30 March, 2023

Research agenda for the loss and damage fund

Authors

The United Nations COP27 climate summit delivered a breakthrough in loss and damage finance. It established and mandated a Transitional Committee to design and functionalise a new loss and damage fund by the end of 2023. While politics will undoubtedly drive the fund’s design, research can contribute the necessary evidence base for informing policy choices. This piece in Nature discusses what research could contribute to the design of the loss and damage fund.

Publications

The 1.5°C limit and risks of overshoot

This briefing looks at what the 1.5°C limit means in terms of adaptation and loss and damage for the most vulnerable countries and regions. It finds that slowing down warming is critical to buy us time to adapt and also to avoid irreversible loss and damage. Even if warming rises above 1.5°C (overshoot) we can bring it down again with ambitious emissions reductions.

Le seuil de +1,5°C et le risque de dépassement de ce seuil

Ce rapport examine ce que la limite de 1,5 °C signifie en termes d'adaptation et de pertes et dommages pour les pays et régions les plus vulnérables. Il constate qu'il est essentiel de ralentir le réchauffement pour nous donner le temps de nous adapter et pour éviter des pertes et des dommages irréversibles. Même si le réchauffement dépasse 1,5 °C, nous pouvons le faire baisser à nouveau en réduisant les émissions de manière ambitieuse.

Climate justice and loss and damage: perspectives from the global south

This article outlines the loss and damage debate through a climate justice lens with particular emphasis on Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries. It examines the latest developments of the new loss and damage fund including operationalisation.

Unabated: the Carbon Capture and Storage 86 billion tonne carbon bomb aimed at derailing a fossil phase-out

The climate talks at COP28 have centred around the need for a fossil fuel phase-out. Our analysis quantifies the risk posed by restricting a phase-out commitment to only ‘unabated’ fossil fuels.

No change to warming as fossil fuel endgame brings focus onto false solutions

The CAT's annual warming estimate has risen by 0.1˚C to 2.5˚C. The estimate is largely influenced by weak existing targets rather than shifts triggered by updated Nationally Determined Contributions.

Carbon majors’ trillion dollar damages

In this report we explore who could pay for loss and damage through the lens of responsibility for historic emissions, and the financial gains generated from selling oil and gas.

Coastal loss and damage for small islands

This commentary on a paper in Nature Sustainability reviews how the study quantifies the impacts of sea-level rise on small island states and estimates the impacts in terms of cost, land loss and population exposure across all small islands worldwide.

The effects of political knowledge use by developing country negotiators in Loss and Damage negotiations

This article traces how developing country negotiators used knowledge to further their interests in loss and damage negotiations from 2003 to 2013.

Risks of synchronised low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections

This study finds that the jet stream – air currents in the upper atmosphere – can synchronise extreme weather caused by climate change, resulting in crop failures in multiple countries at the same time.

De la CDN 1.0 à la CDN 2.0: qu'est-ce qui a changé dans les CDN des PMA de l’Afrique de l'Ouest?

La présente étude examine les premières et les secondes Contributions Déterminées au niveau National des onze pays les moins avancés de l’Afrique de l’Ouest à savoir le Bénin, le Burkina Faso, la Gambie, la Guinée, la Guinée Bissau, le Libéria, le Mali, le Niger, le Sénégal, la Sierra Leone et le Togo.

EU’s role in the world: how can EU climate diplomacy stimulate greater ambition?

This paper discusses EU climate leadership and ambition and explores avenues for the EU to promote greater climate action inside and out of the UNFCCC process.

Houses built on the mountains just outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Climate justice and loss and damage: Hurricane Dorian, Haitians and human rights

Haitian communities were the locus of the majority of deaths and missing people attributed to the 2019 Hurricane Dorian and faced a series of distributional, procedural and recognition injustices. We investigate the historical factors and contemporary conditions of Haitian communities in The Bahamas that resulted in significant inequities, disproportional impacts and infractions of human rights.

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Decarbonisation targets and 1.5℃ pathways

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