Loss and Damage
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LOSS AND DAMAGE: CLIMATE REALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY LOSS AND DAMAGE Addressing loss and damage IN THE NEW CLIMATE DEAL = Supporting those WORLD LEADERS NEED TO GET SERIOUS aected by devastating impacts of ABOUT LOSS AND DAMAGE CAUSED BY climate change. CLIMATE CHANGE WHAT WE NEED FROM GOVERNMENTS AT COP21: EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS 1.5°C Limit global warming to below 1.5°C. Phase out the use of fossil fuels. Increase the use of renewable energy. SCALING-UP ADAPTATION Massively increase nancial and other support to catalyse $ adaptation action at a scale needed to substantially reduce future losses and damages. ADDRESS LOSS AND DAMAGE: Anchor Loss and Damage, its mechanism and nancial and technical support in the Paris agreement, and promote immediate action. CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4 1. CLIMATE CHANGE INDUCED LOSS AND DAMAGE: WHY IT MATTERS 5 Adaptation can reduce losses from climate change impacts 5 When limits to adaptation are exceeded, loss and damage affects the poor 8 2. LOSS AND DAMAGE: WHAT SCIENCE TELLS US ABOUT THE FUTURE 10 3. LOSS AND DAMAGE UNDER THE UNFCCC: FIRST STEPS IN A LONG JOURNEY 12 First steps under the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage 14 Loss and Damage in the Paris Agreement 14 4. CONCLUSIONS AND COP21 RECOMMENDATIONS 15 ENDNOTES 16 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Authors: Sven Harmeling (CARE), Sandeep Chamling Rai (WWF), Harjeet Singh (ActionAid), Teresa Anderson (ActionAid), Additional inputs from: Viivi Erkkilä (CARE), Grace Cahill (ActionAid), Soren Ambrose (ActionAid), Kit Vaughan (CARE), Tasneem Essop (WWF), Tonya Rawe (CARE), Aurelie Ceinos (CARE), Ugan Manandhar (WWF), Lou Leonard (WWF). Cover photo: © Teresa Anderson / ACTIONAID EXECUTIVE SUMMARY With the current global average temperature now at around 1°C alone issue in a separate article, including establishing above pre-industrial levels, poor people in developing countries a link to mitigation and adaptation efforts, which impact are already suffering devastation from climate change impacts. on the level of loss and damage; It is therefore critical and urgent for vulnerable countries and communities to adapt to climate change impacts. Being prepared • Reflecting the need for additional financial and for changes in climate and severe weather events can reduce the technical support to be provided primarily by the impacts on people’s lives, their livelihoods and food security. For countries most responsible for causing the problem, but too long, however, action in cutting emissions and scaling-up taking into account evolving responsibilities over time; adaptation has been utterly inadequate. As a result, more and more of these impacts are exceeding people’s ability to adapt. • Ensuring that institutional arrangements under the Paris Agreement have a mandate to further strengthen Loss and damage is therefore now part of the reality of work on addressing loss and damage as the problem climate change, and must be tackled. Loss is often understood evolves (building on, but not limited to, the Warsaw as irreversible (e.g. loss of lives, species or habitats), while International Mechanism (WIM)). damages can be repaired (such as roads, embankments etc.). If the planet undergoes 2°-3°C of warming, which is a possibility with current national climate pledges – known as Intended Nationally 3. Strengthen the Warsaw International Mechanism by: Determined Contributions (INDCs) - on the table, the scale of loss and damage will be catastrophic. • Deciding that its work will continue beyond the planned 2016 review. As past greenhouse gas emissions are the main driver of climate change and associated loss and damage, historic responsibilities • Exploring and establishing financial instruments. (The for these emissions must be taken into account when it comes first step must be to establish a financial panel with a to providing financial and technical means to those countries mandate to make recommendations to ensure finance and communities most affected, and least responsible for global flows to support vulnerable communities facing the warming. This is a matter of justice and human rights. worst impacts). In the UN climate regime, governments have taken their first • Promoting additional concrete actions to assist the steps to address loss and damage, resulting in the establishment poorest and most vulnerable in facing loss and damage of the so-called Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and (e.g. the development of redress schemes, adequate Damage (WIM) which has started to work on a range of issues. regional insurance approaches, building resilience of These include understanding non-economic losses to the impacts social safety nets, generation of finance from highly of slow-onset events such as sea-level rise, to addressing climate- responsible companies, etc.) induced human mobility, and developing financial instruments for dealing with loss