Stories
WHY A REAL MOSAIC OF SOLUTIONS IS FUNDAMENTAL FOR LOSS AND DAMAGE RESPONSE
20/5/26
Imagine you are a policy maker in a developing country. Right now your country is facing the escalating impacts of climate change. Extreme weather events like hurricanes are more intense. Slow motion climate disasters like sea level rise, desertification, and glacial recession are accelerating. Heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires are all more likely to happen. In just a few hours your country could experience loss and damage equivalent to a large percentage of your GDP. In the coming decades, significant areas of your country—or your entire country— could become uninhabitable.
At the same time, escalating geopolitical tensions and the war in the Middle East are amplifying the cost of living crisis, set in motion by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Food, fuel, medicine, and building materials are more expensive and shortages are expected. Humanitarian and development finance —already inadequate— have been slashed as the spending priorities of Global North contributors shift to militarisation and domestic cost of living challenges. Progress on sustainable development is already facing significant setbacks. Millions more people may fall into extreme poverty. Food insecurity, disease, and social unrest is increasing. There are never enough resources to meet urgent needs. You and your government are perpetually overwhelmed.
You are acutely aware of the loss of biodiversity, culture, and livelihoods your country and your citizens face. You lose sleep over the number of lives and livelihoods lost. The homes, schools, and roads destroyed in seconds. The decades of progress on sustainable development eroded. The injustice of paying for a disaster that your country did little or nothing to cause.
You face impossible choices every single day. Choices between making debt payments or keeping basic health and education services going. Choices between taking on more debt to rebuild, or not being able to rebuild at all. Choices between investing what little money you have available in your budget in ecosystem protection, disaster risk reduction (DRR), early warning systems, or climate adaptation. Choices that should never have to be made.
You face constant, unrelenting pressure. Pressure to increase logging, mining and fossil fuel extraction to meet development needs and pay back illegitimate debts. Pressure to privatise national services and infrastructure to attract investment and satisfy debt obligations. Pressure to meet conditionalities set by lenders and contributors that don't align with national priorities. Pressure that should never be felt.
You face rules stacked against you. International tax rules that favour the 1 percent, Global North countries, and their corporations. Trade rules that have locked your country into dependence on the export of raw materials and import of expensive food. Borrowing costs that are far higher for your country than those in the Global North. Rules that should be fair.
And when you try to access what little support there is available. You are asked to develop a funding proposal the size of a PhD thesis for just a few million dollars when billions are needed. You pay high premiums for insurance but wind speeds are deemed not high enough to trigger payment, despite loss and damage in the billions. The support that arrives is too little, too late, and requires burdensome reporting.
Yet, you do your best, knowing full well the recovery and reconstruction that is possible could soon be obliterated by the next disaster. You innovate with what little you have. You drive up ambition on the world’s stage, demanding action, not just for your country, but for all.
But without finance and support at the scale of the needs, without changing the rules of the game, you fear that your country will barely survive. But you never give up and never stop searching for solutions.
Perhaps it was for all of these reasons that during United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP 27, as negotiations to establish The Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) were ongoing, the Maldives’ Minister of Environment, H.E. Aminath Shauna called for a “mosaic of solutions” to address loss and damage.
Perhaps it is why when the gavel fell, cementing the historic decision to establish the FRLD, the mosaic of solutions approach was reflected in the establishment of new Loss and Damage funding arrangements alongside the Fund. And why since COP 27, the Maldives’ vision for the mosaic has been further elaborated by researchers and Loss and Damage negotiators.
It is for all of these reasons —for all these “whys”— that those of us at the Loss and Damage Collaboration (L&DC) have decided to broaden our focus to respond to this call from developing countries, and the frontline communities within them.
Introducing a new workstream
Therefore, we are very pleased to announce the launch of a new workstream, one that aims to catalyse “a mosaic of solutions” that can meet the full scope and scale of Loss and Damage needs, while enabling developing countries to build long term resilience and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aims of this workstream are three fold:
- To catalyse a fit for purpose “mosaic of solutions” both inside and outside the UNFCCC;
- To reclaim the mosaic of solutions as a tool that can be harnessed by the most affected to advance climate justice; and
- To close the finance gap in the mosaic to meet the full scope and scale of the needs.
