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Accepted Paper:
Shifting the focus of the global warming agenda to adaptation and loss & damage (AL&D)
Terry Cannon
(Institute of Development Studies)
What has happened to the focus on adaptation and loss & damage in the debates about global warming? Organizations (especially NGOs) continue to focus on what they can do (which is orders of magnitude less than what is needed, and there are very few good ideas about what adaptation should consist of.
Paper long abstract:
This paper is to provoke discussion about the problem that most of the discussion around global warming is focused on emissions reduction and mitigation. Very little is being said about AL&D. In the ‘rich’ countries the public has hardly any conception of what it might entail (let alone the implications for taxation and transfers of finance). Despite widespread awareness of what mitigation means, general discussion and debate about global warming involves very little about AL&D, and of the public is generally ignorant of it.
For the sake of simplicity, this paper looks at (very simplified) ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ aspects of climate change adaptation and Loss & Damage (AL&D) issues. By supply I mean the availability (or not) of funding from ‘rich’ countries to the global ‘south’, and demand is intended to indicate the various needs and claims made by countries of the south for support to adapt or deal with loss and damage. A key issue is that so far on the demand side the actions being taken are largely defined by those who supply, in conjunction with governments of the global south that collude with funders to accept particular forms of assistance. There is an enormous gap between what is offered by funders and taken up by governments take up on the one hand, and the needs of the people on the other.