One of the most troublesome issues that has emerged in Nepal over the years has been the growing apathy of the government towards its suffering civilians. This issue has come into the limelight with more ferocity in the aftermath of the trying year 2072 B.S. With the number of uncompensated victims of various extreme events like the mega earthquake or the victims of various landslides, floods and avalanches multiplying over the years, it is difficult to imagine a future where justice will come to mean anything more than a few thousand rupees each.
However, recent international negotiations show that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, at least for the victims of climate change induced disasters.
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While words like adaptation and mitigation have dominated the international climate change discussions for quite some time now, a relatively new term ‘loss and damage’ has entered mainstream discussions only recently. Loss and damage is a sweeping term that describes all the issues that adaptive and mitigative actions have been unable to address. Such issues arise when mitigation or adaptation are completely absent, harmful in the long term, insufficient or completely inept of protecting vulnerable populations and ecosystems from the impact of greenhouse gases (GHG) that have already been released in the atmosphere.
Such rising GHG concentrations in the atmosphere means that the most vulnerable of countries – the least developed nations and the island nations around the world – have been subjected to a growing number of extreme events like floods, cyclones, landslides and slow onset events like rise in average temperature and rainfall patterns, rising sea level, desertification, loss of biodiversity and loss of arable land.
Such events have hit many vulnerable communities – especially those dependent on seasonal rainfall for agriculture or those living in low lying lands – hard, irreparably destroying their lives and livelihoods, land and assets and cherished cultural and natural landmarks. With a thick trail of noxious emissions that we have left behind in the past few decades, it is no wonder that no amount of mitigation and adaptation today will be able to completely avert all climate change related tragedies in the future. Thus, it is important to have a universal mechanism to access the losses bore by the innocent and compensate them fairly.
Prioritizing disaster-resilient infrastructures
In spite of being such a crucial part of climate change, loss and damage has only come into the limelight recently. Since loss and damage arises from any issues that have remain unsolved over the years despite efforts from the developed countries in the past, many feel that these bigger economies should be held culpable for the consequences of such unsolvable problems that they have created. Due to this loss and damage has become synonymous to compensation.
However, this is a tricky arena with a lot of ambiguity and with no one protocol that dictates how people should be compensated. While it might be easy to pay somebody back for the crops that they lost in a flood, how would a family be compensated for the death of a loved one or loss of cherished or sentimental possessions? Another reason for the snail’s pace is the sheer scale of compensation that would be required in the case of huge catastrophes.
For example, how would you compensate for the loss of an entire island nation due to rising sea levels? The lives, livelihoods, land and assets that have been lost add up and so do the loss of cherished historical and cultural sites and the indigenous flora and fauna. Thus, the sheer ambiguity and the size of the repercussions make loss and damage a hotly debated topic among those culpable and those affected.
Due to such contention, it has been difficult for the UNFCCC to define the exact scope of loss and damage – what issues do loss and damage cover? It is also unclear which parties should be held financially accountable on a particular disaster – all of the big emitters or just a selective few? In case of the latter, who will decide – and how – on which countries are exempted and which are liable? As is seen, the issue of loss and damage raises a lot more questions than answers.
In Nepal, there have been no policies regarding loss and damage as of yet and there is a severe lack of knowledge, skills, manpower, and capacity in the area. Loss and damage has remained clouded over by concerns of adaptation. However, it is crucial to objectively realize that we cannot possibly adapt to all aspects of climate change, there is going to be many devastations and we will be required to hold some party culpable. Otherwise, the repercussions on climate justice will be severe and this is bound to encroach on fundamental human rights.
Study conducted in flood and landslide prone villages in Nepal show that people have reported loss and damage including the impact on livelihood and food prices, loss of assets and livestock and lands and houses. People tried to adapt to these by adopting practices that were harmful in the long run such as lowering or modifying food consumption, selling their assets or livestock or migrating elsewhere. Climate change has wrecked irreparable havoc in the lives of many.
From its infancy in 1991, loss and damage has been associated with compensation. Therefore, it has been a topic that has been hotly debated with a very slow progression. The issue entered discussions in the UNFCCC only in 2007 and was granted a separate agenda only in 2010. In 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) on Loss and Damage was finally established and within this mechanism, a work plan was made to address the issue.
In the Paris conference of 2015, there were some wins and some losses for vulnerable nations in terms of Loss and Damage. Perhaps one of the biggest fights won was when the issue was assigned its own article, separate from that of adaptation in the agreement: this ensures that Loss and Damage will be taken as a standalone issue of its own merit in the future. The article highlights the need to avert, minimize and address Loss and Damage in context of climate change.
Another goal that was set forth by such vulnerable countries was to establish an international mechanism that was separate and broader in its functions than the WIM. However, it was decided that instead of scraping the WIM altogether in 2016, continuity would be given to it and objectives added. Another crucial demand of the developing countries was to establish a climate change displacement coordination facility that would be able to coordinate efforts between nations to address the displacement of people caused by climate change. While this was not addressed in the main agreement, the annex established a task force to address the issue.
Perhaps one of the most significant losses for the small economies was the clause that there is ‘no basis for liability and compensation’ for Loss and Damage in the agreement. Still, while the practical aspects of the issue is lost in ambiguity, there is a new call on nations to investigate and cooperate on the topic and related aspects like early warning systems, risk assessment, risk transferring schemes etc.
“In regards to Loss and Damage, we won some and lost others”, says Manjeet Dhakal, a COP21 participant, “These losses, however, do not mean an end to the issue. The history of loss and damage has shown a very slow progression and this is because of the contention it faces in the international platform. However, the vulnerable nations – including Nepal – have achieved many of the goals we had set out to achieve and we are preemptively working towards those we haven’t. It is a long fight and we are getting there, slowly but steadily.”
Given its prickly nature, loss and damage is a topic that is still in its infancy almost 20 years after it was first introduced. While the progressions and setbacks of the Paris agreement can be taken with a grain of salt, it shouldn’t be dismissed as a complete failure altogether. When issues that require compensation are as inherently ambiguous as they are with Loss and Damage – so much so that experts joke that it would be like a developed country handing over a blank check to the developing ones – there are bound to be major hurdles and roadblocks on the way before we can qualify for such assistance.
Conferences come and go and agreements can be altered. Meanwhile, LDCs like us have to be able to make a strong argument for the inherent need of a universal compensatory mechanism. And nothing makes for a stronger argument than concrete research findings on that which has already been lost or damaged.
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