The book chapters cover specific issues showing the wide variety of research on L&D, as well as the many interconnections, shared concepts, tools and methods. In this section, we align some of the key findings and suggestions for moving forward. We identify five key propositions that, as we assert, hold potential for providing a roadmap for further ‘grounding’ the so far highly political debate. The propositions are essentially cross-cutting and reflect the architecture of the book in terms of considering insights from the various sections (setting the stage, critical issues, methods and tools, cases, policy options). The propositions each build on relevant findings that then inform suggestions for an actionable element to be taken forward by research, policy and practice.
Proposition 1
Risk management is an effective entry point for aligning perspectives and debates. Framed comprehensively, coupled with climate justice considerations and linked to established risk management practice, it may help to identify a distinct policy space for Loss and Damage.
The L&D debate has been polarised between those advocating for compensation for actual losses and damages, and others suggesting support for tackling future risks by (further) employing disaster risk management and climate insurance solutions. While L&D remains a political concept developed during the UNFCCC negotiations, it has (some of) its technical roots in risk management, which can be built upon to identify a joint and distinct policy space (see chapters by Schinko et al. 2018; Botzen et al. 2018; van den Homberg and McQuistan 2018).
Risk management brings along established practices for dealing with extreme events and any trends therein, and thus may provide an operational framework with a tested set of methods and tools (see Bouwer 2018; Botzen et al. 2018). Yet, a broader perspective on climate risk research and policy appears sorely needed. In its 5th Assessment Report (IPCC 2014b), the IPCC laid the foundations for such a perspective by broadly defining climate-related risks and the potential (as well as limits) for adaptation to key risks faced by geographic regions both today and in the future, characterised by scenarios of aggressive or business-as-usual mitigation and adaptation. This perspective requires to take into account non-economic losses and damages (NELD) such as to human health and lives, but also losses of cultural identity and sacred places. The issue of NELD, which has garnered substantial attention in the discourse, but is generally not accounted for in standard DRR approaches, implies a need for well considering its two main characteristics, context-dependence and incommensurability (Serdeczny 2018).
Understanding and acting on climate risks is intricately linked to justice and ethical considerations. Justice and fairness issues have played a key role in the climate change policy and academic discourse since the beginning of the UNFCCC process–most prominently through the distributive justice principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” (UNFCCC 1992). These considerations also come into play when contemplating issues of compensatory justice due to the unequal distribution of historical and current greenhouse gas emissions, the adverse distribution of impacts between the global North and South, and the understanding that climate change is projected to lead to unavoidable and potentially irrecoverable losses and damages (chapter by Wallimann-Helmer et al. 2018). Building on risk and justice principles, Schinko et al. 2018 propose a distinct L&D policy action space that can be identified by aligning a needs-based, distributive justice perspective, proposing support for transformative climate risk management beyond adaptation possibilities, with a compensatory justice perspective which upholds considerations for curative options for liabilities attributable to anthropogenic climate change (see also Mechler and Schinko 2016).
Interestingly, both types of principles and policy actions are already seeing some, if incipient, attention today. Transformative risk management is increasingly debated in the L&D discourse, and involves issues such as offering alternative livelihoods to those that are being affected (e.g., switching from smallholder farming to service sector employment) and assisting with voluntary migration where needed. Options under this rubric exhibit substantial overlap with interventions of disaster risk reduction and adaptation, yet may be focussed further on avoiding and managing intolerable risks that touch on hard and soft limits. Insurance applications, a mainstay of policy attention, e.g., through the G20/V20 InsuResilience initiative (InsuResilience 2017), can in principle be a useful entry point for tackling transformation; yet, caution must be exercised about commercial insurance products that place the full burden on the most vulnerable. Premium support in the form of subsidies and technical assistance can potentially transform insurance into a mechanism that meets the aspirations of the L&D discussions. Insurance options furthermore hold additional potential by serving as a concept and tool for exploring the magnitude and locations of adaptation frontiers, “socio-ecological system’s transitional … operating spaces between safe and unsafe domains” (Preston et al. 2014) (see chapters by Schäfer et al. 2018 and Linnerooth-Bayer et al. 2018).
