By Shababa Haque, Erin Roberts, Stephanie Andrei and Saleemul Huq with ICCCAD, Bangladesh. (Southasiadisasters.net issue No. 106, March 2014)

It is clear that mitigation and adaptation efforts alone will no longer be sufficient to prevent loss and damage from climate change impacts. While all countries will experience losses and damages, the South Asian region is particularly vulnerable. Given that the issue is relatively new, research has only started to emerge in the past few years. Increasingly it is being recognized that in order to better address and assess the losses and damages resulting from climate change, a more comprehensive set of approaches needs to be developed and implemented at the international, national and local levels. In the past few years the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has been on the forefront of research to enhance understanding of loss and damage. Most recently, a milestone was reached at the nineteenth Conference of the Parties, held in Warsaw in late 2013, when the Warsaw international mechanism on loss and damage was established. It is hoped that the establishment of the Warsaw international mechanism will provide developing countries with support to address loss and damage, reinforce the importance of loss and damage research and remove the political sensitivity that was previously associated with the topic.

With an overarching aim to enhance capacity on loss and damage, ICCCAD has facilitated research with national climate experts and researchers in a number of fields, producing technical papers on a number of topics including microinsurance, approaches for addressing loss and damage, addressing loss and damage from both extreme events and slow-onset loss and damage at the local level, and the legal and institutional contexts for addressing loss and damage – all in the national context of Bangladesh. The work on loss and damage in Bangladesh has also enhanced stakeholder engagement on the issue, facilitating a discussion on how to promote cross-sectoral collaboration and integrate the adaptation and disaster risk reduction agendas to address climate change more holistically and comprehensively.

The team also took part in numerous international meetings and workshops, both regionally and globally, engaging and strengthening dialogue with researchers, practitioners and other key stakeholders and decision makers within the field. In March of 2013 ICCCAD and partners launched the Asia Pacific Forum on Loss and Damage to disseminate research and provide a platform for an exchange of knowledge and best practices on loss and damage. Work to develop a website for the Forum is currently underway. A bi-monthly newsletter will be produced to profile research in the region. Researchers are encouraged to send information about their loss and damage-related work to: lossanddamageforum@gmail.com.

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