Adaptation, Loss and Damage: A Global Climate Impact Fund for Climate Justice

This paper discusses climate justice in the context of increasing climate costs triggered by anthropogenic climate change. It stresses the urgent need of supporting countries most affected by climate change, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS), by helping them to cover climate impact costs such as adaptation and loss and damage (L&D). Following on the previous paper by Sachs et al. (2022), and building on the literature, this paper provides a taxonomy of climate-induced costs to identify their different types, sources and interactions. The paper also proposes a pilot integrated conceptual and methodological framework to quantify and assess responsibilities across countries for adaptation and L&D costs, using indicator frameworks and methodologies from the existing attribution and contribution studies. It then makes an initial attempt to frame a dedicated Global Climate Impact Fund (GCIF) to share fairly and globally the burden of financing for adaptation and L&D costs from anthropogenic activities, among responsible countries. We argue that increased funding for adaptation and loss and damages must come hand-in-hand with the development of long-term resilience and sustainable development pathways, including medium term investment frameworks, in highly vulnerable countries and other countries.