Complementing transformative risk management, largely appropriate for sudden-onset impacts and risks, with efforts for dealing with slow-onset events, the space for curative measures overlaps to some extent with demands for compensation, which have been ruled out by the Paris Agreement, but not from the debate in general (see chapters by Simlinger and Mayer 2018; Schinko et al. 2018). In addition to policy proposals in the domain of insurance, essentially a pre-arranged compensation mechanism for any losses and damages funded by premium payments of those at-risk, via a climate attribution-triggered capitalisation mechanism (see proposition 4), the most advanced ideas in the context of curative measures have been articulated with regard to support for involuntary climate-induced displacement and forced migration. A climate displacement facility is being discussed under the WIM and proposals for approaches to address climate-induced displacement have been made (e.g., through the Nansen Principles on Climate Change and Displacement (NRC & IDMC 2011) and the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States (Displacement Solutions 2015).
Identifying the financial costs associated with such a distinct risk and policy L&D space is currently extremely difficult–particularly as the remit of action has not been concretised. There are some limited studies extrapolating from estimates of climate impact and adaptation costs. If L&D is framed as dealing with residual impacts after adaptation, models using economic optimality reasoning calculate impact and option costs in the billions of US dollars; yet, as Markandya and González-Eguino (2018) find, there is currently low confidence regarding damage costs, cost of adaptation and residual impacts. Beyond finance considerations, the risk management approach to L&D—if framed comprehensively (with associated principles, methods and tools)—may indeed embrace some of the other salient perspectives of the discourse, such as those emphasising burden sharing and the limits to adaptation, and thus help to constitute a systematic platform for future work of the WIM and beyond (see chapter by Lopez et al. 2018).
Proposition 2
Attribution science is advancing rapidly, leading to increased understanding of the causal connections between emissions, climate, human systems, and Loss and Damage. While the science has often been associated with responsibility and blame, its aim is to analyse drivers of change fundamental to informing actions to minimise, avert, and address loss and damage.
Climate change attribution research originally focused on examining drivers of observed changes in global temperature. Attributing losses and damages is much more complex and requires investigating how anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) influence many other climatic variables apart from global temperature, as well as their influence on the oceans, cryosphere, biosphere, and human systems on a range of timescales. It also requires a comparison of the influence of anthropogenic emissions on hazards, with other potential drivers (for example land use change, and aerosols), as well as drivers of exposure and vulnerability. Therefore, this is not only a question for climate scientists, but requires integration of research from a number of scientific fields. Researchers are stepping up to this grand challenge and have made rapid advances, particularly in a new field of climate change attribution research focusing on single extreme weather events. This now allows statements to be made about how anthropogenic emissions have influenced the likelihood or magnitude of specific heatwaves, heavy rainfall events, wind storms, and droughts. Several recent event attribution studies have also demonstrated the influence of GHG emissions on the probability of monetary losses from flooding and loss of life from cold- and heat-related events (see chapter by James et al. 2018).
The evidence base on climate impacts is growing. As summarised in IPCC’s AR5, impacts of climate change have been observed on all continents and across all oceans. There is high confidence that worldwide glacial retreat, permafrost thawing, and mass bleaching of coral reefs can be mainly attributed to climate change (IPCC 2014a). Yet, impacts to human systems and specific events are much harder to assess due to multifactorial causation, and in particular, since vulnerability reducing actions have been employed in many locations and for many weather-related hazards (see chapters by Bouwer 2018; Lopez et al. 2018). Therefore, despite the advances, it may never be possible to generate a complete inventory of L&D attributable to anthropogenic emissions. In addition to the uncertainties inherent in the attribution problem, a lack of robust time series data in many hot spot locations hinders progress in research and risk management (Huggel et al. 2016b). Thus, policy-advisors and negotiators should not expect the emergence of fully conclusive evidence regarding the influence of climate variability and change on specific incidences of losses and damages and, in particular, should not expect the strength of evidence to be equivalent between events and between countries.
