high degree of certainty whether climate breakdown was the likely cause.
As Cop after Cop went by without agreement on loss and damage, and Huq’s trademark moustache turned from black to grey, he retained his good cheer and determination. His approach was a mix of intellectual rigour and moral gravity. He knew that no arguments would gain a hearing at UN talks unless he could ground them in solid science and data, but that equally the only way to achieve real progress was to confront rich governments with the consequences of their actions, and he was forthright in calling them out.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Saleemul was the son of the then diplomat and information secretary in the government, Zahoorul Huq, and his wife, Shajeda. As a diplomat’s child, Saleemul grew up in various locations, including Berlin, Jakarta, Nairobi and London, where he studied botany at Imperial College.
In 1971, a political crisis in Pakistan resulted in the secession of East Pakistan and creation of the new state of Bangladesh, and it was there that Huq pursued his further research, as a lecturer in botany at Dhaka University, and as co-founder in 1984 of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. His interest in the changing climate grew from there, as well as his conviction that the politics of development must change to accommodate the needs of the environment.
By the time the UN framework convention on climate change, parent treaty to the 2015 Paris agreement, was signed in 1992, Huq had realised – as many of his fellow academics had not – that economic and social development and environmental concerns were intertwined.
Huq was made OBE in 2022, and was published for the final time just last month, a Guardian Opinion column co-authored with the academic Farhana Sultana. In it, he wrote: “As the world prepares for Cop28, the onus is on global leaders, corporations and individuals to rise to the occasion and champion the cause of climate justice. Wealthy nations must start putting real funding towards loss and damage, while ramping up their mitigation and adaptation efforts, and reining in the influence of the fossil fuel industry in climate policies. The future of our planet depends on it.”
He is survived by his wife, Kashana, whom he married in 1982, his daughter, Sadaf, and his son, Saqib.
• Saleemul Huq, climate economist and campaigner, born 2 October 1952; died 28 October 2023
