Governing Climate Change Loss and Damage: The National Turn

Deadly floods in Pakistan, hurricanes in the Caribbean, and prolonged drought in East Africa – all intensified by climate change – have left hundreds of thousands of survivors without homes, jobs, food or water. Climate-driven extreme weather results in inevitable losses: loss of property, loss of livelihoods and loss of lives. Slower moving changes – such as sea-level rise, increasing temperatures and spreading deserts – also cause terrible harm to people’s homes, health and sense of security. The issue of climate change loss and damage has been dominating the international climate change negotiations in recent years. But it is national governments that are most immediately tasked with responding to the climate emergency, and their responses vary enormously. Until now, we have little understanding of how individual states are grappling with losses associated with the impacts of climate change. Governing Climate Change Loss and Damage: The National Turn is the first book-length treatment of loss and damage policy and politics at the national level. Unlike most books on climate policy, it focuses specifically on countries in the Global South that are on the frontline of climate change impacts. Through seven original empirical case studies, this book shows that some countries pursue the establishment of climate change loss and damage policies and programs more proactively and explicitly than others. Countries from the Global South tend to experience the negative impacts of climate change more acutely. Yet this book makes clear that it is not always those that face the most severe and existential impacts that take national policy action on loss and damage. Drawing on existing theoretical accounts in the study of climate policy, this book shows what countries are doing (and not doing) to address losses. It highlights policy innovations in sectors from fisheries to finance; identifies new institutional linkages that allow countries to better address issues such as climate-related internal displacement and shows how different forms of knowledge – from local and lived experience to historic disaster data – can supplement a lack of systematic information in policy-making processes. It also draws attention to the role of ideas in climate policy-making, showing how some states’ desires to cultivate a particular national identity – as an “emerging economy” or as a “green economy leader” – in the international sphere or the pursuit of specific development paradigms affects the way and the extent to which they engage with loss and damage as a policy domain. The book advances understanding of how policy-makers across sectors conceptualise loss and damage, identifies the barriers and constraints in policy-making across countries and traces the wide range of policies that are being deployed to grapple with different types of climate impacts. In doing so, the book shows the way to more effective governance of loss and damage now and in the future.