Applying Recent Insights from Climate Risk Management to Kick-Start the Operationalization of the Loss and Damage Mechanism

With the impacts of climate change already being felt across the globe, it is imperative to tackle further irreversible loss and intolerable damage. The shift in the discourse on the conception of Loss and Damage (L&D) as harm towards the less politically controversial conception of risk has pushed the door for applying existing and novel risk management approaches to L&D. We suggest that adaptive learning, linked to climate risk management (CRM), can help overcome substantial scientific and political challenges, and provide operational support for debate around the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage. We suggest a transdisciplinary dynamic framework, building on adaptive learning theory as applied to climate change via the concept of iterative CRM, which holds great potential for addressing these challenges and the remit of L&D. In the short term, the incremental adjustment process consists of the following elements: Step (1): monitoring existing instruments, new scientific evidence on climate change, natural hazard data, loss databases, the climate signal, and stakeholder perceptions. Step (2): model-based analysis of climate-related sudden onset risks and slow-onset processes, acknowledging the uncertainties associated with climate change. Step (3): integrated appraisal of the new modeling results according to public and private coping capacities, taking into account economic L&D, NELD and justice considerations. Step (4): Implementation or update of risk management instruments according to different layers of risk; this requires decision criteria under uncertainty and keeping in mind multiple dividends. The embedding in a learning loop framework allows for fundamental and transformative adjustments of the current reactive risk management processes, as well as employing mental and analytical models in the medium to long-term.