Towards CS4L&D: Advancing climate services for loss and damage

Abstract

Losses and damages from climate change are not just a future risk but already a present reality, and “Loss and Damage” (L&D) as a policy domain has been formalised under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), alongside mitigation and adaptation. While climate services currently provide strong support for adaptation and disaster recovery, here we propose that an expanded set of climate services for L&D (CS4L&D) should be developed to help address climate justice implications of realised losses and damages. CS4L&D could pragmatically connect research on climate hazards and lived experiences of impacts with global political negotiations on L&D and transformative climate action and justice. Existing disaster databases and extreme event attribution services could be enhanced with knowledge relevant for L&D, including information on exposure, vulnerability, adaptive capacity, financial support, and governance. Existing disaster forensics tools could be enriched with knowledge on L&D in the UNFCCC context, including the political and legal implications of evidence these tools provide. A broadening from risk management to climate justice also awakens new possibilities for climate services. An expansion of climate services for L&D would contribute to climate justice by substantiating the L&D mechanism under Article 8 of the Paris Agreement and the claims for compensating L&D in climate litigation and activism. Novel users (and co-producers) of climate services for L&D might be legal professionals, journalists, affected communities, and activists, in addition to the traditional users such as planners, consultants, and decision-makers. We encourage the L&D and climate services communities to begin to co-develop with stakeholders such climate services for L&D.