Overview

• Climate loss-and-damage funding is a mechanism to support recovery from the losses and damage caused by climate change, particularly in lower-income countries that disproportionately bear the burden of climate impacts.
• The fund is expected to be hosted by the World Bank in Washington DC for an interim period, with many climate-vulnerable countries calling for the fund to be associated with the United Nations on a permanent basis.
• Questions of who will pay and how much, and who will be eligible to receive funding and on what grounds, are yet to be answered. Higher-income countries do not want to be legally bound to contribute, while many climate-vulnerable countries want them to be.
• Researchers propose using weather and climate data and models to predict the vulnerability of individual countries, regions and cities to climate events, and pre-emptively apportion funding accordingly. This approach would help the most vulnerable to be better prepared for shocks.
• Researchers also suggest that the fund needs to focus on smaller grants for grassroots community organizations, with simpler rules of access, to get funding to the people who need it as quickly as possible.