and damage. The knowledge and experience • Coordinating and developing legal and policy gathered through the WIM can form the basis of action to address frameworks for particular types of loss and damage, for loss and damage in the new global climate agreement. example climate displacement and migration. Exploring the role of a coordination facility, as well as addressing World leaders, as well as businesses and communities, must non-economic losses, could contribute towards this. rapidly increase their efforts to cut emissions and help people deal with their changing climate. The negotiations for a long-term • Providing for full and effective public participation durable and dynamic treaty, the Paris Agreement, must ensure in the work of the mechanism, particularly by the that the international community’s response to climate change communities most affected by loss and damage and their in the 21st century can adequately address loss and damage. representatives. Therefore, the Paris Agreement must: Overall, governments must adopt a bold way forward 1. Reduce the incidence of loss and damage by: on loss and damage in the Paris Agreement, to ensure • Enshrining the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C that the issue has permanence and durability under and establishing key underpinning mechanisms such as the new framework. a emissions phase-out goal by 2050 at the latest, and 5 year successive commitment cycles; • Scaling-up adaptation actions including through massively increasing financial and other support; and 2. Address loss and damage in the long-term by: • Anchoring loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in the Paris Agreement as a stand- Loss and Damage: Climate Reality in the 21st Century • pg 4 1. CLIMATE CHANGE INDUCED LOSS AND DAMAGE: WHY IT MATTERS Bineta Fall was one of the last farmers on the island of Baout in Senegal, until rising sea levels made soils too salty for growing rice © Clément Tardif / ACTIONAID Bineta Fall used to grow rice on the island of Baout, in Senegal. loss of lives, species or habitats), while damages can be repaired But rising sea levels have flooded her island’s rice fields so much (such as roads, embankments etc.). There will be both economic that Bineta and every other farmer on the island have been and non-economic losses1, and these losses will require both forced to abandon farming altogether. economic and non-economic measures to address them. “There is no more agriculture here. It is too salty,” Bineta says The year 2015 has seen severe humanitarian consequences as a regretfully. A determined and dedicated farmer, she was the last result of increasingly erratic weather patterns. The extreme heat person on the island to give up growing rice. waves in India and Pakistan in May and June led to the deaths of approximately 3,600 people.2 The Amazon ecosystem suffered Now the community is entirely dependent on the sea for their its worst drought in 80 years. And more than 1 million people food and livelihoods. Bineta sells fish. But without agriculture to were affected by flooding in Myanmar, with over 1 million acres 3 provide for part of their needs, they admit they have little choice of farmland inundated and more than 15,000 houses destroyed . but to overfish their local marine ecosystems, and catches are While not all of these events can be blamed on climate change getting smaller. Almost all the men on the island now fish for a alone, there is increasing certainty that man-made climate change living. But they need to stay longer and go further out to sea to is worsening the frequency and severity of these events, and that find the catches necessary for their livelihoods. As a result, more the damage is already being done. A recent study investigating 29 lives are being lost at sea. extreme weather events occurring in 2014 confirmed that many were significantly influenced by climate change. Researchers concluded that “as the science of event attribution continues With water levels flooding the village and rising faster every to advance, so too will our ability to detect and distinguish the year, the islanders are not even sure what will become of their effects of long-term climate change and natural variability on homes or island in years to come. individual extreme events.” 4 On a neighbouring island, Diamniadio, village elder Seny Sarr shares the same worries. “Each year the sea water comes higher. This year it will probably come into the village itself. Where will we be in 50 years if these sea levels continue to rise? Only God knows.” Bineta Fall’s fate is only one illustration of what thousands of vulnerable communities in developing countries already face. Loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change is a reality today. Loss is often understood as irreversible (e.g. Loss and Damage: Climate Reality in the 21st Century • pg 5 © ausnewsde / Shutterstock.com VANUATU: PROTECTING LIVES AMIDST UNPRECEDENTED DAMAGES Cyclone Pam, a Category Five cyclone, was one of the worst storms ever to hit the Pacific region when it struck in March 2015.