WHY A REAL MOSAIC OF SOLUTIONS IS FUNDAMENTAL FOR LOSS AND DAMAGE RESPONSE

Imagine you are a policy maker in a developing country. Right now your country is facing the escalating impacts of climate change. Extreme weather events like hurricanes are more intense. Slow motion climate disasters like sea level rise, desertification, and glacial recession are accelerating. Heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires are all more likely to happen. In just a few hours your country could experience loss and damage equivalent to a large percentage of your GDP. In the coming decades, significant areas of your country—or your entire country— could become uninhabitable.

At the same time, escalating geopolitical tensions and the war in the Middle East are amplifying the cost of living crisis, set in motion by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Food, fuel, medicine, and building materials are more expensive and shortages are expected. Humanitarian and development finance —already inadequate— have been slashed as the spending priorities of Global North contributors shift to militarisation and domestic cost of living challenges. Progress on sustainable development is already facing significant setbacks. Millions more people may fall into extreme poverty. Food insecurity, disease, and social unrest is increasing. There are never enough resources to meet urgent needs. You and your government are perpetually overwhelmed.

You are acutely aware of the loss of biodiversity, culture, and livelihoods your country and your citizens face. You lose sleep over the number of lives and livelihoods lost. The homes, schools, and roads destroyed in seconds. The decades of progress on sustainable development eroded. The injustice of paying for a disaster that your country did little or nothing to cause.

You face impossible choices every single day. Choices between making debt payments or keeping basic health and education services going. Choices between taking on more debt to rebuild, or not being able to rebuild at all. Choices between investing what little money you have available in your budget in ecosystem protection, disaster risk reduction (DRR), early warning systems, or climate adaptation. Choices that should never have to be made.

You face constant, unrelenting pressure. Pressure to increase logging, mining and fossil fuel extraction to meet development needs and pay back illegitimate debts. Pressure to privatise national services and infrastructure to attract investment and satisfy debt obligations. Pressure to meet conditionalities set by lenders and contributors that don’t align with national priorities. Pressure that should never be felt.

You face rules stacked against you. International tax rules that favour the 1 percent, Global North countries, and their corporations. Trade rules that have locked your country into dependence on the export of raw materials and import of expensive food. Borrowing costs that are far higher for your country than those in the Global North. Rules that should be fair.

And when you try to access what little support there is available. You are asked to develop a funding proposal the size of a PhD thesis for just a few million dollars when billions are needed. You pay high premiums for insurance but wind speeds are deemed not high enough to trigger payment, despite loss and damage in the billions. The support that arrives is too little, too late, and requires burdensome reporting.

Yet, you do your best, knowing full well the recovery and reconstruction that is possible could soon be obliterated by the next disaster. You innovate with what little you have. You drive up ambition on the world’s stage, demanding action, not just for your country, but for all.

But without finance and support at the scale of the needs, without changing the rules of the game, you fear that your country will barely survive. But you never give up and never stop searching for solutions.

Perhaps it was for all of these reasons that during United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP 27, as negotiations to establish The Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) were ongoing, the Maldives’ Minister of Environment, H.E. Aminath Shauna called for a “mosaic of solutions” to address loss and damage.  

Perhaps it is why when the gavel fell, cementing the historic decision to establish the FRLD, the mosaic of solutions approach was reflected in the establishment of new Loss and Damage funding arrangements alongside the Fund. And why since COP 27, the Maldives’ vision for the mosaic has been further elaborated by researchers and Loss and Damage negotiators.  

It is for all of these reasons —for all these “whys”— that those of us at the Loss and Damage Collaboration (L&DC) have decided to broaden our focus to respond to this call from developing countries, and the frontline communities within them.

Introducing a new workstream

Therefore, we are very pleased to announce the launch of a new workstream, one that aims to catalyse “a mosaic of solutions” that can meet the full scope and scale of Loss and Damage needs, while enabling developing countries to build long term resilience and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aims of this workstream are three fold:

1. To catalyse a fit for purpose “mosaic of solutions” both inside and outside the UNFCCC;
2. To reclaim the mosaic of solutions as a tool that can be harnessed by the most affected to advance climate justice; and
3. To close the finance gap in the mosaic to meet the full scope and scale of the needs.  

But, rest assured, we will continue to strive to ensure robust progress under the UNFCCC. You may recall that in a previous brief, we laid out our five-year vision for Loss and Damage under the UNFCCC, one that stressed the importance of strengthening the functions of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) and fully resourcing its Executive Committee, and Santiago Network, as well as the FRLD. Yet, as the challenges of the fictional policy maker in the introduction so keenly demonstrate, the climate regime alone will not be able to meet all of the Loss and Damage needs of developing countries.

What does a fit for purpose mosaic of solutions look like?

Building on the Maldives vision, we will strive to catalyse a fit for purpose “mosaic of solutions” one that:

Prevents loss and damage: By enabling climate change mitigation and facilitating a just transition that limits global warming to 1.5°C, ensuring the protection of ecosystems, and scaling up sustainable development to achieve the SDGs.

Reduces loss and damage: By properly funding and implementing climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction (DRR), preparedness, early warning systems, and anticipatory action, while ensuring universal social protection.  

Addresses loss and damage: By scaling up and properly funding:

• Immediate response (within hours, days, and weeks) by humanitarian actors that provide emergency health care, shelter, and food that saves lives.
• Mid-term response (within weeks and months) by the FRLD, United Nations (UN) agencies, and other partners —including philanthropy— to prevent and reduce further harm to livelihoods, food systems, health, culture, infrastructure, and more.
• Sustained long-term response (over years and decades) to recover lost development, build back better, ensure long term risk reduction, and resilience building, and guarantee remedy —and where required— reparations.

Ends disenablers of loss and damage response: By facilitating debt cancellation, reforming trade rules to be fair, prioritising suitable development, reclaiming lost tax revenue, and making the international financial architecture accessible and equitable.

Figure 1 illustrates how this fit for purpose mosaic of solutions would fall across the different phases of loss and damage response (from prevention to long term risk reduction and resilience building).

Figure 1: How the mosaic works across different phases of loss and damage response.