Publications

Loss and Damage Finance for Children

By Lucy Szaboova and Cristina Colón
29 / 12 / 2023
Slow- and sudden-onset climate events are increasingly impacting children’s safety and security and are widening the gap between protection needs and provisions. Photo credit: UNICEF/UN0792935/Andrianandrasana

Climate-related loss and damage – such as the loss of land, life, livelihoods or cultural heritage – is one of the greatest intergenerational injustices that children face today. It threatens the rights of current and future generations of children

Despite being the least responsible for causing the climate crisis, the children of today and tomorrow will face its impacts, including loss and damage, more acutely than any other generation to date.

Yet children and their rights are largely absent from policy discussions and climate finance allocations. Where children are considered, they are treated only as vulnerable victims rather than as active agents of change.

This report explores losses and damages that relate directly to children’s rights and well-being:

  • It identifies opportunities for the United Nation's Loss and Damage Fund, together with other loss and damage financing, to address the negative impacts of loss and damage on present and future generations of children.
  • It emphasizes that efforts to respond to loss and damage should be guided by the principle of upholding the rights of children.

The report also features insights from workshops with children aged 11-18, sharing their lived experiences of loss and damage and their recommendations in their own words.

Read the full paper here: