A CONVERSATION BETWEEN FRIENDS: REFLECTING ON THE EVOLVING LOSS AND DAMAGE LANDSCAPE AND SHARING A VISION FOR THE FUTURE

‍Hafij Khan and Erin Roberts have been friends and colleagues for over 12 years. Over that time, the Loss and Damage landscape under the United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or the Convention) has evolved. Yet, it still falls so very short of meeting the needs for addressing loss and damage in vulnerable developing countries: the role of the Convention and its Paris Agreement in the context of Loss and Damage. We need to mobilise hundreds of billions, not hundreds of millions, and get it to where it is needed most: the countries and communities on the front lines of climate change in the Global South. That is why we do the work we do. And if you’re reading this, it’s probably what motivates you too.

Recently Hafij, the Co-chair of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WM), the Co-coordinator of Loss and Damage for the LDC Group in the UNFCCC negotiations and the director of the Centre for Climate Justice-Bangladesh (CCJ-B) and Erin, the global lead of the Loss and Damage Collaboration (L&DC), reflected on the history of Loss and Damage policy discourse, the evolution of the landscape and where we need to go next to create a world in which all humans, all other species and all ecosystems are thriving on a healthy planet. This blog is an outcome of that conversation. We hope you enjoy this journey through time, from a reflection of the past to a contemplation of the present to a vision for the future.

Nearly 12 years ago, a young, naïve and dare I (Erin) say, clueless, woman arrived in Dhaka for a great adventure. She had recently finished her Master’s degree on international development and had signed up to be an intern supporting the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) on a project focused on community based adaptation. A few days after arriving she was asked by her boss, Saleemul Huq, to attend a coordination meeting of the Least Developed Country (LDC) Group, a negotiating bloc of then 49 countries working together in the climate negotiations under the UNFCCC. At that meeting she met Hafij Khan, who by then, had been working with the LDC Group and negotiating for Bangladesh for four years.

A few weeks later Saleem informed me (Erin) that he needed a coordinator for a project on Loss and Damage. Her response (in the privacy of her own head) was something along the lines of: “What and what?” As we said, she was clueless. But nevertheless she decided to rise to the challenge, step into bigger shoes and become the coordinator of the project, which was focused on translating the global Loss and Damage for the national context in Bangladesh. Little did she know that that decision would change the course of her life.

Meanwhile, Hafij was already engaged in the project in his capacity as the founder of CCJ-B. We became colleagues and eventually friends. When Erin became an advisor to the LDC Group, we began to work even more closely together. Hafij helped Erin learn the ropes of the UNFCCC negotiations along with so many others including Sumaya Zakieldeen, Idy Niang and (now Ambassador) Adao Soares Barbosa. Those early days of working on Loss and Damage were, in many ways, quite exciting and in other ways, extremely difficult.

There was a lot of curiosity about how loss and damage could be assessed and addressed. But it was still so marginalised and woefully under funded; living on the margins of climate action despite the fact that loss and damage was already manifesting in every part of the world, hitting the most vulnerable in the Global South, those least responsible for climate change, the hardest. Sometimes when we introduced ourselves and told folks what issue we worked on, they would literally take a step back, as if they might catch something just by being close to us.

The discussions on Loss and Damage were always driven by the countries most affected by climate change: developing countries in the Global South. And you likely know, in 1991 as what would become the UNFCCC was being negotiated, Vanuatu on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) submitted a proposal for a mechanism to compensate SIDS for the effects of sea level rise. Yet, for nearly two decades, Loss and Damage did not feature in the UN climate negotiations. When the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, began to provide evidence of the scale and scope of current impacts of climate change and foretell a future of widespread loss and damage the issue could no longer be ignored.

We met and began working together five years after “loss and damage” was first introduced as a term in the Bali Action Plan at the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in 2007 in the context of enhancing adaptation, including disaster reduction strategies and measures to address loss and damage. The following year, AOSIS submitted a proposal for a mulit-window mechanism on Loss and Damage that would include an insurance component, a rehabilitation and compensatory component and a risk management component. Two years later, at COP 16 in Cancùn, Mexico, Loss and Damage was formally acknowledged in the Cancun Agreements, which recognised the need for international cooperation to understand and reduce loss and damage and established a two-year work programme to consider approaches to address loss and damage in particularly vulnerable developing countries.

