Understanding the Politics and Governance of Climate Change Loss and Damage

Abstract This introduction to the 2023 special issue of Global Environment Politics brings questions related to politics and political processes to the forefront in the study of climate change loss and damage. The aim of avoiding the detrimental impacts of climate change has been at the heart of the international response to global climate change for more than thirty years. Yet the development of global governance responses to climate change loss and damage—those impacts that we cannot, do not or choose not to prevent or adapt to—has only over the last decade become a central theme within the discussions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Loss and damage has also become a research topic of growing importance within an array of disciplines, from international law to the interdisciplinary environmental social sciences. However, the engagement of scholars working in the fields of political science and international relations has been more limited so far. This is surprising because questions about how to best respond to loss and damage are fundamentally political, as they derive from deliberative processes, invoke value judgments, imply contestation, demand the development of policies, and result in distributional outcomes. In this introduction we describe the context and contributions of the research articles in the special issue. By drawing on a wide range of perspectives from across the social sciences, the articles render visible the multifaceted politics of climate change loss and damage and help to account for the trajectory of governance processes.