The Third Pillar of International Climate Change Policy: On ‘Loss and Damage’ after the Paris Agreement, edited by Morten Broberg and Beatriz Martinez Romera Routledge, 2021, 134 pp, £120 hb, £44.99 ebk ISBN 9780367676681 hb, 9781003132271 ebk

Abstract

To the extent that there was still any doubt, the climate-related disasters of 2020 and 2021 – including historical wildfires, unprecedented heatwaves, massive flooding, extended droughts, and rapid melting of ice sheets – unequivocally demonstrate that it is too late to avoid some consequences associated with climate change. While it remains essential to pursue ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation, we can neither prevent nor adapt to some forms of climate-related harm. Developing countries, many of which bear only minimal responsibility for emitting greenhouse gases, are likely to suffer the greatest losses and have the least ability to recover without assistance. Recognizing this injustice, the Association of Small-Island States (AOSIS) and developing countries have long advocated the inclusion of a loss-and-damage mechanism in international climate policy. In 1991, during the negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), AOSIS proposed that developed countries create and finance a global insurance policy to cover climate-related loss and damage. After decades of advocacy, loss and damage were finally incorporated into the international climate regime, firstly, through the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) in 2013 and then through Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, a dedicated loss-and-damage provision that emphasizes ‘the importance of averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change’. Only a year after adopting