When the work programme was established, Bangladesh approached the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) to ask for support to understand what national approaches to addressing loss and damage might look like. The project that resulted from those conversations was called the Loss and Damage in Vulnerable Countries Initiative and was led by Germanwatch with the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII), United Nations University Institute for the Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), leading the global policy work and ICCCAD, leading the work in Bangladesh.

The global team, which included Soenke Kreft, Sven Harmeling, Koko Warner and Kees van der Geest did research on Loss and Damage at all levels, curated discussions and provided thought leadership to help drive discussion on Loss and Damage under the UNFCCC. We had our sights on COP 18 in Doha where Parties would consider the outcome of the work programme and determine the role of the Convention in the context of Loss and Damage (the policy agenda to address loss and damage).

In Doha we had a lot of long nights. Sometimes we worked right through the night and into the following day. In the end, in decision 3/CP.18, Parties decided that the role of the Convention vis-a-vis Loss and Damage is to promote the implementation of approaches to address loss and damage, including by enhancing knowledge and understanding, strengthening dialogue and coordination and enhancing action and support. This remains the cornerstone of the Loss and Damage landscape.

If you look back at that decision, and we encourage you to do so, you’ll get a sense of what that discussion was like. There is a list of actions that countries could take to address loss and damage, with an emphasis on the importance of systematic observation and data collection to assess loss and damage. Parties also laid out critical questions for further investigation. Developed countries were requested to provide support to developing countries in accordance with the Cancun Agreements (decision 1/CP.16) and other relevant COP decisions. And, importantly, Parties decided to establish, the following year at COP 19, institutional arrangements, including the possibility of an international mechanism, to address loss and damage in particularly developing countries. As we sat in plenary listening to the decision being read out and then gavelled in that Sunday in Doha, I (Erin) began to cry. It felt like an important moment, the breakthrough that was needed to support those on the frontlines of climate change in developing countries for whom, even then, loss and damage was already a daily reality.

Our optimism was perhaps premature looking back now. The hard work had only just begun and the politics of Loss and Damage began to get trickier to navigate. Loss and Damage was called at times a “toxic issue”, a framing we found very unhelpful. Because, at the end of the day, avoiding loss and damage is the reason why the countries of the world came together to develop, and then ratify a framework convention on climate change. It is the raison d’etre as it were. Yet, though the historical responsibility of developed countries and their obligations to provide climate finance to developing countries are inscribed in the Convention, a legally binding treaty, high income countries whose development led to anthropogenic climate change, had continued to dodge both their historical responsibility and their obligations (and in fact, continue to do so today). Loss and Damage was clearly confronting for them. Because it was, at the end of the day, about repaying a climate debt long owed and required confronting some dark shadows related to  how they got to where they are.

The lack of willingness of developed countries to confront those realities also led to lack of funding for work on Loss and Damage at all levels, but particularly for global work on the UNFCCC. Our global project became a victim of its own success. Initially we were told it would be extended for two more years. But politics played out in a way that made that impossible in the end. In mid-2013 we were told our project would end after COP 19. With that declaration, our work together became a sprint to a finish line. Our aim became making the outcome of COP 19 as ambitious as possible: the establishment of a truly robust mechanism to fulfil the functions that Parties had agreed the previous year.

Throughout 2013 we continued to do research and curate discussions and we worked across developing countries. Our team also continued to attend workshops and contribute to conversations across the world. Then, an important opportunity came along. Saleem was given an opportunity to hold a meeting at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre on the shores of Lake Como in Italy. He suggested convening a meeting of developing country negotiators and experts working on Loss and Damage to prepare for COP 19, where Parties would decide what institutional arrangements would be established to fulfill the role of the Convention.

That meeting took place in October of 2013, a week before developing countries would begin arriving in Warsaw for the preparatory meetings. That meeting brought together lead negotiators and advisors from the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), AOSIS, the Group of 77 and China and the LDC Group, along with negotiators from Latin America and Asia. The meeting was organised by Juan Pablo Hoffmaister, who was then the lead negotiator on Loss and Damage for the G77 and China and myself (Erin). Those in attendance can be seen in the photo featured at the top of this blog.

