The Loss and Damage Moment?
The rising temperatures and seas around us suggest that our efforts to prevent dangerous climate change are failing.
In light of our failure, most nations have turned to dealing with the new normal that those changes have wrought. In climate-speak, they have turned attention from ‘mitigation’ to ‘adaptation’.
But what, if anything, can we do when efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change are not enough?
The countries most vulnerable to climate change, the so-called ’Small Island Developing States’ and ‘Least Developed Countries’ have been raising this question for the past two decades. The prospects for island nations such as Tuvalu and Kiribati help us understand the very real limits to adaptation.
With a sea-level rise of just 1 meter — a conceivable consequence this century on the pathway that we are on — these member states of the United Nations could disappear off the face of the Earth.
Enter the conversation, then, the thorny issue of “Loss and Damage”. First raised two decades ago by developing countries, there are now tentative signs that the issue may be taken seriously.
A major shift in the debate has been the way that developing countries have delinked the recently established ‘Warsaw Mechanism’ from issues of compensation. In turn, developed countries have accepted that the loss and damage question must be faced, despite lingering worries that it may render them liable for paying up for dangerous climate damage.
Does such a shift represent capitulation by developing countries? Or an adept strategy to shift the dial on correcting historical injustices?
On the table now in Paris is the option to recognize loss and damage in its own section of the awaited agreement. Proponents of this position — Small Island Developing states and Least Developed Countries — argue that since the issue comes into play when adaptation fails, it merits its own category as an important part of the climate architecture going forward.
Countering this position, industrialized countries opposing loss and damage would prefer instead to entirely avoid any reference to the issue.
Negotiators from both sides appear well aware of what is at stake: beyond semantics, whether the issue is inserted, and where, will have wide-ranging repercussions for climate finance.
Will future climate losses and damages be compensated? How they will be ajudged to be a result of climate change? How will they be economically valued? How can one even put a value on the loss of an entire existence?
Such questions are inherently political and moral in nature.
One way or another, the Paris talks will mark a litmus test of the political will to face up to the difficult questions that come into play in light of our failure in mitigation and adaptation.
President Obama, on the opening day of the ongoing talks Paris, lent his support to “stand with the island states” in pursuing a new agreement.
Just how lost and quite how damaged those island states are in the coming years depends in large part on talks this week.
Will we look back on Paris as the ‘Loss and Damage Moment’?
