scholarly journals Compensating for Climate Change Loss and Damage

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A Page ◽  
Clare Heyward

With the adoption of the Warsaw International Mechanism in 2013, the international community recognised that anthropogenic climate change will result in a range of adverse effects despite policies of mitigation and adaptation. Addressing these climatic ‘losses and damages’ is now a key dimension of international climate change negotiations. This article presents a normative framework for thinking about loss and damage designed to inform, and give meaning to, these negotiations. It argues that policies addressing loss and damage, particularly those targeting developing countries, should respect norms of compensatory justice which aim to make victims of unwarranted climatic disruptions ‘whole again’. The article develops a typology of different kinds of climate change disruption and uses it to (1) explain the differences between ‘losses’ and ‘damages’, (2) assign priorities among compensatory measures seeking to address loss and damage and (3) explore a range of equitable responses to loss and damage.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Jorge Gabriel Arévalo García

Anthropogenic climate change has and will have unavoidable adverse effects despite mitigation and adaptation policies. Therefore, the financial burden of the costs of loss and damage must be distributed fairly and proportionally. This implies that those responsible for climate change must take responsibility and compensate those who suffer losses and, if possible, repair the damages related to this phenomenon. However, climate justice has been limited by the lack of a causal link between a specific climate change effect and specific damages or losses. Accordingly, this article discusses the compensation and reparation of losses and damages related to the adverse effects of climate change, as a stream applicable after mitigation and adaptation policies. In addition, this article reviews the implications of the relevant findings that established the existence and development of climate change as a problem that affects the enjoyment of human rights, to argue how the theory of human rights can contribute to the current legal model for reparation and compensation for losses and damages associated with climate change. Also, due to the impossibility of obtaining a legally binding agreement as a structure for integration, and to adequately address the problem of causes, consequences, benefits and burdens, vulnerable groups ought to be the most affected.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-0
Author(s):  
Monika Adamczak-Retecka

The topic of loss and damage in the context of climate change has gained increasing importance in the UNFCCC climate change talks in recent years. The Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage was established after two years of deliberations by the Conference of the Parties (COP) 19 in 2013. It is supposed to be the main vehicle under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to promote the implementation of approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in a comprehensive integrated and coherent manner.


Climate Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Broberg

With the 2015 Paris Agreement, ‘loss and damage’ (L&D) was introduced into the unfccc treaty framework as a new, third substantive area of climate change law. Both before and after its adoption, this new area has been subject to much contention—and this is reflected in a high degree of uncertainty surrounding its interpretation. This article examines the definition of L&D and the types of impact covered by the notion. It also examines the relationship of L&D with mitigation and adaptation, as well as the instruments that are covered by it. Finally, the article considers the controversial issue of who can invoke L&D—and against whom.


The global climate crisis is not just a matter of fixing industry so that it can produce profitably and contaminate less. There is a far more pressing issue facing us: how to address the negative climate impacts of development that is irresponsible in terms of its human and environmental costs. Mitigation and adaptation are two fundamental pillars of the climate debate. Technological equity and efficiency (mitigation) and the capacity of communities to brace themselves in the face of climate change (adaptation), are both fundamental to advance international climate change negotiations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-177
Author(s):  
Serge Silatsa Nanda ◽  
Omar Samba ◽  
Ahmad Sahide

The adoption of international climate agreements requires thorough negotiation between parties. This study aims to analyse the inequities between developed and developing countries in climate negotiations. This was done through a scrutiny of the main stages of these negotiations from the Rio Conference to the advent of the Paris Agreement. Our analysis has shown pervasive inequities along the climate negotiations over time. The UNFCCC made a qualitative separation between developed and developing countries in the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. Furthermore, the Kyoto Protocol emphasized this with the commitment of developed countries to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5%. The Kyoto Protocol by introducing flexibility mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) contributed to increase inequalities. The Paris Agreement has increased inequity by requesting each country to submit nationally determined contributions (NDCs) even though the global emission of developing countries remains very low. The negotiation style of developing countries is mostly limited to compromise and accommodation to the desires of the powerful states, as is the case in most international cooperation. The reality of the climate change negotiations mirrors the inequalities between developed and developing nations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 164 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad S. Boda ◽  
Turaj Faran ◽  
Murray Scown ◽  
Kelly Dorkenoo ◽  
Brian C. Chaffin ◽  
...  

AbstractLoss and damage from climate change, recognized as a unique research and policy domain through the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) in 2013, has drawn increasing attention among climate scientists and policy makers. Labelled by some as the “third pillar” of the international climate regime—along with mitigation and adaptation—it has been suggested that loss and damage has the potential to catalyze important synergies with other international agendas, particularly sustainable development. However, the specific approaches to sustainable development that inform loss and damage research and how these approaches influence research outcomes and policy recommendations remain largely unexplored. We offer a systematic analysis of the assumptions of sustainable development that underpins loss and damage scholarship through a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed research on loss and damage. We demonstrate that the use of specific metrics, decision criteria, and policy prescriptions by loss and damage researchers and practitioners implies an unwitting adherence to different underlying theories of sustainable development, which in turn impact how loss and damage is conceptualized and applied. In addition to research and policy implications, our review suggests that assumptions about the aims of sustainable development determine how loss and damage is conceptualized, measured, and governed, and the human development approach currently represents the most advanced perspective on sustainable development and thus loss and damage. This review supports sustainable development as a coherent, comprehensive, and integrative framework for guiding further conceptual and empirical development of loss and damage scholarship.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-95
Author(s):  
Feiyue Li

Abstract The idea of ‘fairness’ may be viewed as fundamental to a nation’s participation in the development of the international legal system governing climate change. As the second-largest economy and the largest Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emitter in the world, China’s actions on climate change are critical to the global response. Indeed, international cooperation on climate change is unlikely to succeed without China’s active engagement. Therefore, China’s perception of the fairness of responsibility allocation will significantly influence its attitudes toward its international climate responsibilities. However, limited work has been done to date to concretely examine China’s perspective of the fairness of responsibility allocation and to understand its fairness discourses and practices of climate responsibility in a dynamically evolved process. This article aims to fill that gap in the literature by elucidating how China perceives the fair allocation of climate responsibility and how its fairness discourses and practices have evolved over the course of the three phases of international climate change negotiations. It will be shown that China has perceived the factors of historically accumulated emissions, per capita emissions and capability to lie at the very core of its understanding of fairness.


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