The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), headquartered in the typhoon-battered Philippines, announced on Monday that it would begin accepting applications starting 15 December this year, with the goal of disbursing funds by end-June 2026.
The FRLD is a UN-backed climate finance mechanism established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at COP28.
“The board decided in April this year that we’re not going to sit on that US$800 and spend five years trying to figure out a policy framework,” said Richard Sherman, FRLD co-chair representing South Africa, speaking at the launch of the applications process at COP30 in Brazil. “We decided we wanted to spend the money.”
The FRLD’s launch of applications comes on the heels of multiple extreme weather disasters, including last week’s Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica, which resulted in nearly US$7 billion in damages or a third of the country’s economy.
FRLD host country the Philippines is also facing its second deadly typhoon in a week. Super Typhoon Fung-Wong, known locally as Uwan, made landfall on Sunday and left at least four dead. It followed Typhoon Kalmegi last week, which killed about 224 people with over 100 others missing.
In COP30 host country Brazil, a tornado caused six deaths and injured more than 700 in the southern city of Rio Bonito do Iguacu just days before the climate conference began.
While vulnerable nations and civil society groups welcomed the FRLD’s call for applications, also known as the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM), they say the fund size remains woefully inadequate.
“While this fund has hope, it…needs to be filled at a scale that is commensurate with the level of damage and suffering which these events cause,” said Elizabeth Thomspon, board member of the FRLD from Barbados.
Earlier this year, the FRLD’s initial US$300 million allocation for a pilot was scaled down to US$250 million, which sparked concern. Wealthy countries have pledged nearly US$800 million to the fund, but less than half of that amount has been collected.
Board members of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, led by executive director Ibrahima Cheikh Diong (far left) and the COP30 Brazilian president André Corrêa do Lago (fourth from right) launched a call for applications to its fund. Image: Samantha Ho/ Eco-Business
“The FRLD is still pretty much empty,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, a coalition of more than 1,300 civil society organisations fighting the climate crisis. The network has estimated that over US$400 billion is needed to cover the world’s climate-related loss and damages, which is 500 times the size of the current pledged amount.
“We need to demand that the fund must be filled up and scaled, so that we can take care of all those who are suffering the impact of climate change,” said Essop at a press conference ahead of the fund’s launch of its call for applications.
Harjeet Singh, climate activist and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, welcomed the launch of applications, but added that it is already failing the people it promised to protect from climate harm. “This fund is starting with a fraction of the scale required, has no genuine access for frontline communities and it has completely failed to function as a rapid response mechanism,” he said.
Bottom-up, country-driven financing
Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, FRLD’s executive director, acknowledged these gaps in funding.
”We’re not sitting on billions right now [but] the demand is huge. Everyone alone cannot achieve what is needed, which is why complimentarity, coherence and cooperation is very important,” he said.
As one of its three funding criteria, the FRLD will engage with the countries and other funds that are also supporting the country.
However, the first of its criteria ensures that FRLD will not dictate what countries should do in respect of loss and damages, as the fund will only finance bottom-up, country-driven responses.
“It is not up to the fund to decide what it is supposed to be funding, as long as it is aligned with the…countries’ national strategies [on loss and damage],” said Diong.
Implementation must therefore be “owned and driven by the countries themselves,” he explained. “The country will have to decide what they need and what should be supported by the fund.”
However, the FRLD will ensure that it maintains a “very interactive process” of funding with recipient countries, he said.
Countries must also demonstrate that the FRLD’s financing will yield the expected results in responding to loss and damage.
The FRLD funds will be channelled to countries either directly via national governments’ budgets or in partnership with accredited multilateral development banks, or in partnership with UN-backed entities that can access the FRLD, such as the Adaptation Fund, Global Environment Facility and Green Climate Fund.
This story was produced as part of the 2025 Climate Change Media Partnership, a journalism fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.
