Over the last few decades, the rise in climatic hazards associated to slow-onset and extreme weather events elicited the need for implementing Loss and Damage (L&D), along with adaptation and mitigation, as a third pillar of climate action in developing nations that are the worst victims of human-induced climate change.
As a matter of fact, this year’s 22nd session of the Conference of Parties (COP) was expected to be the “Loss and Damage COP.”
What is loss and damage?
Loss and damage can be described as the negative impacts of climate change inflicting upon nations vulnerable to climate change, given ineffectiveness in existing adaptation and mitigation technologies.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) characterises the two perplexing terms, “loss” (as an irreversible impact that cannot be repaired or restored) and “damage” (as an impact that can still be reversed or alleviated).
If we take the recent example of Haiti, the third most affected country in 2015 as identified by Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) report 2017, we acknowledge that hundreds of lives were lost in Hurricane Matthew, so this is a complete “loss.”
On the other hand, the buildings and other socio-economic infrastructures that could be rebuilt but were destroyed in the hurricane falls under “damage” category caused by climate change.
The concept of L&D was not quite widespread until recently. However, the call to include this much debated topic under the climate change regime dates back to 1991, a year before founding the UN climate convention.
During this time, the small island states made a plea to be compensated via an international insurance pool for losses resulting from the impacts of sea-level rise, which is a slow-onset event that cannot be solved via adaptation or mitigation.
The issue of L&D was first raised and offered as work program under the UNFCCC system in 2007 at COP13 in Bali, making its way to the Cancun Adaptation Framework at COP16. Then, it went through fine-tuning at COP17 and had its own policy mechanism at COP19 in Warsaw.
The distinct manifestation of L&D as an individual component of climate action is the biggest victory for the least developed and vulnerable nations. It is a result of the crusades fought, since the beginning, to embrace L&D as a new discipline under the convention.
It may seem as decisions on L&D has made some progress in Morocco, it has left out the most important issues that needed to be addressed
Achievement and disappointments
With big achievements made in Paris, this year’s COP was assumed to be taking the issue of L&D forward from what has been done so far.
Surprisingly, the much anticipated “loss and damage COP” experienced a rather sluggish progress in terms of decision and actions. Besides, the WIM (Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage) at the time of its establishment at COP19 was agreed to be reviewed at the 22nd COP, along with an indicative framework for a five-year rolling work plan built upon the accomplishment of the two-year work plan. That was designed by the executive committee of the mechanism.
The two-year work plan that was approved in Lima at COP20 took into account nine action areas for L&D, comprising non-economic losses, slow onset events, migration, and support for financial instruments.
The UNFCCC press release at the UN Climate Summit 2016 has stated that a new five-year framework under the WIM will administer impacts that are not addressed through planned adaptation, incorporating displacement, migration and human mobility, and comprehensive risk management.
Besides, the decisions agreed upon reviewing the report based on the initial two-year work plan of the WIM, demands for enhancing the work through collaboration with a wide range of bodies and entities, inside and outside the UNFCCC process, raising its potential and effectiveness.
The decisions adopted in Marrakech also ensure shared commitment of parties to address the concerns of the most vulnerable countries.
It may seem as decisions on L&D have made some progress in Morocco, but truth be told it has left out the most important issues that needed to be addressed to actually implement L&D mechanism as the third pillar for climate action, along with adaptation and mitigation.
Draft conclusions and recommendations proposed by the chairs, the subsidiary body for scientific and technological advice (SBSTA), and the subsidiary body for implementation (SBI) of the WIM, are pretty much centring around the outcomes of the Paris Agreement (PA) and the completed two-year work plan.
The decision cries for a proper financial mechanism to implement the five-year work plan. Under paragraph four of the draft decisions, the issue of financing for L&D has been vaguely presented, leaving out the need for introducing the source of funding for L&D.
An enhanced mechanism
While the WIM has been carrying out some tasks under the L&D work program, it is moving rather slowly in terms of building financial mechanism to efficiently address both the economic and non-economic losses and damages. So far, the financial action under the WIM included risk transfer, using insurance policies to help vulnerable groups.
As we know, insurance is not always feasible; for example, we cannot insure against abnormal precipitation rate or rising sea-level. Thus, the need to build innovative, yet more inclusive financial mechanisms (like fossil levy or carbon taxing) was one of the things the least developing nations were expecting at the 22nd UN Climate Talks.
Even though a separate matter, L&D has not been mentioned under Article 9 of the PA which entails the urgency of financing for adaptation and mitigation. It is true, some work of L&D is related to adaptation, but the fund available for adaptation is too little to work for loss and damage.
According to a report by CARE, the WIM should urgently develop financial instruments which can generate additional finance in the scale of $50 billion annually by 2020 to avoid irrecoverable and permanent losses and damages.
Moreover, the 2017 Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) report revealed that more than 528,000 lives were lost worldwide and losses of $3.08tn (in PPP) were incurred as a direct result of almost 11,000 extreme weather events, between 1996 and 2015, around the world.
According to the report, the host region of the 2016’s COP -- the continent of Africa -- is the worst victim to extreme climatic events with four countries ranking among the 10 countries worldwide most affected in 2015 -- Mozambique, Malawi, Ghana, and Madagascar.
Despite the urgency for consolidating the demands for loss and damage, the failure to reach any concrete decisions on actions to be taken is rather ironic.
Shaila Mahmud is a Bangladesh-based researcher and a Climate Tracker fellow for COP22.
