The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), through its Sahel Resilience Project funded by Sweden, convened a high-level regional webinar on 4 March 2025 to spotlight the new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), designed to support vulnerable countries recovering from the devastating impacts of climate change.

The Fund, established at COP28 and governed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA), is expected to begin disbursing resources by the end of 2025. An Interim Secretariat—comprising the UNFCCC and the Green Climate Fund—is providing advisory support and technical assistance in identifying suitable options and propositions for the start-up phase.

Facilitated by Rita Missal, Recovery Advisor with UNDP’s Crisis Bureau (i), the session brought together senior leadership and technical experts from 24 UNDP country offices across West and Central Africa, focusing on strategies to leverage the Fund to accelerate post-disaster resilient recovery.

“In our region, those of us who’ve seen the floods over the past couple of months in Niger, Chad, northern Nigeria, and the entire central Sahel know the scale of loss and damage that hits when climate conditions shift dramatically,” said Njoya Tikum, Director of UNDP’s Sub-Regional Hub for West and Central Africa.

A new type of climate financing

Unlike other climate funds, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage explicitly addresses both economic losses—such as damaged infrastructure and livelihoods—and non-economic losses, including loss of life, displacement, cultural heritage, and psychosocial trauma.

Africa has suffered over 1,695 climate-related disasters, accounting for 15% of global climate events, resulting in more than 731,000 deaths and $5 billion in losses (ii). The Fund aims to fill a longstanding financing gap, offering direct, flexible, and rapidly available recovery resources to the most climate-vulnerable countries.

“The Fund prioritizes non-economic losses—often ignored in traditional recovery frameworks—and enables faster, more autonomous responses for African nations,” noted Rita Missal, who also highlighted tools such as Post-Disaster Needs Assessments and Nationally Determined Contributions as possible gateways through which countries can identify their priority needs to facilitate access to funding.