The planet has already warmed by 1.1 degrees C (2 degrees F) due to human-induced climate change, and millions of people are today facing the real-life consequences of higher temperatures, rising seas, fiercer storms and unpredictable rainfall. Rapidly reducing emissions is essential to limit temperature rise and secure a safer future for us all, as is making major investments to protect communities from severe impacts that will continue to worsen over time.
Yet collective efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt are currently not enough to tackle the speed and scale of climate impacts, meaning that some losses and damages from climate change are inevitable.
“Loss and damage” is a general term used in UN climate negotiations to refer to the consequences of climate change that go beyond what people can adapt to, or when options exist but a community doesn’t have the resources to access them. Loss and damage is and will continue to harm vulnerable communities the most, making addressing the issue a matter of climate justice.
Since the formation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the early 1990s, vulnerable nations have been calling on developed countries to provide financial assistance that can help them address loss and damage. But their proposals have been rebuffed.
However, momentum for providing funding to address loss and damage finally gained steam leading up to and during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021. At the COP27 summit in Egypt this coming November, countries will have a chance to finally establish a mechanism to address this critical need.
Here’s what you should know about loss and damage:
What are some examples of loss and damage?
While the UNFCCC has not precisely defined loss and damage, it’s generally understood to result from both extreme weather events likes cyclones, droughts and heatwaves, and slow-onset changes — such as sea level rise, desertification, glacial retreat, land degradation, ocean acidification and salinization. In some cases, damages may permanently alter some places; for example, rising seas encroaching on low-lying islands, or drought shrinking freshwater resources and turning once-productive farmland into dust.
Vulnerable communities are particularly prone to loss and damage due to a lack of finance for climate adaptation efforts or because they may live in areas that are experiencing climate impacts beyond what adaptation can offer protection from (more on this in the next section).
The damages from these effects of climate change can be divided into economic losses and non-economic losses, though there is overlap between the two.
Economic losses and damages are those affecting resources, goods and services that are commonly traded in markets. In other words, climate impacts that negatively affect sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism, or that damage critical infrastructure, property and disrupt supply chains.
For example, in coastal Bangladesh, salt farming is a major source of employment. Yet, in recent years frequent cyclones, tidal surges and heavy rainfall have hampered salt production, eroding the country’s self-sufficiency and forcing it to import salt to manage the market shortfall.
Non-economic losses can be the most devastating — such as the incalculable toll of losing family members, the disappearance of cultures and ways of living, or the trauma of being forced to migrate from your ancestral home.
Take the communities in Kosrae, Micronesia, for example, that have lost burial grounds due to coastal erosion caused by sea level rise. Meanwhile the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has affected the cultural identity and hunting practices among Inuit communities. And the Caribbean’s 2017 hurricane season resulted in prolonged displacement of entire island populations due to the complete destruction of communities.
While harder to quantify and monetize, non-economic losses have severe and detrimental effects on the well-being of affected communities.
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