Private Actors and Loss and Damage

A few private actors, especially energy producers, have historically made disproportionate contributions to climate change. Some of the especially significant emitters have been called ‘carbon majors’. Wallimann-Helmer et al. (forthcoming) argue that loss and damage is not the role of governments to address in terms of compensatory justice. In contrast, loss and damage may potentially be an appropriate target for private market actors to address in terms of compensatory justice, given second-best or non-ideal circumstances. Loss and damage involves the harms that are not addressed by adaptation and cannot at this point be addressed by mitigation. If L&D related obligations exist, unlike with mitigation, they will attach more strongly to addressing harms that are occurring than future harms that may or may not occur. In particular, an obligation for addressing extant risks – setting up and financing loss and damage policy instruments –may be incurred by these carbon majors. The obligation of carbon majors may be justifiable due to asymmetric information between these producers and consumers; due to the enabling role producers in particular play in generating emissions; and due to the tractability of holding them accountable.