Tackling the Limits to Adaptation: An International Framework to Address 'Loss and Damage' from Climate Change Impacts

The current and future scale of climate change implies serious loss and damage, especially to the lives and livelihoods of those who are poor, most vulnerable and least to blame. Still developed country governments are failing to act with sufficient emission reductions.

Because of past inaction and the sheer severity of the problem, the response must now be not only to immediately and drastically cut emissions, support countries most affected to build their resilience and adapt, but also to address and redress the permanent loss and damage from climate change that is resulting from insufficient mitigation ambition to comprehensively tackle the problem.

At the UN climate conference in Doha, Qatar, ActionAid, along with CARE and WWF, is demanding that:

• Developed country governments must reaffirm previous commitments, based on the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, to take the lead in combating climate change and its adverse effects, including through mitigation action and the provision of new, additional and predictable financial resources, capacity, and technology transfer
• An International Mechanism on Compensation and Rehabilitation for loss and damage must be established in Doha
• A process is agreed to elaborate the procedures and modalities of the International Mechanism to operationalise it  by 2014
• A second phase of the loss and damage work programme is elaborated to define the remaining elements of the comprehensive framework on loss and damage