Pakistan loss and damage fund applications will now take longer to process after the board overseeing the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage decided it needed more time to work through an unusually high number of proposals amid limited financial resources. The ninth meeting of the FRLD Board, held in Manila from July 8 to 10, closed without significant progress on outstanding funding decisions, a result that drew criticism from civil society groups who said the fund was failing communities already exposed to worsening climate disasters.
The fund was established at COP27 in Egypt in 2022, with a decision to make it operational reached at COP28 in Dubai and full operationalisation confirmed at COP29 in Azerbaijan. With close to 500 million dollars in its account, it launched its first call for proposals at COP30 in Brazil. That call drew 176 funding requests from 119 developing countries, with combined demand reaching 2.8 billion dollars, more than eleven times the 250 million dollars initially set aside for disbursement. The average request per proposal stands at roughly 15.9 million dollars, ranging between 5 million and 20 million dollars.
Why Pakistan Loss and Damage Fund Applications Are Stalled
At the Manila meeting, the board had been expected to consider proposals from Haiti, Jamaica, Nigeria and Ivory Coast in order to establish procedures for future grants. That decision has now been pushed back to December, since the large majority of the 176 submissions had yet to be reviewed. A civil society campaigner involved in monitoring the fund noted that those four proposals alone accounted for roughly 30 percent of the initial funding allocation, leaving board members reluctant to commit such a significant share of the pool before reviewing the wider set of applications.
According to people familiar with the process, the board had originally hoped to approve those four proposals to help streamline its review and disbursement procedures, but ultimately deferred the decision given how few of the total submissions had been assessed. Pakistan’s representative on the FRLD Board explained that the submission deadline fell in mid-June, with close to 100 requests arriving on that day alone, leaving only a small number of proposals reviewed so far. The board now hopes to work through roughly two-thirds of all submissions by December, before disbursements begin, with around a dozen funding requests expected to be approved at the next board meeting, particularly if an additional 100 million dollars is added to the funding pool.
The approved projects will fall under a two-year pilot phase known as the Barbados Implementation Mechanism, for which 250 million dollars has been allocated. However, less than 500 million dollars has actually been received by the fund to date, according to a policy specialist at an international advocacy organisation. Civil society groups tracking the fund’s progress have said the amount now allocated to the pilot mechanism will cover only about 12 percent of the 2.8 billion dollars requested, enough to fund at most around 22 proposals at the average request size.
Pakistan’s Own Proposals Still Under Review
Pakistan, which regularly faces severe flooding and heatwaves, has submitted three separate proposals to the fund. Official sources indicate that one has already completed peer review and received encouraging feedback, while comments on a second, focused on climate-resilient health systems in Balochistan, remain outstanding. According to fund documents, Pakistan’s submissions include a three-year recovery and systems-strengthening project seeking 20 million dollars through the UN Development Programme, a Balochistan-focused health resilience project seeking 18 million dollars through the World Health Organization, and a third proposal seeking 20 million dollars for the compensation and rehabilitation of fish farms and hatcheries damaged by recent flash floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Sources close to the process acknowledged the funding constraints facing both the board and the fund’s secretariat, but expressed hope that Pakistan would ultimately secure backing for at least one of the three projects.
Civil society groups have raised additional concerns beyond the delay itself. They noted that the fund’s Resource Mobilisation Strategy, intended to set out a clear path toward the estimated 400 billion dollars needed annually, has also been pushed back to December, leaving the fund without firm targets or a timeline. Unresolved questions around the World Bank’s role in hosting the fund continue to complicate its ability to operate efficiently and get money to affected communities quickly, an issue one board member described simply as teething problems. Campaigners also criticised restrictions on observer access, saying they had been shut out of several closed-door sessions during the Manila meeting. Summing up the frustration among advocacy groups, one campaigner warned that without urgent action to clear the fund’s institutional roadblocks and mobilise far greater sums, it would remain nothing more than an empty, broken promise.
Published in SouthAsianDesk, July 18, 2026
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