Non - Economic Loss and Damage Project
Our Non-economic Loss and Damage Project works to shine a spotlight on the non-economic dimensions of loss and damage within the UNFCCC process, academia, and other forums relevant to Loss and Damage decision-making. Through an exploration of how we can measure, assess, and address NELD, the group works to further understanding and awareness of this critical yet undervalued component of climate governance.

For enquiries related to Non-economic Loss and Damage Project please contact the project coordinator:

teo [@] lossanddamagecollaboration.org 


See concept note here:
This is a project which started at COP25 in Madrid 2019. At that meeting of the countries who are members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement, the Santiago Network for averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change (Santiago Network) was established.

The Santiago Network offered hope to frontline communities in the climate crisis that a body had been created to help them address loss and damage. This body would make sure there was action and support being provided on the ground in their communities including helping them access finance, technology and build their capacity to address these impacts. This was in the context of a world where climate impacts are increasing, and this is being felt by the most vulnerable people in our society who are the least responsible for climate change. These impacts are rapidly becoming worse.


This project started under the banner of the Loss and Damage Collaboration, an informal group of practitioners, researchers, activists and decision makers from both the global North and South who have expertise on a range of topics relating to the need to address loss and damage. It had a number of projects, including the Santiago Network Project which developed a committed group from a range of backgrounds led by Doreen Stabinsky and Heidi White who were concerned that the Santiago Network might become no more than a website.

The Santiago Network Working Group, as it was then called, has since been tireless in seeking to steer the negotiations on the Santiago Network from something that had become a website to something that had a dedicated negotiations stream under the UNFCCC, and a comprehensive decision with dedicated finance, agreed form and functions and a process for review. This included publications; advocacy e.g. interventions at meetings of negotiators on the Santiago Network and participation in and chairing of meetings of the Adaptation and Loss and Damage Friends Group which is led by the UK COP26 Presidency team; as well as coordination, capacity building, and support on the ground at the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow, United Kingdom in November 2021.

At COP26 there was positive progress, and the work of the Santiago Network Project will now shift to the 2022 negotiations where financial arrangements will be further elaborated and a decision will be adopted regarding the form or ‘institutional arrangements’ of the Santiago Network to finalise the decision to operationalise the Santiago Network and enable it to provide the help that vulnerable communities need to survive.

The Santiago Network Project is open to members from any background. It is important that our input into the negotiations is well-informed and based on the best available advice. We are particularly concerned to involve marginalised groups whose voices are not always heard to ensure the best outcome possible for the negotiations. We cannot be perfect but we can be ambitious and try as much as possible to learn from the past so that the assistance that is urgently needed is provided. These communities need help now and we need to ensure that the Santiago Network becomes effectively operationalised at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

For enquiries directly related to the Santiago Network Project please contact the Project Lead heidimareewhite [@] gmail.com
Team Members
NELD Expert
KAREN MCNAMARA
Karen McNamara, of the University of Queensland Australia, is a development geographer interested in how livelihoods can be enhanced to respond to the triple crises of poverty, disaster risk and climate change; with extensive experience working throughout the Asia-Pacific.
NELD Expert
GUY JACKSON
Guy Jackson is a human geographer, based at the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Sweden, exploring the drivers of vulnerability in socio-ecological systems. Guy is currently working on the project Recasting the Disproportionate Impacts of Climate Change Extremes at LUCSUS. Guy’s current research explores people’s experience of loss, adaptation, and immobilities. Underlying this research is an interest in understanding the (re)production of vulnerability at different spatial and temporal scales. This research seeks to further our understanding of loss and damage by using an intersectional lens and transdisciplinary approaches.
NELD Expert
ISTIAKH AHMED
Istiakh Ahmed is a doctoral student at the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Before starting his PhD, he worked as an Advisor - Climate Adaptation, NAP and NDC support programme at GIZ Bangladesh. Earlier He worked at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) as a ‘senior programme coordinator’ managing the Loss and Damage programme. He has published several journal articles, book chapters, working papers, research reports, blogs and op-eds on climate change adaptation and loss and damage.
NELD Expert
DOUWE VAN SCHIE
Douwe van Schie is a researcher focussing on on-the-ground experiences of loss and damage. He does this in collaboration with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD). Initially, Douwe focussed on non-economic impacts. However, he has shifted to a values-based approach which unifies the concepts of economic and non-econoimc loss and damage.
NELD Expert
Moleen Nand
Moleen Nand is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland. She is working on local values-based systems approaches, the impact of climatic stressors on these values, current adaptation measures, and how to address NELD now and in the future in the Pacific. Moleen was a PhD student at the University of Adelaide where her research examined social-ecological systems’ vulnerability, current adaptation strategies, and lived experiences of L&D due to cyclones and droughts in Fiji’s sugar industry. Her research also investigated L&D governance, including climate finance readiness and policy gaps in addressing NELD.
Coordinator
Teo Ormond- Skeaping
Teo Ormond-Skeaping is an award winning artist, filmmaker and photographer working on projects relating to, amongst other things, non-economic loss and damage, the governmentality of Loss and Damage. Teo also works to coordinate the Loss and Damage collaborations' Advocacy and Outreach, communications, human mobility and displacement, and Art and Culture programs, the later of which focuses on how cultural and creative practitioners can address and raise awareness of the need to address non-economic loss and damage.
Project Outputs
2023
2022