In climate policy, loss and damage refers broadly to the adverse impacts of climate change on the natural environment that cannot be minimised through climate adaptation (such as building sea walls to prevent flooding) or mitigation (such as reducing global greenhouse gas emissions). These impacts are already being felt acutely by climate-vulnerable developing countries, especially so in small island developing states such as Pacific Island Countries. Although, there is no internationally agreed definition, a 2023 analysis found that, between 2000 and 2019, the world (unevenly) experienced at least USD2.8 trillion in loss and damage from climate change. Consequently, loss and damage appraisal is closely linked to climate injustice and inequalities as the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries are often the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases. This raises contentious questions about the responsibility for causing and paying for loss and damage, but also about how loss and damage features in the work of operational development and humanitarian actors in climate-vulnerable states.

Our new report GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS: Building a shared agenda for operational actors on non-economic loss and damage in the Pacific Islands seeks to address this by grounding a global policy dialogue about what constitutes as loss and damage in the Pacific Island experience.