Translating the loss and damage agenda for national policymaking

Erin RobertsInternational Centre for Climate Change and Development

September 30th, 2014Loss and damage workshop Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Defining loss and damage . . .

Loss: Impacts of climate change that cannot be recovered

Damage: Impacts of climate change that can be recovered

Loss and damage: The impacts of climate change that people cannot cope with or adapt to (Warner and van der Geest, 2013)

History of L&D in the international climate change negotiations

1991: Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) proposes insurance pool in new climate change Convention

2007: ‘Loss and damage’ appears for the first time in a UNFCCC text

2010: Work programme on loss and damage created under Cancun Adaptation Framework

2013: Warsaw international mechanism on loss and damage established (also under CAF)

The state of the Warsaw international mechanism on L&D

Highlights from the work plan of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw international mechanism:

Identify tools, technologies, lessons learned and best practices to facilitate comprehensive risk management

Assess and develop recommendations to enhance knowledge and capacity to address slow onset processes

Invite relevant risk management and humanitarian organizations to develop country specific analyses of the risk of loss and damage and develop institutional arrangements to prevent and manage loss and damage

Establish an expert group to develop recommendations for reducing the risk of and addressing non-economic losses

Need to enhance understanding of: how loss and damage impacts vulnerable people and countries, slow onset processes and approaches to address them, human mobility and non-economic losses

See: http://unfccc.int/files/adaptation/cancun_adaptation_framework/loss_and_damage/application/pdf workplan_18sept_11am.pdf

The reality on the ground

Recent recent in nine developing countries found that L&D happens when: Coping and adaptation measures are not sufficient Coping and adaptation measures have costs that are not

recovered (both economic and non-economic) Coping and adaptation measures are erosive and increase

vulnerability No coping or adaptation measures are implemented because

of a lack of capacity or resources or because the hard limits of adaptation have been reached

See: Warner, K and K. van der Geest (2013) Loss and damage from climate change: local level evidence from nine vulnerable countries International Journal of Global Warming 5(4):367-386. Available at: http://www.lossanddamage.net/download/7237.pdf.

Conceptualizing approaches to address L&D

Avoiding L&D: Mitigation, adaptation, risk management (including risk reduction) and sustainable development

Addressing residual L&D: Risk management (including risk transfer, risk retention, relief and reconstruction)

L&D in a sea of policy agendas

Mitigation: Best way to avoid L&D but need action by those who can most influence the climate system

Adaptation: Even with high levels of mitigation there will be climate change impacts that will need to be adapted to

Risk management: Each country will need its own mix of risk reduction, risk transfer (such as microinsurance), risk retention (including social protection mechanisms) and relief/reconstruction measures appropriate for its national context

Sustainable development: Addressing development deficits helps avoid L&D and also cushions the blow when L&D cannot be avoided

What the research says . . .

Need to target adaptation strategies to ensure they benefit those who need them

Need to better understand who and what is at risk of loss and damage

Need to understand and develop ways to address non-economic loss and damage

Need to understand the limits to adaptation

See: Warner, K et al. (2012) Evidence from the frontlines of climate change: Loss and damage to communities despite coping and adaptation [online] Available at: http://i.unu.edu/media/unu.edu/publication/31467/6815.pdf.

Limits to adaptation

The IPCC (2014) defines limits to adaptation as “[t]he point at which an actor’s objectives (or system needs) cannot be secured from intolerable risks through adaptive actions” (Agard et al., 2014)

Hard limits: Adaptation is no longer possible to avoid intolerable risk

Soft limits: Adaptation strategies to avoid intolerable risk are not available

Once the limits of adaptation are reached a society can either transform or incur loss and damage (Dow et al., 2013)

See: Dow, K. et al. (2013) Limits to Adaptation Nature Climate Change 3:305-307.

The adaptation frontier

Adaptation frontier provides a safe operating space for adaptation

The ability of a society to stay within the adaptation frontier depends on: Path dependence (past choices) Adaptation and development deficits Values Extent to which future loss and damage is discounted

See: Preston, B. et al. (2013) The Climate Adaptation Frontier Sustainability 5:1011-1035 [online] Available at: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/5/3/1011.

Transformation

The IPCC (2014) defines transformation as, “a change in the fundamental attributes of a system, often based on altered paradigms, goals, or values.”

Transformational adaptation is defined as the strategies employed to reorganize systems when the limits of incremental adaptation are reached (Klein et al., 2014)

Few practical examples exist but the types of activities cited in the literature include new technology, practices or geographic scale as well as new institutions and systems of governance

Next steps

Explore synergies between existing policy agendas and address development and adaptation deficits

Improve understanding of who and what is at risk of loss and damage from future climate change impacts to inform policy making

Enhance understanding of the role of transformation in avoiding and reducing loss and damage