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Lanka to tap UN climate fund for Ditwah compensation
View(s):By Tharushi Weerasinghe
Sri Lanka will apply to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD)—a UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—to seek compensation for damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah.
Damage assessments are underway, while the government is also holding bilateral discussions on the claim, including during the recent United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya.
Environment Minister Dhammika Patabendi confirmed on Friday that a 10-member committee has been appointed to lead the application process. He said the government would also consult international experts before submitting its claims.
The committee includes the Secretary to the Ministry of Environment; the Director General of the Department of Wildlife Conservation; the Chairman of the State Timber Corporation; the Ministry’s Director of Biodiversity; the Director of Climate Change; the Director of Environmental Planning and Economics; the Conservator of Forests in charge of biodiversity and watershed conservation at the Department of Forest Conservation; and the Director General of Planning at the Ministry of Environment.
Earlier this week, the FRLD Secretariat announced that the submission window for its first Call for Funding Requests under the Barbados Implementation Modalities had opened. Funding requests can be submitted between December 15, 2025, and June 15, 2026.
The Loss and Damage Fund—formally known as the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage—is a UN-backed financing mechanism created to support climate-vulnerable developing countries facing irreversible harms from climate change, such as extreme weather events, sea-level rise and displacement. The Fund provides grants and concessional loans for recovery and reconstruction, addressing both economic and non-economic losses, including loss of life and trauma, that cannot be addressed through adaptation alone.
The FRLD was agreed upon at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022 and operationalised at COP28 in Dubai in 2023. While it received its first pledges in 2024, the Fund has faced criticism over inadequate start-up financing after just $250 million was announced for the 2025–2026 period at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, last month.
“Sri Lanka is navigating a crisis where speed is everything, yet the Fund’s current design prioritises process over urgency,” noted Harjeet Singh, climate activist and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. He has been a campaigner for Loss and Damage for many years. He noted that under the current setup, the government of Sri Lanka must be “hyper-aware of three critical traps.”
Mr Singh cautioned first against the “projectisation” of disaster. The Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM) require countries to submit detailed funding proposals aligned with criteria such as long-term resilience and co-benefits. While important in principle, he said these requirements risk forcing Sri Lanka to reframe an unfolding humanitarian emergency into a conventional development project simply to fit the Fund’s template.
Second, Mr Singh highlighted that the Fund’s direct budget support modality—the fastest way to channel money into national treasury lines for immediate relief—is not yet fully operational. This creates the risk that Sri Lanka’s application could stall, pushing the government to route funds through intermediaries such as the World Bank or UN agencies, effectively reinstating the very middlemen the Loss and Damage Fund was meant to bypass.
Finally, he stressed that Sri Lanka must guard firmly against any loan components. “With the country already in a debt crisis, this application must be explicitly grant-based,” the activist said, noting that while the Fund has a mandate to provide grants, pressure to ‘leverage’ private finance or loans often re-emerges during negotiations.
It is a cruel irony, Mr Singh argued, that as Sri Lanka counts its dead from Cyclone Ditwah, it must also navigate a bureaucratic maze to access funds promised for precisely such moments. “Governments shouldn’t need teams of consultants to craft perfect proposals while people are drowning,” he said, adding that financing should be released based on the clear reality of a climate-driven disaster.
More broadly, Mr Singh warned that the procedural demands of the FRLD risk privileging administrative capacity over actual need. A successful application currently requires extensive technical documentation and external expertise, he said — “a country devastated enough to need help but organised enough to complete flawless paperwork.”
Concerns also remain over the pace and scale of the Fund itself. Under the BIM, the process from submission to approval and legal agreements can take months. Cyclone Ditwah struck in November; under current timelines, funds may not reach affected communities until mid-2026. “A fire brigade doesn’t ask you to fill out a grant application before turning on the hose – why does this fund?” Mr Singh questioned.
The scale of available financing further undermines confidence. The FRLD’s global allocation of just USD 250 million for all developing countries over two years is dwarfed by the losses caused by Cyclone Ditwah alone, which are expected to run into the billions.
“Offering a few million dollars in the face of such devastation isn’t a lifeline — it’s a token,” he said.
How the Fund responds to Sri Lanka will be a defining test of its credibility, Mr Singh argued. Failure to deliver rapid, meaningful support to a debt-burdened island facing a textbook loss-and-damage event would signal to the Global South that the Fund remains an “empty shell” despite years of negotiations. “If the FRLD cannot work for Sri Lanka after Ditwah,” he said, “then it cannot work for anyone.”
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