KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE FIRST ANNUAL HIGH LEVEL DIALOGUE OF THE FUND FOR RESPONDING TO LOSS AND DAMAGE

The first annual High-Level Dialogue (HLD) co-convened by the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) and the United Nations Secretary-General was held on the 25th of April on the margins of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings.

The theme of the HLD was “Strengthening Response to Loss and Damage through Complementarity Coherence and Coordination”.

The structure of the HLD included keynote addresses; joint statement by entities that are part of the evolving landscape of the Loss and Damage Funding Arrangements and other relevant climate actors on “Complementarity, Coherence and Coordination” followed by two roundtable discussions on:

1. New Partnerships for Enhanced Responses to Loss and Damage;
2. Additional Recommendations and Strategic Partnerships for Loss and Damage;

The participants of the HLD included the FRLD, the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage, the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, high-level representatives from governments (Pakistan, South Africa, Germany, and the  COP 29 Presidency), multilateral development banks (MDBs) (e.g. the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank), international financial institutions (IFIs), United Nations Agencies (E.g. UNHCR, IOM, and UNEP), climate funds (the Adaptation Fund and Green Climate Fund), civil society, and others (e.g. the Global Shield, Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company, Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility). Each participant was requested to make a statement of a maximum of three minutes.

What are our key takeaways from the HLD?

Our top level take aways from the statements made during the HLD by entities that make up the Loss and Damage funding arrangements are as follows:

• There was a lot of talk about using insurance to respond to loss and damage by regional risk sharing facilities, MDBs and bilateral agencies. (Note that insurance can only play a very limited role in addressing loss and damage and money from the FRLD should not pay for premiums);
• The Global Shield and other related initiatives were mentioned. (Note that we consider the Global Shield to be a distraction from the FRLD and would prefer money to go to the FRLD instead);
• Many participants offered technical advice, but few were willing to offer co-financing responses to Loss and Damage with the FRLD. (There was concern that the FRLD is not an attractive investment partner at its current scale. Note that 400 billion USD is needed each year to meet the loss and damage needs of developing countries with a significant amount of this funding ideally channeled through the FRLD at scale, not the few hundred million currently available; and  
• The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) emphasized the importance of local communities and ensuring access at the community level and touted their experience in delivering small grant funding to affected communities. (Note a focus on community small grants is important to address who can directly access the FRLD and how, an issue that is currently being discussed by the Board of the FRLD).

Civil society was represented by the Liane Schalatek of Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Washington, DC, for the Women and Gender Constituency, Brandon Wu of Action Aid, USA for ENGO and for Claudia Huerta of C40 Cities for Local Governments. They raised critical points including:

• 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 at least tens of billions not hundreds of millions.
• A successful and ambitious resource mobilization effort for the FRLD must be the absolute highest priority between this first HLD and next year’s iteration.
• The FRLD should set new best practices, having learned lessons from the experiences and shortcomings of other funding entities and set standards for what should be considered Loss and Damage finance.
• Partnerships with the FRLD must:  
  
  • Aim to comprehensively address loss and damage;
  • Provide funding as grants through non-debt creating instruments;
  • Ensure that funding is new, additional, predictable, and adequate;
  • Be equitably governed and provided, including by prioritising direct access for all developing countries and affected communities;
  • Ensure the meaningful and effective participation of affected communities; and
  • Acknowledge, respect, and promote human rights.
    

Critically, civil society representatives also drew attention to the need for massive improvements on the format, participation and transparency for future HLDs, including a live webcast. In doing so they highlighted that a representative for the Indigenous Peoples constituency could not attend the HLD due to late notification of the arrangements for the HLD, visa uncertainty and missing travel support. All of this, despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples participation is mandated in the COP 28 decision establishing the HLD.

We therefore hope that the Executive Director and Secretariat of the FRLD will hear this call and make sure that the arrangements for next year's HLD are made in a timely manner. We also hope that the format of future dialogues will be more conducive to a dialogue between the entities that make up the Loss and Damage Funding Arrangements (i.e. one where participants do not just read out pre-prepared statements).

What is the outcome of the HLD?

A report detailing recommendations related to enhancing implementation of the objectives of the new Funding Arrangements emerging from the dialogue, including aspects of cooperation and coherence. This report will be provided to the Board of the FRLD by the Secretariat of the Fund, and presented in the Board’s annual report to the COP and the CMA. At the time of writing it is unclear whether a draft report will be released and on what timeline the report is being prepared. However, we hope to see the draft report made available well in advance of the 6th meeting of the Board of FRLD which will take place between the 9th and 11th of July in Cebu, in the Philippines.

A special thank you

We wish to offer our sincere appreciation to Liane Schalatek, Brandon Wu and to Claudia Huerta for their representation of UNFCCC constituencies and their invaluable reporting on the proceedings of the HLD.

Further resources

The full recording for the first annual HLD of the FRLD is now available here and a two minute video with key highlights is also available here. Our key messages for the HLD which include further information on what the objectives of the annual dialogue are and why it's important can be found here.