Introduction
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its third assessment report (IPCC TAR, 2001), recognises that an increase in climate-related disasters is one way of identifying signs of global warming and climate change. The increase in the number, magnitude and frequency of extreme events results in more burdens to existing coping and response mechanisms.[1]
At the end of the UNFCCC COP 13 in Bali in December 2007, governments agreed that ‘Enhanced action on adaptation’ should include consideration of ‘disaster reduction strategies’ (see Section 1(c) in the Bali Action Plan). The importance of disaster risk reduction (DRR) as a strategy for climate change adaptation is therefore recognised by the climate change international forum, and it is agreed that DRR must be a key component of the adaptation pillar of the post-2012 framework if an effective, sustainable approach to adaptation is to be achieved.
The Bali Action Plan calls for risk management and risk reduction strategies, including risk sharing and transfer mechanisms, such as insurance, and disaster reduction strategies to address loss and damage associated with climate-change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
Global warming changes average climatic conditions and climate variability, thus exacerbating underlying risk factors and generating new threats, which a region may have no experience in dealing with. The burden on existing response strategies and mechanisms comes about when the current response strategies for disasters no longer suffice, as the coping and response mechanisms are based on past vulnerabilities. If climate change adaptation policies and measures are to be efficient and effective, they must build on and expand existing efforts for the reduction of disaster risk. Conversely, if disaster risk reduction approaches are to be sustainable, they must account for the impact of climate change.
Climate change adaptation, DRR, and loss and damage
Climate change adaptation and DRR have very similar aims in terms of seeking to build resilience in the face of hazards. They both focus on reducing people’s vulnerability to hazards by improving methods to anticipate, resist, cope with and recover from their impact. In so doing, climate change adaptation clearly focuses on climate-related hazards, such as floods, droughts and storms. The disaster risk management community has a long history of dealing with such events, and therefore a wealth of experience relevant to adaptation.Building resilience is key in efforts towards both the reduction of disaster risks and climate change adaptation. However, in the case of the former, the emphasis is on determining existing capacity so as to anticipate, resist, cope with and recover from the impact of hazards.
Recently, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called for submissions to identify a cost effective, equitable DRR strategy and robust programme in the face of increasing weather and climate variability. The submissions were also to be based on information on the following themes, to be addressed in the new work programme:
(a) Assessing the risk of loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change and the current knowledge on the same;
(b) A range of approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including impacts related to extreme weather events and slow onset events, taking into consideration experience at all levels;
(c) The role of the Convention in enhancing the implementation of approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change.
The treatment for loss and damage under the climate change international discussions is clearly focused on safeguards against extreme weather and climate events. To address expected losses, the UNFCCC parties have identified both DRR strategies and risk transfer mechanisms, including insurance, as potential elements in a new climate agreement. While intervention through insurance is considered limited, in that it does not prevent the loss of lives or assets experienced in developed countries, it shows that collaboration between the insurance industry and the public sector can promote risk reduction in a number of ways.
Insurers can also avoid large compensation claims by investing directly in risk reduction measures, and, as a prerequisite for coverage, they can require that policy holders undertake DRR measures. In addition, government can provide the right incentives through legislation, financial oversight and monitoring, and work with insurers to raise awareness and improve risk education by making available risk data and information systems.
Among the challenges in developing a loss and damage strategy and programme is the need for new and additional redefinitions of what a disaster is, and what an extreme climate event is – especially in the face of an uncertain and highly variable climate, in which the frequencies and intensities of flood, drought and other extreme weather events are likely to change in uncertain ways. The vulnerabilities will need to be re-assessed across several sectors – including, for example, coastal areas, settlements, agriculture, health and tourism.
To fill these gaps, it will be necessary to re-estimate all impacts attributable to climate change. Such efforts will provide a better understanding of the magnitude of the impact and motivate further adaptive and mitigation actions. For example, global warming and climate change affects the basic requirements for health: clean air and water, sufficient food, and adequate shelter. Climate change also brings new challenges to the control of infectious diseases, as some are highly climate-sensitive to temperature and rainfall, including cholera and the diarrheal diseases, as well as vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue and schistosomiasis. However, there still remains a major knowledge gap on economic losses resulting from health impacts – including the cost of premature death, the impact on people’s productive capacity (both sick people and healthy people, the latter, for example, under heat stress), and the burden borne by health systems to deal with increased caseload. No health economic study systematically examines all the health damage cost categories across all diseases/health impacts at global level, leaving aside a wide range of associated climate-sensitive health impacts.