Some of the most frequently discussed applications of attribution science for L&D have been made in relation to liability and legal responses. Attribution research is relevant to private and public administration litigation as well as to breaches of customary international law—the no-harm principle (see chapter by Simlinger and Mayer 2018). In the case of litigation before a national or international court or tribunal, legal cases are faced with a myriad of technical difficulties, particularly what concerns the issue of causality. Litigation requires diligence to prevent or minimise harm, as well as considering the indirect consequences of harmful wrongdoing in addition to direct impacts, which are normally considered in litigation. Thus, the case of Lliuya versus RWE, which is currently (mid 2018) in the evidentiary stages after having been admitted to a higher regional court in Germany, is exemplary in two regards. It is considered the first case on L&D in Germany and elsewhere, as several tort-based cases have been rejected by, for example, courts in the USA. It also innovatively seeks remuneration for risk management efforts to be undertaken to avoid future, irreversible risk (loss of life) associated with glacial lake outburst flooding affected by glacial retreat attributed with high confidence to anthropogenic climate change (see chapter by Frank et al. 2018). Given the many technical difficulties to be addressed, for legal actions overall, it may be interesting to consider working with a so-called modified general causation test—as has been done successfully for other risk classes, such as tobacco, nuclear risk etc. (see chapter by Simlinger and Mayer 2018). This would mean focusing on proving that GHG emissions are generally capable of causing damages and that a causal link between action and damage is probable. Such a rationale would render the requirement to attribute a specific climatic event to the emissions of a specific person or entity unnecessary. Therefore, a lack of attribution evidence may not necessarily be a limiting factor in some legal responses. Overall, attribution research has the potential for much broader applicability. It has an important role to play in helping to understand losses and damages, including through the quantification of risks; investigating the relative importance of different drivers of change; and identifying timescales on which significant impacts of climate change emerge in different regions of the world. All of these applications are fundamental to informing actions to address, avert and minimise losses and damages.
Proposition 3
Climate change
research has focused on understanding physical/hard
limits to adaptation
, but less so on the soft limits, which are strongly shaped by social processes. Applying a multiple lines of evidence framework, we find that soft limits to intolerable
risk
are already being breached in several geographies globally.
Climate change
is a key factor, yet exposure growth and
vulnerability
dynamics particularly need attention for a comprehensive understanding.
While research on adaptation limits is still in its infancy, the L&D debate has had some focus on adaptation limits, which have been defined as points beyond which actors’ objectives are compromised by intolerable risks. Adaptation research has focused on how climate-related hazards lead to hard adaptation limits, that is, where no adaptive technologies and actions are feasible anymore (see also chapter by van den Homberg and McQuistan 2018). Soft adaptation limits, characterised by a lack of options and concurrent socio-economic trade-offs, have received less attention. In addition, empirical research on losses and damages has only recently started to consider the mediating role of ecosystems and their services provided to society (van der Geest et al. 2018). Notably, a very recent volume co-edited by Johanna Nalau, an author in this book, provides a first comprehensive overview of research and experience on adaptation limits (see Filho and Nalau 2018). As one methodological contribution along a multiple lines of evidence approach, risk analysis shows a way forward for identifying hard and particularly soft limits. Starting with risk identification for assessing risks in monetary and/or non-monetary terms, the process of risk evaluation examines the ability of agents (households, private and public sectors) to respond to risk leading to qualifications and quantifications of risk (in)tolerance.
The cases presented in this volume provide a multiple lines of evidence approach for considering any actual or potential adaptation limits. The research documented in the book has generated evidence that poor and vulnerable people and communities already persist at the edges of these boundaries and limits. Overall, the case studies in this book report multiple instances where soft and hard adaptation limits are (at risk of) being breached. Climate change is generally a key factor, yet other drivers and constraints also need to be understood and addressed. In addition, observed vulnerability dynamics imply that adaptation and building resilience lead to reductions in vulnerability.
Pacific Island states are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, high tides, and salinisation, but also to droughts. Some communities experience seasonal food shortages, and malnutrition is common, indicating that part of the Pacific (as discussed for the state of Vanuatu) is already at or near the tolerable/intolerable interface. As a result, relocations and some resettlement are already occurring or planned (Handmer and Nalau 2018). As people move, understanding the means through which SIDS migrants maintain cultural traditions and the challenges current migrants face can help address potentially irreversible, but avoidable, losses of cultural traditions in the event of mass displacement as analysed for the Marshall Islands (Heslin 2018).
Faced with the increasing impacts of climate change and recognising that gains in development and poverty alleviation are severely hampered by climate change, the government of Bangladesh is planning to set up a national L&D mechanism to support those that have already incurred significant losses and damages beyond adaptation (Haque et al. 2018). Flood climate risk management case studies on Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Peru show limits to adaptation due to inadequate transboundary governance, insufficient devolution of mandates and funding to lower administrative levels, as well as inadequate access to and use of technology (chapters by Mechler et al. 2018b; van den Homberg and McQuistan 2018).
