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Ever more intense climatic events are rapidly pushing Small Island Developing States to the verge of their coping capacities, beyond which they will experience irreparable loss and damage. These risks threaten the socio-economic stability and undermine already limited abilities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. A recent event hosted by the Government of Belize looked at ways of increasing understanding and international cooperation to address this urgent issue.

Climate change related non-economic losses are an important dimension of the Loss and Damage debate under the UNFCCC. This encompasses the loss of lives, of homes, livelihoods and traditions, in other words: losses that are not easily quantified and that most people would not want to put a monetary value. This guest blog illustrates what a community can perceive as non-economic losses and what it undertakes to deal with them – in this case Chippewa Indians from Bad River Bend of Lake Superior in northern US.

The Suva Expert Dialogue 2-3 May in Bonn, and the technical paper it is meant to inform, are important next steps to furthering collective understanding of approaches to address loss and damage, associated finance needs, and sources of support. Here's what to expect from the two-day meeting.

By now it is clear that climate change is as much an economic problem as it is an environmental one. Rising temperatures slow economic growth and devastating climate-related impacts leave large negative imprints on economic development of developing countries. Most financial instruments that have been proposed in the context of loss and damage do not solve the problems developing countries face.