It is in this respect that the new loss and damage work programme strategies will need to be cost-effective and equitable in reducing weather- and climate-related disaster risk.
They should enhance access to and understanding of information and promote livelihood diversification to be able to withstand a number of stresses, not just weather-related hazards; There needs to be a set of sub-programmes blending quantitative, cost benefit analysis, and qualitative methodologies. Also important is the identification of synergies between social, environmental and climate change that are acceptable to the vulnerable communities; Policies and measures, including financial options and tools, must account for new risks and the aggravation of existing risks posed by climate change. Past and current approaches should form the basis of new and improved measures aimed at enabling communities and nations to increase their resilience to climate change.
In determining a global response mechanism to prevent and address disasters and disaster losses, we must learn from the experiences of the Nairobi Work Programme (2005–2010), whose objectives are to enhance regional, national and local capacities on: (a) understanding and assessing the impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change and (b) enhancing informed decision on adaptation practices in terms of effective DRR.
Possible elements of a loss and damage work programme
Disaster risk management and reduction are featured in the Cancun Adaptation Framework along with the paragraph on human migration and displacement (paras 13–14 of the Cancun Adaptation Framework). Loss reduction spans the range of rapid- and slow-onset hazards that can cause loss and damage. Activities related to loss and damage must be viewed as part of a climate risk management strategy that includes, first and foremost, activities that prevent human and economic loss and damage from climate variability and extremes.
There is increasing recognition that disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation have a common focus in that they are both concerned with reducing the vulnerability of communities and contributing to sustainable development. It is also important that discussions with governments maintain that adaptation includes not only climate extremes but also the more slowly evolving risks posed by systematic trends, such as increasing mean temperatures and sea-levels. In some cases these are not mutually exclusive; for example, the current climate extremes causing such distress in the Horn of Africa are symptomatic of longer drying trends in the region, requiring immediate disaster management as well as longer-term adaptation. Slow onset of climate changes are already resulting in failing agricultural systems in several of the poorest countries, accentuating inadequate water supplies, and having adverse impact on deteriorating or sub-optimal infrastructure – all of which undermine or reverse the course of economic development.
These losses and damages are significant and growing, and need to be addressed within a holistic climate risk management approach that will result in climate resilient economies.
The development of possible elements of a loss and damage work programme must support smart design of insurance that builds in incentives for reducing disaster risks and minimises maladaptive behaviour. The incentives are themselves very difficult to assess. An important precondition for insuring climate change disasters is that we must be able to predict the specific event. Under climate change, the losses occur suddenly and are near impossible to foresee. Further, it is also important to develop a loss and damage work programme that will spread the risk over time, regions and between individuals/entities.
For some climate change–related losses and damages, such as sea-level rise, desertification and drought, it might be important to define thresholds for addressing the losses and damage – especially when the processes are slow and continuous changes that potentially affect the population of one or more countries. Maintaining affordability will be challenging as climate-risk impacts increase in frequency and magnitude, becoming less insurable. Given increased levels of uncertainty accompanying climate change, higher risks to insurers ultimately mean higher premiums for clients, unless significant risk reduction measures are in place.
Key lessons point to the need to learn from a phased approach – allowing in-country demonstrations of the practice of loss and damage strategies; these may include undertaking specific community-based adaptation projects with linkages to DRR, and knowledge generation – practical, understandable and deployable knowledge, including scientific and socioeconomic knowledge.
The work programme must allow for a provision of expert advice and technical assistance on DRR and climate change adaptation.
Specifically the programme must lead to an improved understanding of climate variability, document good practices and implement pilot initiatives in vulnerable communities. It needs to promote community-based adaptation principles and develop, adapt and test tools and techniques for adaptation – for example tools to measure physical (in terms of physical measures of risk reduction); social (institution building, gender, inclusion, networking, etc.), educational (school and higher education, non-formal education, education for field practitioners, teachers, etc.) and economic (livelihood resilience and options, micro-finance, etc.). It should also promote policy advocacy, education, and awareness around insurance for a work programme on loss and damage associated with climate change.
The authors are affiliated to the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Botswana.
[1] The IPCC projects increased frequency of heavy precipitation events (very likely), increased areas affected by drought (likely), increased incidence of extremely high sea-level (likely) and increased intensity of tropical cyclone activity (likely).