Funding Loss and Damage to Reduce Immigration?

There is a huge mismatch between climate responsibility of the Global North and climate vulnerability in the Global South. Many hope international climate transfer to remedy this injustice, but a big question mark remains over its public-opinion foundations in contributing countries. Based on the existing international political economy literature on the immigration agenda of foreign policy, we tested whether the promise of reducing the number of climate migrants to come would lead to more favorable opinion toward the newly operational Loss and Damage Fund (LD Fund). We discovered null findings from a pre-registered, adequately powered survey (vignette) experiment with about 4,500 respondents in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States in late March, 2025. The promise of reducing immigration did not cause respondents to indicate higher levels of support for the LD Fund compared to those exposed to the promise of reducing internal displacement within developing countries or those in the control group. In addition to adding new to our understanding of the nexus between climate migration and public opinion on climate policy, this research note also contributes to the broader literature by showing the lack of microfoundations of using foreign policy partly as migration policy.