Members of our global team were also invited to provide ideas based on their research as was Roda Verheyen, an international environmental lawyer who recently represented Saúl Luciano Liluya in his case against German energy giant RWE. Over four intense days we developed a proposal for a truly robust international mechanism that would sit under the UNFCCC. It would have a policy arm to provide guidance and enhance understanding and promote coordination, a technical arm and a financial arm to enhance action and support.

From Bellagio many of us went straight to Warsaw (Erin on the train which was a cool experience). It was another intense COP. Long days and nights negotiating an outcome. The tension was thick and the emotions were high. It was clear how much was on the line. LIves, livelihoods and futures on one hand and finance on the other. Developed countries refused to commit to establishing the kind of mechanism developing countries had come to see established.

In the end, the proposal from the G77 and China was not accepted by developed countries and the outcome, the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), was much less robust than envisioned (in decision 2/CP.19). An Executive Committee (ExCom) was established to guide the work of the WIM in fulfilling its functions which would eventually come to have 10 members from developing countries and ten from developed countries as agreed at COP 20 in Lima the following year (in decision 2/CP.20)

Our project ended after COP 19. I (Erin) moved back to London to begin her PhD and was recruited to work for the African Climate Policy Centre and eventually began to work with the AGN on both adaptation and Loss and Damage. And I (Hafij) continued his work in Bangladesh and with the LDC Group as co-coordinator with (now Ambassador) Adao Soares Barbosa. We continued to work together with Saleem on various projects focused on Loss and Damage and then came Paris...

We were all there: Myself (Hafij) as a negotiator for Bangladesh with the LDC Group and me (Erin) working with the AGN and Saleem representing civil society. It was another intense two-weeks of negotiations and there were many disappointing moments, particularly on the way in which the outcome on Loss and Damage was negotiated. While Loss and Damage was included as a separate article, distinct from adaptation, the language was watered down and not aligned with what Parties had agreed to at COP 18 and 19with averting and minimising included alongside addressing loss and damage. This served to dilute the focus on addressing loss and damage that has been experienced and oddly, added averting loss and damage (which is best done through mitigation) and minimising loss and damage (which is effectively adaptation). In the closing plenary I (Erin) cried again. But these were not tears of happiness, but rather fat tracks of despair running down my face.

Rather than driving the discussions and the work on Loss and Damage, decision 1/CP.21 and the Paris Agreement, set progress back. The Paris Agreement also set in motion a now nearly decade long debate on the governance of the WIM. In Article 8.2 Parties decided that the WIM would be subject to the authority and governance of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA). Developed countries interpret this to mean the WIM should be governed solely by the CMA. Developing countries argue that the WIM being governed by the CMA does not supersede nor replace governance by the COP under which it was established. Rather, the WIM is governed by both governing bodies overseeing the implementation of these two international treaties. If anything, the governance of the COP supersedes that of the CMA given that the Convention is the foundational treaty and the Paris Agreement is the subsidiary legal instrument that sits under it. Hence, the correct way of capturing the relationship between the two treaties is: Convention and its Paris Agreement.

After Paris things got harder for all of us. Many of those in our community were down for a very long time. We both struggled. But then we got up and dusted ourselves off and the work began again. And if possible, it got even harder. Now we had to contend with a focus on averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage; to fight for a focus on addressing loss and damage despite the fact that the mandate of the WiM was unchanged de jure. But there was a concerted push from developed countries to change its mandate de facto. That was backed up by a refusal to send mirror decisions to the COP and the CMA as the secretariat shared the interpretation of developed countries on the governance issue. Developing countries were fighting on so many fronts with little, and in some cases, no resources. We often worked pro bono. Financed ourselves to get to meetings. Negotiators had to take on multiple jobs to make ends meet. Funding for Loss and Damage was more difficult than ever before.