A case study on the Sahel and the semi-arid drylands of East Africa discusses how climate variability and change have affected primary productivity and food production as supporting and provisioning ecosystem services. Losses and damages reported in this context are livestock losses, food insecurity, displacement, cultural losses (including traditional livelihood systems), and finally, conflict related to these. The case also shows that oversimplification must be avoided in a context of multiple risk factors, including the governance or management of natural resources. Examples for risk factors presented are a lack of investment in water-related infrastructure, gaps in access to agricultural technology, barriers to pastoralists’ freedom of movement, or lack of health care services, which have also contributed to increasing losses and damages (van der Geest et al. 2018).
Migration, particularly if forced, is an example of “beyond the limits of adaptation.” Contextualising migration as multifactorial, a selection of cases including sea level rise in Pacific Island States, cyclonic storms in Bangladesh, and desertification in West Africa, as well as deforestation in South America’s Southern Cone, presents instances of migration driven by climate change and variability, as well as other factors (Heslin et al. 2018). The Arctic case on relocation and outmigration provides examples of instances “beyond adaptation” due to institutional, political, organisational and jurisdictional factors hindering implementation of adaptation to climate impacts, thus leading to losses and damages (Landauer and Juhola 2018).
Proposition 4
Insurance
mechanisms can only serve the prevention and cure aspects emphasised in the L&D debate if they are made affordable with support from outside the
insurance
pool, and if they are purposefully designed to encourage or prescribe
risk
reduction. While their applications are limited to sudden onset events,
insurance
instruments can help to explore
adaptation
frontiers, in which many factors, including technology, play a role.
Climate insurance has been one of the foci of debate on L&D and the WIM work plan. Recent experience, however, shows that insurance instruments can only serve as a risk-reducing and equitable response to losses and damages from weather extremes in developing countries if they are designed to explicitly reward risk-reducing behaviour and if they are supported by those outside the insurance pool. Commercial insurance is based on the principle of mutuality, according to which the insured participate in a disaster pool according to their risk class and pay a risk-based premium. Thus, the commercial insurance approach, unless subsidised or otherwise supported, does not share risk beyond the at-risk insured community.
This stands in contrast to most micro-insurance and regional insurance pools, which for the most part receive substantial support from the international community. Support appears to be increasingly based on the concept of solidarity, consistent with the humanitarian principles underlying development assistance, and not on attribution or responsibility for climate change impacts experienced by vulnerable countries. A common challenge with the solidarity principle, which features subsidies and other support to reduce premiums, is its failure to incentivise policyholders to reduce their risk. In meeting this challenge, international financial institutions, development agencies and other donors will need to reconcile the contending equity and preventive objectives in their support of climate insurance programs.
Two examples of insurance instruments serving the poor, the African R4 micro-insurance program and the African Risk Capacity (ARC) regional insurance pool, combine these goals. Neither is a commercial insurance enterprise; neither is fully characterised by risk-based premiums underlying the principle of mutuality; and both are highly subsidised. The R4 program’s success has largely been attributed to its close connection with public safety net programs in the participating countries, while ARC requires member governments to develop disbursement plans to ensure that the most vulnerable parts of the population benefit from the macro scheme. Moreover, ARC’s innovative Extreme Climate Facility (XCF) program may additionally bring in the concept of accountability, motivated by a perceived ethical or legal obligation for compensating those experiencing climate-attributed losses and damages, linked to changes in observed extreme weather in the region (Linnerooth-Bayer et al. 2018).
In general terms, insurance is a pre-arranged compensation mechanism for losses incurred and can be offered by both private and public actors. Public relief or catastrophe funds serve a similar function, while neither collecting premiums nor (typically) estimating risks. Many countries in the world have contingency funds to support victims of disasters. In Bangladesh, there is debate on whether to set up a national mechanism that would reimburse climate-related losses incurred by farmers and households that go beyond their adaptation possibilities (for example, if flooding pushes people to leave their homesteads or drought renders farming not profitable) (Haque et al. 2018).
