Loss and damage associated with climate change impacts

The impacts of climate change that are not mitigated, or appropriately adapted or coped with, are referred to as “loss and damage." The global community has recently recognized that addressing and financing the “residual” loss and damage from climate change requires a different approach as such costs cannot or have not been appropriately mitigated or adapted to. Although international pressures to weigh a country’s contribution to climate change financing against their contribution to climate change has been proposed, no such legally binding climate change deals have been fashioned. Most parties have only agreed to nonbinding actions to either reduce emissions or finance loss and damage in low-income, vulnerable countries. This is because the concept of loss and damage and the approaches to address the concept have been widely contested and debated. Additionally, the lack of a global consensus on an appropriate mechanism to attribute gradual and extreme natural calamities to climate change has further intensified the debate. Given this background, this chapter seeks to synthesize the key issues surrounding this debate. The objectives of this chapter are to review the definitions of loss and damage, examine the evolution of its significance in the international climate politics, present a comparative analysis of the approaches to address climate change-induced loss and damage, and outline empirical evidence of loss and damage in geographically and economically vulnerable nations.