Is now the time for Loss and Damage Action Plans?

The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage is now operational. 

As of its Board meeting last April in Barbados, the FRLD will now proceed to give USD250 million in grants to developing countries for strengthening national responses against loss and damage (L&D). This is part of its “start-up phase” lasting until 2026, with nations able to access up to USD20 million for their projects. 

However, many aspects of the FRLD’s sustainability still remain in question, which in turn would also impact how the global community sustains recent gains in addressing L&D. 

A way to strengthen it is for developing countries to be enabled to produce National L&D Action Plans, which would serve as the basis for their long-term responses in the third pillar of climate action.  

But should they develop these plans now?

The basis

COP30 in Brazil will be defined by several themes, although nothing is arguably more critical to long-term global climate action than the next batch of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Some countries such as Panama and Peru have integrated L&D into their current or updated commitments, while others like Vanuatu and Bangladesh are exploring national facilities dedicated to this issue.

However, L&D is fundamentally different from mitigation, mostly the focus of NDCs, or adaptation that is covered by National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). Addressing climate impacts beyond local capacities for either requires a unique set of solutions to account for economic and non-economic costs, especially for communities hit hardest by said impacts.   

The formulation of distinct L&D Action Plans would enable developing countries to more urgently and effectively avoid, minimize, and address losses and damages. These would contain thematic programs to address climate risks and impacts as indicated among the priorities under the “start-up phase”, from quick responses to extreme weather events to long-term interventions against slow onset events. 

Such plans would also serve as the main basis for how nations would engage with not just the FRLD, but also the rest of the current global L&D governance landscape. It includes the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage (SNLD), which assists countries in developing technical capacities needed to design and implement their respective strategies. 

Recent FRLD Board meetings have seen proposals for technical assistance to be given to countries for developing country-led programs. The formulation of said plans could aid in addressing this issue, while enhancing synergies with the SNLD through determining a nation’s L&D-related needs that would help prepare it for access to available funding.

The widespread adoption of L&D Action Plans as a standardized format for this workstream would also align with how the NDCs and NAPs correspond to mitigation and adaptation, respectively; it would further cement L&D as a true pillar of global climate action.     

The challenges

Formulating NDCs and NAPs also consume time and resources. With six months to go before COP30, not even 30 countries have finished their updated NDCs that are supposed to scale up global efforts in slowing down global warming. Less than half of developing countries have submitted their NAPs to the UNFCCC.

As urgent and critical L&D Action Plans are, developing countries will likely face even more difficulties in producing them than with NDCs or NAPs. Compared to mitigation or adaptation, the understanding of L&D as a field and existing capacities are both not as advanced as either.

Yet this only elevates the importance of the synergy between FRLD and SNLD to more effectively aid developing countries, with the former still in its “start-up phase” and the latter needing more resources for its own work. Establishing modes of collaboration between them is pivotal to not only creating said plans, but also preventing more losses and damages that the most vulnerable communities experience.

This context partly explains why grants being the primary mode of finance for the fund’s first two years of work is that crucial. Another key theme of COP30 is turning last year’s underwhelming new collective quantified goal on climate finance into “at least” actual money that would enable more solutions to be implemented. 

As unjust as giving loans to the most vulnerable countries with little resources or capacities for climate action already is, burdening them with more debt in exchange for capacity-building that would cover formulating national plans is even more absurd. 

Yet this is the current reality for most developing countries. This cannot be replicated in responding to L&D that is more inherently linked to climate justice than any other aspect of climate action. 

At least for this year and the next under the FRLD, developing nations have a more certain way to secure funding to develop their long-term programs, if not entire L&D Action Plans, without creating more debt.   However these countries opt to develop said plans, they must ensure that they are created through an inclusive and “bottom-up” approach, as intended under said fund. 

Paramount to this is to ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable communities, such as youth, women, indigenous peoples, and local communities, are included. This is notwithstanding the direct community access mechanism that civil society groups have been clamoring for the FRLD to establish.

Adopting the L&D Action Plan as a new standard is an indicator of whether or not the FRLD can truly live up to its mandate and how the most vulnerable can avoid the worst of the climate crisis.

Yet as with any other plan, its implementation is only as good as allotted resources. It is still the burden and responsibility of developed countries to provide sufficient funding to ensure no one is left behind, and of the FRLD to make sure that in some form or another, polluters will pay.

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