In climate negotiations and beyond, “loss and damage” generally refers to the impacts of the climate crisis that transpire despite, or in the absence, of either (1) climate change adaptation, mitigation, and disaster risk reduction and management solutions, or (2) the resources of communities to access them.
Loss and damage can result from both rapid-onset climate change impacts (such as typhoons, droughts, and heatwaves), as well as slow-onset changes such as sea level rise, desertification, glacial retreat, land degradation, ocean acidification, and salinization. It pertains to both economic and non-economic losses, including permanent and irreversible losses of lives, properties, livelihoods, culture, and biodiversity, among others.
A recent report estimated that 54 of the world’s climate-vulnerable developing and least-developed countries, which are emitting around five percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, have lost approximately US$ 525 billion in aggregate dollar terms in the past two decades (2000-2019) because of the climate crisis — about 20 percent of their collective Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Commissioned by the Vulnerable Twenty (V20), a group of finance ministers from the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), the report showed that these countries would be twice as wealthy today were it not for climate change.
For some, these are merely economic numbers, but for us in the Global South, this means catalogs of more casualties and deaths, of more homeless and jobless people, of more families going back to poverty or falling down the poverty line after every calamity.
The Philippines has been a poster child of severe loss and damage in the past decade.
The 2021 Global Climate Risk Index has ranked the Philippines fourth among countries most affected by climate change from 2000 to 2019.
In 2013, the world witnessed the unprecedented devastation caused by Supertyphoon Haiyan. At least 6,300 lives were lost and more than P89 billion worth of damages to public and private infrastructure and lands were recorded.
In the years before that, Tropical Storm Ketsana (2009), Parma (2009), Washi (2011), and Bopha (2012) collectively claimed over 3,000 lives in the country, affected more than 10 million Filipinos, and caused economic losses of as much as US$ 5.7 billion.
Brgy. Salangan in San Miguel, Bulacan still submerged in flood on Sept. 26, 2022 after the onslaught of Supertyphoon Noru (Karding). (Mark Balmores / Manila Bulletin File)
This vicious cycle of loss and damage is still a reality for the Philippines in recent years.
Just late last year in September, Supertyphoon Noru affected more than 1.5 million people across the country and caused the biggest damage to our agriculture sector — estimated to be at US$ 55 million.
While extreme weather events like these are often reported in mainstream media, climate change impacts that occur without the visual drama of calamities — such as ocean acidification, changes in hydrology, and sea level rise — are slowly bleeding our economies and affecting the livelihoods of our people. They worsen already difficult conditions with our food security, and the management of agriculture, fisheries, and ecosystems.
Given that global warming is set to increase to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels within the decade regardless of greater mitigation actions and more intensified adaptation interventions, our communities stand to bear greater loss and damage in the next few decades.
In countries like the Philippines, the climate crisis translates to a debt crisis, as loss and damage continue to drive up the cost of capital and debt to unsustainable levels.
Our government is already allocating alarmingly significant and growing proportions of our public budgets to cover rapidly growing loss and damage costs. These include the budget needed to rebuild homes, hospitals, and other infrastructure after a supertyphoon ravages the country, to provide shelter, food, and other essential supplies for those who need to be relocated during and after the storm, to distribute emergency cash transfers for communities affected by flooding, drought, and other calamities, and to move people away from inundating coastal communities.
Financing loss and damage diminishes our already scarce resources intended to support our critical economic and development strategies in education, public health, nutrition, energy access, and job creation.
Existing climate finance mechanisms, such as the Adaptation Fund, Green Climate Fund (GCF), Least Developed Countries Fund, and Special Climate Change Fund, are focused on climate change adaptation (building resilience against current and future climate change impacts) and mitigation actions (emissions reductions) and do not address the loss and damage finance needs of vulnerable communities.
Addressing loss and damage requires financing beyond developed nations’ current commitments to support emissions reductions and adaptation in developing countries. Failing to do so would mean facing an ever-worsening spiral of further loss and damage, which will impede much-needed investments in climate resilience and low-carbon development.
At the heart of this discourse is climate justice. There is no more blatant display of injustice than making climate-vulnerable countries foot the bill for a problem not of their own making, consequently hindering them to focus on the pursuit of low-carbon development.
This is why countries from the Global South are fighting tooth and nail for the establishment of a distinct funding mechanism that will provide protection against climate risks for as many poor and vulnerable people as possible.
Thankfully, just a few months ago, during the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), parties agreed to operationalize a loss and damage fund. This is a big win for us, but we know that it will be a long way to go.
The most contentious issue that would have to be settled before this fund is determining who pays for the funds, how much, and what will be the basis for access, reporting, and financing mechanisms.
While debating on the nitty-gritty of this fund in COP28 later this year, we need to remember that losses and damages are already happening, and they are projected to worsen in the coming years. Loss and damage finance is critical and urgent. Lives are at risk. The future of many communities is at stake.
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About the author: Kristine Galang is currently the Communications Lead of The Climate Reality Project Philippines. Before joining the branch in 2021, she worked as the speechwriter communications focal of the former vice chairperson of the Climate Change Commission. Prior to working in the climate change sphere, she worked at Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office under the Aquino administration as deputy of its media monitoring division.