Demanding urgent responses to the loss and damage caused by climate change

Climate change is causing devastation across the world, with the least developed countries (LDCs) suffering the worst of its impacts, despite having made the smallest contribution to the climate crisis.

Some of these impacts manifest slowly, such as sea-level rise, ocean acidification and desertification, while others – cyclones, drought, flash flooding – hit hard and fast.  

The loss and damage from these impacts, including damage to buildings and infrastructure, destroyed crops and loss of livestock, may be repaired at a cost. Many impacts, such as death, damage to health, destruction of crucial ecosystems, and loss of cultural heritage and Indigenous knowledge, cannot be dealt with by spending money alone.

In international climate policy there is no universally agreed definition of ‘loss and damage’. But for the LDCs, these deep and irreversible impacts – while often intangible and unmeasurable – are very real and increasingly unavoidable.

They have passed the point of being dealt with through mitigation or adaptation.

Research highlights the urgent need to address loss and damage

Loss and damage needs stronger attention both at national policy level and at the climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It needs countries who have contributed most to the climate crisis to commit trillions of dollars of dedicated finance to deal with loss and damage, making sure that the money is channelled to communities so that they can define and manage the response.

IIED is working with people in LDCs to build awareness and improve understanding of lived experiences of loss and damage and to get the concept recognised as a priority issue in UNFCCC negotiations.

Research to gather more evidence of people’s experiences shows the multi-dimensional nature of the risks they face from loss and damage, the necessary combination of solutions that must be applied at different levels, and the cost of putting those solutions in place. Of course, not all loss and damage can be resolved by finance – destruction of buildings, artefacts and places destroys cultures and histories too.

The year-long project aims to create space for communities in the global South to talk with donors and decision makers about what they are doing, the solutions they have found and their priorities for action.

Through pushing for loss and damage to be top of the agenda in global policy forums, they want to re-emphasise the urgency needed to address their situations and future loss and damage elsewhere.

Blogs and animations share first-hand accounts of loss and damage

Through different content we have shared people’s personal experiences of loss and damage. In a series of blogs, listed below, representatives from Rwanda, Sierra Leone and the Solomon Islands call on governments to acknowledge the realities of loss and damage, and to provide urgently needed financial and technological support to help the LDCs manage the fast-accelerating impacts of climate change.

• Loss and damage in Rwanda: a young climate activist reports: Ineza Umuhoza Grace describes how her family was one of many thousands displaced by climate change, and calls for policymakers to recognise the disproportionately heavy losses that women and girls suffer as a result of the climate crisis.
   
• Engulfed by the sea: the loss and damage from climate change: from the Solomon Islands, Gladys Habu relays the devastation of losing an entire island – and all the life and culture that thrived there – as sea levels rise.
   
• How climate change losses could open the Solomon Islands’ old wounds: young climate activist Solomon Yeo fears depleting land and water could spark fresh tensions between ethnic groups – and lead the Solomon Islands to revisit its troubled past.
   
• Loss and damage of climate change has pushed Sierra Leoneans far beyond their ability to adapt: Gabriel Kpaka gives his personal account of how floods, sea level rise, mudslides, landslides and more are destroying lives and livelihoods in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.

• How the erosion of Nepal’s life, land and beauty is deep and irreparable: Shreya K.C. calls on world leaders to replace fake handshakes with concrete action

And in a series of animations the experiences of these same individuals are brought to life. Three of the animations are accompanied by behind-the-scenes footage, where each character gives us insights into what motivated them to tell their story on loss and damage, and share their hopes that these personal experiences will drive policymakers to act.

Watch the animations in the playlist below or on IIED's YouTube channel. The animations are available in different languages, as listed below.

The film focusing on the Solomon Islands was a finalist in the 2022 Charity Film Awards.