UNFCCC technical paper on existing institutional arrangements regarding climate change related loss and damage. This technical paper has been produced by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to review existing institutional arrangements, both within and outside the Convention, and at the transboundary, regional and global levels, that focus on loss and damage (LAD) related to climate change.
The paper begins by outlining the mandate, objective, methodology, scope, and structure of the study, before providing a summary of general features and emerging trends. The paper then presents a summary of the regional coverage and gaps in existing institutional arrangements, including:
Africa: There are a limited number of regional institutional arrangements concerned with assessment, and few exist to strengthen dialogue, coordination, coherence, and synergies among stakeholders.
Asia: A comparatively large number of relevant institutional arrangements focus on disaster management, spurred by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Only a handful of institutional arrangements concern urbanisation, despite numerous megacities in the region.
Caribbean: Few institutional arrangements concern managing risk due to the centralised coordination of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency. Recent focus has been on pre-impact assessments for a range of scenarios.
Latin America: Central America is exploring institutional arrangements for risk-sharing through a solidarity fund, while high-level coordination throughout the region is developing methodologies to analyse the cost of climate related LAD.
Pacific: Institutional arrangements in this region focus on extreme weather events and sea-level rise, with just one, the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative, focused on economic costing.
The paper concludes by highlighting a number of trends that emerge from this preliminary analysis, including that: all regions predominantly focus on LAD associated with extreme weather events rather than slow onset events; no institutional arrangements were identified that concern non-economic LAD; relatively fewer arrangements are in place to deal with transboundary LAD; institutionalised provisions for financial support addressing LAD are mostly centralised at the global level; and coordination and collaboration between global and regional arrangements is currently insufficient. Despite this, the large number of institutional arrangements provide a good basis and further opportunities for addressing LAD. Further stocktaking of existing mandates of arrangements may further assist in understanding the gaps and opportunities in ways that will increase synergy and coherence, and avoid duplication of efforts.