Climate change-related loss and damage: translating the global policy agenda for national policy processes

Abstract

In the wake of the Paris climate conference which inscribes loss and damage as a permanent feature of the global climate regime, this paper examines the relevance of the global Loss and Damage agenda for national climate change policies. Through a structured review of the emerging policy and academic literature two primary challenges are highlighted: first, the difficulty in establishing formal attribution of loss and damage to anthropogenic climate change, and second in determining with clarity the limits to adaptation beyond which loss and damage can be described as unavoidable. In examining these two challenges, we arrive at a framework for national level policy that emphasises the underlying developmental potential of Loss and Damage. In offering this viewpoint, the narrative arc on Loss and Damage is expanded from a technical agenda towards one more attuned to existing policy and mechanisms at the local and national levels. A Comprehensive Risk Management approach is proposed as a practical framing for national and local policies to address loss and damage which could lead to addressing both the underlying and accumulating development failures and risk management capacities that shape loss and damage outcomes. This moves Loss and Damage from a reactive to a proactive responsibility and enables action now – not only once attribution and the limits to adaptation are derived.