In 2018 we began another project under the guidance of Saleem funded by Mercy Corps with support from Practical Action and implemented by ICCCAD. We began to  organise workshops on Loss and Damage before each UNFCCC session for developing country negotiators, including those representing the AGN, AILAC, AOSIS and the LDC Group with the first happening before the second UNFCCC intersessional in Bangkok that year. The funding enabled us to have strategies for the Loss and Damage negotiations and bring experts from civil society together with negotiators from across developing country Parties and groups. Those workshops continued through 2019 and helped create space to strategise for the second review of the WIM at COP 25 in Madrid. In those meetings we brought back the work we’d done six years earlier in Bellagio. Developing countries called for more focus on enhancing action and support, the third function of the WIM, which had been largely neglected until then.

While the review did not culminate in a financial arm as some developing countries had been calling for, it did lead to the establishment of the Santiago Network to catalyse technical assistance to developing countries under the WIM. This was an important development and a significant step forward in building out the architecture on Loss and Damage under the UNFCCC. But there was still no significant milestone on finance despite the fact that some developing countries called for a fund to be guided by the ExCom to disperse funding to developing countries to address loss and damage. Attempts by some developing countries, led by AOSIS, to establish a window in the Green Climate Fund to respond to extreme weather events were also not successful. The Loss and Damage landscape was growing but there was still very little funding to meet the needs on the ground.

Then came the pandemic and, with it, a break from UNFCCC meetings in 2020. Our work became entirely virtual for nearly two years. Finally discussions resumed at COP 26 in Glasgow in late 2021. In the final days, developing countries under the leadership of the G77 and China called for a finance facility to address loss and damage. The proposal was for a finance facility of Loss and Damage that was guided by previous COP decision and went beyond insurance-like instruments to provide direct access to finance to enable vulnerable developing countries to address both economic and non-economic loss and damage. The proposal was clear that the facility must be financed with new and additional climate finance, distinct from that provided for mitigation and adaptation. Instead, Parties decided to establish the Glasgow Dialogue to discuss the funding of activities related to Loss and Damage. The first Dialogue took place at the 56th session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB 56) in June of 2022, the second at SB 58 in 2024 and the third at SB 60 in 2024. Some of the reflections that arose from three years of the Glasgow Dialogue include:  

• The importance of coordination and synergy between the work under the Santiago Network and the ExCom was stressed, particularly with regard to implementing capacity-building activities and enabling the technical guides being developed by the ExCom to support developing countries in responding to loss and damage.
• The proposal to hold regular meetings between the co-chairs of the three Loss and Damage entities to strengthen coherence and coordination. This proposal has arisen in discussions in each of the ExCom, Santiago Network and FRLD meetings —but has not yet been operationalised.
• The ExCom and the Santiago Network Advisory Board to hold outreach events together and collaborate on communications to enhance the dissemination of knowledge products and promote synergies in liaising with country focal points, such as UNFCCC national focal points and loss and damage contact points, capitalising on the convening power of the ExCom.
• The FRLD should be the central coordination entity within the Loss and Damage funding arrangements, rather than merely a “gap filler”, to do so it needs to reach a scale of hundreds of billions not hundreds of millions. As a coordinating mechanism, the FRLD can leverage the WIM and the Santiago Network to promote the exchange of information and good practices.

These lessons were meant to inform discussions on how to finance efforts to address loss and damage under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement. They were not easy discussions. But developing countries and civil society persisted in underscoring again and again, the scale and scope of the needs in developing countries for addressing loss and damage that was already happening. Loss and Damage was no longer a discussion of the future, but one of the urgent needs of the now.

Finally, at COP 27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh in 2022, a Fund on Loss and Damage was born (in decision 1/CP.27). Parties decided that the operationalisation of the fund would be guided by a transitional committee which met five times in 2023 and finally agreed on the proposed governing instrument  for the Fund and suggested establishing a Board consisting 26 members.

Saleem was acting as an advisor to the LDC Group and his team was supporting members of the Transitional Committee. But Saleem sadly left us far too soon one Saturday evening while at home in late October of that year. It was with heavy hearts, still grieving, that we travelled to Dubai for COP 28 in late 2023. Our spirits were buoyed temporarily when the Fund was operationalised at the opening plenary, the governing instrument adopted. Shortly thereafter, pledges began to come in, including from the UAE. While it was a step forward, again, it was again far too little and far too late.