But, rest assured, we will continue to strive to ensure robust progress under the UNFCCC. You may recall that in a previous brief, we laid out our five-year vision for Loss and Damage under the UNFCCC, one that stressed the importance of strengthening the functions of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) and fully resourcing its Executive Committee, and Santiago Network, as well as the FRLD. Yet, as the challenges of the fictional policy maker in the introduction so keenly demonstrate, the climate regime alone will not be able to meet all of the Loss and Damage needs of developing countries.
What does a fit for purpose mosaic of solutions look like?
Building on the Maldives vision, we will strive to catalyse a fit for purpose “mosaic of solutions” one that:
Prevents loss and damage: By enabling climate change mitigation and facilitating a just transition that limits global warming to 1.5°C, ensuring the protection of ecosystems, and scaling up sustainable development to achieve the SDGs.
Reduces loss and damage: By properly funding and implementing climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction (DRR), preparedness, early warning systems, and anticipatory action, while ensuring universal social protection.
Addresses loss and damage: By scaling up and properly funding:
- Immediate response (within hours, days, and weeks) by humanitarian actors that provide emergency health care, shelter, and food that saves lives.
- Mid-term response (within weeks and months) by the FRLD, United Nations (UN) agencies, and other partners —including philanthropy— to prevent and reduce further harm to livelihoods, food systems, health, culture, infrastructure, and more.
- Sustained long-term response (over years and decades) to recover lost development, build back better, ensure long term risk reduction, and resilience building, and guarantee remedy —and where required— reparations.
Ends disenablers of loss and damage response: By facilitating debt cancellation, reforming trade rules to be fair, prioritising suitable development, reclaiming lost tax revenue, and making the international financial architecture accessible and equitable.
Figure 1 illustrates how this fit for purpose mosaic of solutions would fall across the different phases of loss and damage response (from prevention to long term risk reduction and resilience building).
Figure 1: How the mosaic works across different phases of loss and damage response.
This mosaic must be held together by a “glue”. One that ensures loss and damage responses are delivered in an effective, coordinated way, informed by needs and the latest understanding, and underpinned by accountability and transparency. The key ingredients of the “glue” are:
- Coordination, coherence, and complementarity;
- Systematic observation, data, science, knowledge, and lived experience;
- Capacity building, readiness, technical assistance, knowledge, and technology transfer; and
- Accountability, reporting, principles, norms, human rights, and international law.
Without glue the mosaic will fall apart.
What are the benefits of a mosaic of solutions approach?
The mosaic of solutions approach is not just about increasing loss and damage response. It's also about improving how we respond. Think of the mosaic as a solution itself, one that contains within it many more solutions.
The mosaic of solutions approach will help to address the complex, multifaceted nature of loss and damage and the unknowns of cascading impacts and tipping points through a “policy mix”. This will ensure that no one is left behind.
A fit for purpose mosaic will strengthen loss and damage responses from the global to the local level by translating global and regional policy frameworks into implementation and institutionalisation. In doing so, the mosaic will catalyse a menu of solutions that communities, countries, and regions can tailor to their needs, priorities, and circumstances. This will help bypass power bottlenecks, ensuring that marginalised groups receive the support they need (e.g. via direct cash transfers) when governments or other decision makers cannot, or will not provide assistance.
As a point of convergence, the mosaic will strengthen coherence, coordination, and complementarity across climate change, DRR, humanitarian, biodiversity, and development agendas. It will enhance synergies between the three Rio Conventions —the UNFCCC, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
A fit for purpose mosaic will mainstream best practices and norms, uphold international law, including human rights, and operationalise the principles of the polluter pays, do no harm, equity, and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC). It will ensure Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), centre communities in decision making, and make sure that Indigenous and local knowledge and lived experience drive loss and damage response.
Why do we need to reclaim the mosaic of solutions for climate justice?
Shortly after the Maldives called for a mosaic of solutions at COP 27, the term was appropriated by the European Union (EU) and the narrative was changed to justify why the FRLD was not needed. Since COP 27, the EU and other developed countries have continued to push an alternative mosaic of solutions narrative in Loss and Damage and climate finance negotiations. These efforts have included persistent attempts by developed countries to diminish climate finance obligations by “leveraging” the private sector and expanding the contributor base to include developing countries with large economies (e.g. China). They have also prioritised the use of debt creating finance instruments.
