Key Messages
■ Loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change is inevitable due to a combination of factors operating in tangent with each other. These include the failure to achieve desired greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation levels by a set period of time beyond which there are high risks of the climate system entering into an irreversible phase, and failure to achieve effective adaptation amongst vulnerable people.
■ Stakeholders engaged in L&D have a clear but diverse understanding of the definition of L&D and how it can be mitigated. While there appears to be some agreement on L&D being defined as the residual losses and damages after implementing adaptation actions, others call for the need to apply a more broadlybased definition, with L&D providing the impetus for stronger mitigation and adaptation outcomes.
■ Several proposals to address L&D were made to the processes under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It has been found that the principles which countries support for international negotiations and the scope of L&D for a country are largely governed by its potential vulnerability to climate change and the predicted impact of climate change. It is evident that the economic power of a country largely determined its support of risk insurance and related funding mechanisms.
■ Despite the high emphasis on risk insurance and related financial risk management options, in the current discussion on L&D there is little evidence on how risk insurance will help reduce L&D, especially non-economic L&D (NELD). There is a need in the design of risk insurance products to optimise L&D reduction outcomes.
■ Decision makers need to be provided with a set of simple tools/formats to help capture major NELD that impacts decision-making for optimal climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) outcomes