In such a context, insurance in a wider sense (including national compensation pools) may innovatively be used as a navigational tool for exploring the adaptation frontiers (broad loci around adaptation limits). Such exploration may involve: (i) signalling the magnitude, location, and exposure to climate-related risks and cases where adaptation limits are approached or breached; (ii) supporting actors to move away from adaptation limits through improved ex-ante decision making and incentivising risk reduction and adaptation by creating a more certain environment for decisions on climate resilient development; and (iii) enabling actors with access to appropriate risk financing measures to remain in the tolerable risk space. One proposition is thus to embed climate insurance and other related instruments in a comprehensive climate risk management approach accompanied by other risk reduction and management strategies in international cooperation programs and projects (Schäfer et al. 2018).
Proposition 5
Policy deliberations have exhibited characteristics of a win-lose negotiation “game.” A more inclusive narrative highlighting collective ambition, mutual benefits and the role of transformation can point a way forward.
The L&D discourse has exhibited strong ethical and legal undertones appealing to standards shared or agreed beyond the UNFCCC context, such as demanding redistribution for harm via international customary law. While it is useful to prove the need for action on L&D by appealing to moral standards recognised by both contending parties in international arenas, a change of narrative may be conducive to achieving collective action and to avoid turning the issue into a win-lose negotiation “game” (chapter by Calliari et al. 2018).
With evidence that climate impacts and risks are also strongly affecting industrialised countries directly (e.g., Arctic) and indirectly (e.g., through migration), it may be fruitful to frame the debate in terms of the benefits that acting on adaptation and its possible limits and failures could bring for developed countries. Considerations could range from working towards more resilient global supply chains to gaining support for climate displacement and refugees. Exploring mutual gains would contribute to bolstering collective action on an issue of common concern, as well as to elevate and better integrate L&D into other climate negotiation agenda items, such as capacity building, technology and the global stocktake.
A general and joint entry point is the SDG agenda, essentially supporting UN member states’ transformation around a set of global developmental goals. The SDGs, passed in 2015, constitute a universal set of 17 goals and 169 targets defining development aspiration and ideally, collective transformation for all signatory countries (UN 2015). The SDG debate casts an integrated and unifying perspective on development. Integrated—as it requires a synergistic look across these broad development goals, and unifying—as it involves all signatories (Dodds and Donoghue 2016). Risk is fundamental in many regards. There are down-side risks (disasters and climate-related impacts as at the heat of the L&D discourse), which are explicitly and implicitly mentioned in many of the SDGs. The need for and benefits of up-side risk taking through increased investment into the socio-economic development objectives is another one of the cross-cutting issues.
Transformative risk management, which, as we argue, should be one of the pillars of the L&D policy space, thus may be one of those issues of common concern (Schinko et al. 2018). Innovative polycentric science-society partnership models are springing up to support the implementation of transformative risk management options that manage critical disaster risks “on the ground”. Evidence from hotspots, not only has potential to inform better development policies, but may also support actions in industrialised countries facing similar issues (Mechler et al. 2018b). The role of technology is crucial in this context, as it shapes risks and limits to adaptation and risk management. Yet, access in developing countries is constrained. National hydrological and meteorological services in developing countries, for example, are limited in their possibilities to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of flood forecasts. This is because these countries lack the funding and capacity necessary to use state-of-the-art technology (i.e., computing power, advanced hydrological and meteorological models) and acquire or collect more granular data, such as digital-elevation-model data. In addition, the poor and the vulnerable can often not benefit from early warning/early action information due to the digital divide.
As an area of future work, progressive levels of innovation and technology are required to lead from incremental to transformative change, where the UNFCCC’s Technology Mechanism can play a more prominent role (van den Homberg and McQuistan 2018). The WIM Executive Committee may innovatively consider an assessment of technologies from a climate justice perspective, which means rethinking access, use, innovation, finance, and (bottom-up) governance mechanisms from the perspective of the poor and vulnerable.
Enabling joint learning regarding technologies (and other means of implementation) for buffering against high-level risks is necessary for understanding how to overcome soft and avoid hard limits. This may be appealing for developed and developing countries sharing similar exposure and risk, where limits to adaptation need attention (e.g., in the Arctic, mountain areas with glacial retreat, etc.). A joint narrative will be needed to support and incentivise the requisite transformation of energy generation, consumption, but also adaptation efforts across the globe. An improved understanding of actual and potential “dangerous interference with the climate system” at risk management scales and across geographies may indeed be a decisive enabler.