LOSS AND DAMAGE: UNAVOIDABLE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON ECOSYSTEMS


Loss and Damage: Unavoidable Impacts of Climate Change on Ecosystems


What is Loss and Damage?


Anthropogenic climate change is underway and will continue for the foreseeable future. It is manifesting more rapidly and more intensely than many expected.1,2


The most recent


global assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that the world has become 0.85°C warmer than in the late nineteenth century and extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent. Increase in the frequency, intensity and/or amount of heavy precipitation is to be expected; drought is to become more intense and prolonged in many regions; and incidence and/or magnitude of extreme high sea level is likely to increase.1


These climatic


changes and extreme events pose an unprecedented threat to people, ecosystems, assets, and economies.


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Mitigation and adaptation–described as avoiding the unmanageable and managing the unavoidable, respectively– remain the most important paths to reduce the adverse effects of a changing climate.3,4


However, given the delays over


the last 25 years in accomplishing mitigation and the late start on tackling adaptation, scientific evidence indicates that limits to adaptation are clear and that losses and damages from climate change in human and natural systems are inevitable.5-8


While there is no universally agreed definition to date,8-11 the term ‘loss and damage’ may be used to describe the adverse effects of climate change that cannot be avoided through mitigation measures or managed through adaptation


Photo Credit: OlegD/ Shutterstock.com

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