Tackling loss and damage risks: seven key action areas

This briefing outlines an understanding of the nature of loss and damage and the risks it poses to the people and places most vulnerable to climate impacts in least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS). Based on extensive research and consultation with stakeholders across the global South, the briefing outlines seven key features of loss and damage risk and suggest how policymakers and practitioners at national and sub-national levels and their international partners might address them in practice.

The researchers of this briefing find that actions to address loss and damage at national and local levels must account for the complex, multidimensional and inequitable nature of loss and damage risks. They must consider the intersectional lines along which vulnerability to climate impacts are distributed. They must also consider how loss and damage risks will escalate and evolve over time. Instead of focusing on economic forms of loss and damage, any action must engage with people’s lived experiences, to understand and prioritise the non-economic and informal forms of loss and damage that disproportionately affect marginalised groups and people living in poverty.