Now, a year and a half since that pivotal moment in Dubai, of the 768.40 million USD pledged to the FRLD, just 333.89 million USD  —less than half— has been paid into the Fund to date. This is less than 0.2 per cent of the 395 [128–937] billion USD that has been quantified as the midpoint average for the expected Loss and Damage funding needs of developing countries in 2025. Despite this massive gap, we have seen the number of pledges to the FRLD dwindle to a trickle, with just three new pledges being made at COP 29, by Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the work continues. The ExCom continues to work to deliver on its functions (enhancing understanding, strengthening coherence and enhancing action and support for addressing loss and damage) with an increasing focus on the need to support national efforts to address loss and damage. The Santiago Network is operationalised and has received two requests - from Vanuatu and Iraq - with Vanuatu’s request already matched with technical support. At the fourth meeting of the Advisory Board, members decided that, along with its base in Geneva, the Network will also have regional offices in Bangkok, Dar Es Salam and Panama.

As for the FRLD, at the last meeting of the Board (the fifth to take place since the FRLD was operationalised),the Barbados Implementation Modilities (BIM) was established bringing with it, a two-year start up phase for the Fund. Board members decided that 250 million USD would be established with an allocation of between five and 20 million USD for each project approved. The Board will meet twice more this year to discuss the operationalisation of the BIM, participation of observers and the resource mobilisation strategy, which is critically important given the gap between the amount of funding that has been provided to the FRLD and that which is ultimately needed to address the needs on the ground in developing countries.

We need to transition from mobilising hundreds of millions, to hundreds of billions, and eventually trillions for Loss and Damage. Coordination, coherence and complementarity among these three constituted bodies under UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement are also critical as is ensuring that developing countries have the capacity to develop national policies and plans. At the national level, Loss and Damage contact points, liaisons for Santiago Network and focal point or national authorities for FRLD need to work in a coordinated manner to access policy guidance, technical assistance and financial resources from the global Loss and Damage landscape.

The third review of WIM, meant to be held at COP 29, will continue at SB 62. This is a critical moment for Loss and Damage under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement and an important opportunity to provide required guidance for ensuring coordination, coherence and complementarity at the global, national and local levels across the Loss and Damage landscape. We need to see a State of Loss and Damage report to provide both a backward looking assessment of where we’ve been and a forward looking analysis of where we need to get to and a mandate for the ExCom to provide support to national planning processes on Loss and Damage. Among many other things to start to build out the Loss and Damage architecture to deliver the support developing countries and frontline communities within them need in a changing world. You can find a more comprehensive overview of what we need to see on the review to set us on track to creating the world we want here.

Our vision for the future is of a thriving humanity living on a healthy planet. A planet that is home to flourishing ecosystems that enable all life on planet Earth to flourish too. The Loss and Damage landscape can and must help us get there. We see the ExCom as the policy farm, the Santiago Network as the technical or implementation arm and the FRLD as the financial arm of the Loss and Damage architecture. There is enough money in the world to enable that vision to become a reality. We need to see resource mobilisation become a central feature of the work of all three bodies to ensure finance is available at the scale of the needs. And of course, we need to see developed countries finally stepping up to fulfill their obligations to provide climate finance for developing countries to ensure loss and damage can be addressed at the scale and scope of the needs.

In five years we expect the ExCom to be providing guidance to support developing countries in the development of national plans, policies and to establish institutional structures that facilitate actions at local, national and regional levels. We expect the Santiago Network tol be fully funded with a thriving network of organisations, bodies, networks and experts delivering much-needed technical advice to help developing countries understand their needs both today and tomorrow and to develop national plans to address both current and future loss and damage. We expect the FRLD to be delivering at least 400 billion USD in support to developing countries to support frontline communities annually. And we expect this constellation of institutional arrangements on Loss and Damage to be working together; aligned, coherent and coordinated.

Doing so, would bring us full circle to the kind of world we imagine the architects of the UNFCCC envisioned when it was first established. We were not successful in avoiding loss and damage and we can’t roll back the clock but we can set humanity on course to a brighter future. And as we’ve already said above, the money exists to do just that. Our work is about seeing it mobilised and channeled to those who need it most. And we’ll be working together now more than ever before to ensure that happens in our respective roles. We will be taking Saleem’s legacy forward, drawing on the lessons he left behind and the parts of us where he still lives: our hearts.  We hope you’ll join us.