Not even on official negotiation agenda

When countries first signed up to the COP negotiations process more than 30 years ago, climate change was viewed as a future problem.

Then in 2009 richer nations -- historically responsible for the vast majority of plant-warming greenhouse gas emissions -- vowed to provide $100 billion annually by 2020.

The cash was earmarked for two tasks: mitigation, or helping countries to limit further warming by decarbonising their economies, and adaptation, helping them plan for higher seas and more intense downpours in the decades to come.

But today, with just 1.1C of warming so far, nations around the world are already being battered by extreme weather, with climate-linked disasters displacing tens of millions and inflicting hundreds of billions worth of damage.

Yet funding for loss and damage is not even on the official negotiation agenda in Glasgow.

The annual $100 billion outlay promised for climate adaptation and mitigation will eventually be ready from 2022 or 2023 -- several years behind schedule.

But loss and damage will soon dwarf that figure.

Studies show that damage inflicted by climate change could top $500 billion a year by 2030.

An analysis by Christian Aid showed Monday that the 65 most vulnerable nations could see GDP drop 20 percent on average by 2050.

Yamide Dagmet, director of climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, said that loss and damage is a touchy subject for developed nations, whose emissions have driven the destruction.

"It's mainly the rich countries' fear or even paranoia of liability or compensation," she said.

Asked whether the European Union should consider a loss and damage fund separate from funding for mitigation and adaptation, Juergen Zattler, head of the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, on Monday said he believed the question was premature.

"I don't think the discussion is at that stage yet," he told reporters at the Glasgow summit. "We do not know yet what loss and damage actually is, how it is different from adaptation. We are poking in the dark here."

Like Mozambique after cyclones Idai and Kenneth, many countries have been forced into accepting loans to help recover after extreme events.

Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Fiji's minister for economy and climate change,  said that had left nations mired in climate debt.

"It is akin to forcing us to fork out protection money to the mafia of fossil fuel investors, who are responsible for inflicting the terror of this crisis upon us," he said.