Loss and damage from climate change and implicit assumptions of sustainable development

Abstract

Loss and damage from climate change, recognized as a unique research and policy domain through the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) in 2013, has drawn increasing attention among climate scientists and policy makers. Labelled by some as the “third pillar” of the international climate regime—along with mitigation and adaptation—it has been suggested that loss and damage has the potential to catalyze important synergies with other international agendas, particularly sustainable development. However, the specific approaches to sustainable development that inform loss and damage research and how these approaches influence research outcomes and policy recommendations remain largely unexplored. We offer a systematic analysis of the assumptions of sustainable development that underpins loss and damage scholarship through a comprehensive review of peer-reviewed research on loss and damage. We demonstrate that the use of specific metrics, decision criteria, and policy prescriptions by loss and damage researchers and practitioners implies an unwitting adherence to different underlying theories of sustainable development, which in turn impact how loss and damage is conceptualized and applied. In addition to research and policy implications, our review suggests that assumptions about the aims of sustainable development determine how loss and damage is conceptualized, measured, and governed, and the human development approach currently represents the most advanced perspective on sustainable development and thus loss and damage. This review supports sustainable development as a coherent, comprehensive, and integrative framework for guiding further conceptual and empirical development of loss and damage scholarship.

Implicit Sustainable Development Theories Obscure Disproportionate Impacts from Climate-related Extreme Events: Example from Hurricane Michael and Housing Losses on Florida’s Forgotten Coast

“…Capital Theory comes with strong technical advantages. One of the most immediate is that it is the appropriate fit for much of the current practice in the areas of DRR, CC adaptation and loss and damage, where economic-based assessment and policy rules the game (see, e.g., McNamara and Jackson, 2019;Boda et al 2021). Its focus on economic concepts, metrics and financial risk reduction policies results in a degree of relative decisiveness and comprehensiveness that some argue may be essential for operationalizing climate-impact research in the existing political climate (Roberts et al, 2017), or including "stakeholders" such as the private sector (Surminski and Eldridge, 2015).…”

“…The use of such an indicator dashboard under the Human Development approach is quite different from the elaboration of extensive lists of qualitatively different and presumably incommensurate impacts from CC (cf. Tschakert et al, 2019; also see the "wish-list" literature from Boda et al, 2021). Under the Human Development approach, the commensurability of the varying kinds of possible impacts from climate-related events is not denied, nor is it achieved via a unitary metric.…”

“…Sustainable Development (SD) offers a fully comprehensive, integrative and coherent approach to understanding and addressing anthropogenic climate change-driven impacts (Boda et al, 2020). Multiple theories of SD are (implicitly) informing research and practice in this area, each with a unique set of core concepts, evaluative criteria, informational requirements and related policy prescriptions (Boda et al, 2021). Two of the main approaches include: 1) Capital Theory, a utilitarian economic theory that prioritizes maintaining a society's aggregate productivity through its capital stocks; and 2) the capabilities approach to Human Development, a non-utilitarian welfare theory that prioritizes improving the substantive freedom (i.e., capabilities) available to individuals in society, starting with the least-well-off.…”

“…Two of the main approaches include: 1) Capital Theory, a utilitarian economic theory that prioritizes maintaining a society's aggregate productivity through its capital stocks; and 2) the capabilities approach to Human Development, a non-utilitarian welfare theory that prioritizes improving the substantive freedom (i.e., capabilities) available to individuals in society, starting with the least-well-off. Outside, or rather, between, these two approaches, a third unique body of work exists that emphasizes numerous heterogeneous ways in which CC impacts may manifest, which has been labelled the "wish-list of valid concerns" (Boda et al, 2021). While the spectrum of ideas that make up this body of work are not as internally coherent as the main two approaches, its most notable and consistent characteristic is a concern with the place-and cultural-specificity of many impacts from CC (see, e.g., Tschakert et al 2017;Barnett et al, 2016).…”

“…11). Broadly speaking, economicbased approaches have dominated scholarship on the assessment of loss and damage from climate change (McNamara and Jackson, 2019;Boda et al, 2021). However, recent developments in the area of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) have argued for impact assessment approaches that disaggregate impacts and highlight the most vulnerable, with some explicitly championing a capabilities approach to impact assessment (Ton et al, 2020;Gardoni and Murphy, 2008;.…”