With the potential for the mosaic to become a normative governance framework —a structured system of rules, principles, and shared values designed to guide the behavior and decision-making of actors within the mosaic— who gets to define what the mosaic is will be key. Therefore, we must make a concerted effort to reclaim the mosaic of solutions as a tool that can be harnessed by the most affected to advance climate justice.
How do we address the finance elephant in the mosaic?
The mosaic of solutions is not about re-inventing the wheel. Most of the solutions we need are already there. But there is an elephant in the mosaic —a vast finance gap. How vast?
Achieving the SDGs requires 4 trillion USD per year. Ecosystem protection: 700 billion USD per year. Climate change mitigation: 4.725 trillion USD per year. Climate change adaptation: 365 billion USD per year. Loss and Damage: 724.43 billion USD a year. 33 billion USD is needed for Humanitarian action in 2026 alone. And so on and so on.
The needs are in the tens of trillions. Yet, only hundreds of billions are flowing, much of which is too hard to access, comes far too late, and most often comes in the form of loans that worsen existing debt burdens.
To unlock the true potential of the mosaic of solutions, we must close the finance gap with easily accessible, grant based, new, and additional finance. And yes, this is a significant challenge. Especially in these tough political times.
But past precedents, including the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) worth approximately 650 billion USD during COVID-19, demonstrate that resources can be mobilised quickly to address urgent needs.
While the research underpinning this workstream shows that a fit for purpose UN Tax Convention can reclaim trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues each year. That developed countries can mobilise at least 6.6 trillion USD each year from innovative sources to meet their finance obligations (e.g. through a Climate Damages Tax). And the IMF can allocate hundreds of billions of USD in SDRs each year.
The money is there. Only the political will is lacking.
But it's not just about new money. It's also about freeing up fiscal space in developing countries and changing international trade, debt and tax rules so that developing countries can take actions, such as implementing taxes on the windfall profits of fossil fuel corporations.
Our research has shown that the establishment of a robust UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt can facilitate debt cancellation for developing countries and prevent them from facing future debt crises. That trade reform can move developing countries up global value chains and enable them to increase trade revenues and place taxes and tariffs on things like digital services. And that the abolition of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism can allow all countries—not just developing countries— to take climate action without the fear of being sued by planet wrecking corporations.
A step toward deeper transformation
Now imagine once again that you are that same policy maker. But this time imagine that you are not having to make impossible choices. That you are not under constant unrelenting pressure. And that the rules are no longer stacked against you.
Yes, the challenges of loss and damage are still there. But, now with a mosaic of solutions, you are finally able to respond to climate impacts at the same time as continuing to advance sustainable development, long term resilience building, and DRR. Support is easier to access.There is a menu of options that you can tailor to your national circumstances. You spend less time on bureaucracy and more time on improving the lives of your citizens. More time protecting and restoring your nation's ecosystems and biodiversity. Your citizens are healthier and happier. You no longer lose sleep.
And while system change is ultimately needed to ensure that all humans, ecosystems, and species can thrive and not just survive, in the midst of climate change and other planetary challenges. Putting in place a fit for purpose, fully resourced mosaic of solutions was a key step towards the deeper transformations needed to achieve a just and habitable future.
It's time to build a real mosaic of solutions for loss and damage. Join us!
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This blog marks the launch of our new workstream unpacking the pieces of a fit for purpose “mosaic of solutions” to respond to loss and damage from climate change. It is accompanied by a flagship paper that unpacks the pieces of the mosaic and a series of thematic briefs that dive deeper into existing solutions and how they can be strengthened.
The development of this work has been supported by the Scottish Government and Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung New York Office with support from the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The publishers are solely responsible for the content of this publication; the opinions presented here do not reflect the position of the Scottish Government or the BMZ. We also note that views and any errors, are the authors alone and that the content of this brief does not necessarily represent the views of all the members of the L&DC.
Teo Ormond-Skeaping is a climate policy expert, advocate and communicator, with a particular focus on Loss and Damage and climate finance under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement. Since 2022, he has closely engaged with the establishment and operationalisation of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, including the Fund’s Transitional Committee and every meeting of its Board. He has also closely followed the establishment and operationalisation of the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage and its Advisory Board, the work of the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and the process to establish the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance.