Loss and Damage

Understanding Loss and Damage

“Loss and damage” is the term for the unavoided, or unavoidable, harm that results from climate change. It encompasses the injustice at the heart of climate impacts – that those individuals and communities that have contributed least to climate change are experiencing the worst of its impacts – and the reality of the limits of adaptation and lack of climate finance.

CJRF began its dedicated program of work on loss and damage in 2021 when, at COP26, the Scottish Government became the first wealthy nation to explicitly fund loss and damage, and announced a £1 million grant to CJRF. Since then, we have made over $6 million in 45 grants across the Bay of Bengal, East Africa, the Pacific Islands, and the Andean highlands. We have also supported global grants on learning, advocacy, and youth-led grantmaking.

Much of CJRF’s grantmaking on loss and damage has focused on non-economic loss and damage, which are the less tangible effects of climate impacts, such as the loss of culture, language, and dignity. CJRF’s partners have undertaken groundbreaking work with their communities to identify, prioritize, and address their experiences of non-economic loss and damage. This includes building a museum for lost traditional artifacts, providing mental health services, and creating inter-generational spaces to document traditional knowledge.

CJRF's Grantmaking on Loss and Damage

New Loss and Damage Grants in East Africa

In line with CJRF’s experimentation with participatory grantmaking, the loss and damage program tested innovative, participatory approaches to grant-making with a focus on shifting decision-making power to partners and communities with lived experience of loss and damage.

CJRF’s grantmaking on L&D ensures that:

5

Interventions are identified by grantee partners and community members, so that they are contextually appropriate and effective.

5

CJRF, our grantee partners, and our donors take a learning-by-doing approach, and are continually sharing lessons to build the evidence-base and to support advocacy.

5

Interventions explicitly include women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, people with disabilities, and other traditionally marginalized or excluded communities. Each grant takes an intersectional approach, identifying the communities that are marginalized in the given location. Gender-sensitivity is expressly designed into each grant.

5

Grants are flexible to accommodate the continual and evolving nature of loss and damage, and the changing perspectives of those who experience loss and damage.

5

Grants are made rapidly, to ensure funds reach affected communities at a speed that matches the ongoing impacts of climate change.

Accompaniment and Advocacy

Heather and Scotland’s Minister for Environment at COP26

Alongside making grants, we have intentionally woven accompaniment throughout the non-economic loss and damage portfolio, and are now able to unpack early lessons from this process. Part of the accompaniment process has been to foster learning between partners, within and across regions.

Taking an intentional approach to learning and advocacy has enabled us to inform the broader policy space on loss and damage, including the development of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. We have lessons from our first set of grants addressing loss and damage, and more recent reflections on our non-economic loss and damage portfolio that make the case that funding loss and damage is critical as a foundation for wider climate action.

Under CJRF’s new strategy, we will begin to treat loss and damage more holistically – both by integrating economic and non-economic loss and damage, and by funding adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage as essential dimensions of climate justice.

Stories, Learning and Evidence