Climate change and loss, as if people mattered: values, places, and experiences

Abstract

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is seeking to prepare for losses arising from climate change. This is an emerging issue that challenges climate science and policy to engage more deeply with values, places, and people's experiences. We first provide insight into the UNFCCC framing of loss and damage and current approaches to valuation. We then draw on the growing literature on value‐ and place‐based approaches to adaptation, including limits to adaptation, which examines loss as nuanced and sensitive to the nature of people's lives. Complementary perspectives from human geography, psychology, philosophy, economics, and ecology underscore the importance of understanding what matters to people and what they may likely consider to constitute loss. A significant body of knowledge illustrates that loss is often given meaning through lived, embodied, and place‐based experiences, and so is more felt than tangible. We end with insights into recent scholarship that addresses how people make trade‐offs between different value priorities. This emerging literature offers an opening in the academic debate to further advance a relational framing of loss in which trade‐offs between lived values are seen as dynamic elements in a prospective loss space. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e476. doi: 10.1002/wcc.476 This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Comparative Environmental Values

Effects of climatically shifting species distributions on biocultural relationships

“…Ecological changes like those predicted in this study with climate change are a critical issue for Indigenous Peoples around the world, because they transform resource availability and landscape in ways that affect cultural identity, sense of place, knowledge, and social cohesion (Foale, ; Norgaard & Reed, ; Tschakert et al., ). Nonetheless, cultural practices adapt to changing situations over time (Berkes, ; Graham, Dayton, & Erlandson, ; Masterson et al., ).…”

WIREs Climate Change 2018: An editorial essay

“…Categorizing by objective can suggest four types of review articles. A status quo review presents the most current research for a given topic/field (e.g., Tschakert et al, , on loss and damage). A historical review surveys and summarizes the development of a specific field of research over time (e.g., Lamb & Steinberger, , on well‐being).…”

A Typology Framework for Trade-Offs in Development and Disaster Risk Reduction: A Case Study of Typhoon Haiyan Recovery in Tacloban, Philippines

“…Decisions and decision-making processes are a matter of power relations [6,37]. Broadening participation, inevitably, means shifting the power balance to some degree and, thus, creating a trade-off between power and participation.…”

“…The cost of living, housing prices [32], livelihood opportunities [33], and the availability of affordable insurance can all influence people's decisions to live in risky, hazard-exposed areas, as well as how to invest in disaster protection [34]. Also, non-financial factors, such as attachment to a place and community [35,36], and place-based culture [37], can make people want to remain in a place that is hazard prone. Understanding personal and collective prioritisation is a necessity for devising mechanisms that incentivise protection and risk aversion.…”

“…However, under a strict economic-growth approach, the prioritisation of DRR investments will likely only occur if the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Yet, cost-benefit analysis does not account for indirect benefits [15], such as avoided social and environmental losses [37]. The "hidden" nature of avoided losses poses a threat to major investment in DRR [25].…”