Open questions about how to address ‘loss and damage’ from climate change in the most vulnerable countries: a response to the Cancún Adaptation Framework

摘要

Extreme weather events represent the earliest, and in some places most significant, threatsudto the most vulnerable countries that are driven by climate change. An outcome of the 16thudsession of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations FrameworkudConvention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Cancún was the decision to establish a workudprogramme to consider approaches to address loss and damage associated with climateudchange impacts in the most vulnerable countries, including the adverse impacts of extremeudweather events. This represents a significant opportunity to consider in more detail theudfeasibility and design aspects of current proposals on loss and damage, and undertakeudactivities to develop a menu of viable measures and practical implementation options toudinform discussions at COP18 in 2012. We conclude that there is already significant expertiseudand knowledge available on loss and damage that will form important inputs to theseudactivities. However, there are also many open questions, particularly on approaches forudoperationalising a loss and damage mechanism. We identify high priority open questionsudabout the design, implementation and governance of such a mechanism. We suggest that audvaluable activity of the work programme would be to address such open questions with audview to informing recommendations by the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Implementationud(SBI) to COP18.