As the international community meets in Marrakesh for the climate change negotiations at COP-22, one of the most delicate issues on the table is the review of what’s called the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, or WIM.

Policy on “loss and damage,” which refers to the actual and potential impacts of climate change, is complicated. It addresses issues such as building resilience to extreme weather events, dealing with climate-related migration, engaging with the new science of extreme weather event attribution, addressing non-economic losses (e.g., loss of culture, traditions, and place because of sea-level rise), and finance options to help disadvantaged countries.

It is also controversial. Many observers were puzzled by the creation of the WIM at COP-19 three years ago, given strong initial resistance from key developed states, including the United States. And there remains strong opposition to using the words “liability and compensation” from some wealthy states.

The story of how these sides came to agreement is one of language and ambiguity, my co-author Cecilie Hestbaek and I write in an article published in Global Environmental Politics. By tracking the way in which different parties have talked about the issue, we show that the idea of loss and damage has evolved over time and led – at least temporarily – to a resolution of differences and firm establishment of the idea in international climate policy.

Risk vs. Harm

Key parties have historically had different understandings of the policy problem of loss and damage associated with climate change and different prescriptions for the best ways to address it.

On one hand, we found that between 2003 and 2013 some parties tended to view the problem of loss and damage as mainly one of risk and uncertainty. Proponents of this position suggested that because we don’t yet know what the impacts of climate change are going to be, the best solutions are risk reduction strategies, building resilience, and the establishment of risk-transfer or risk-sharing mechanisms, such as insurance.

States subscribing to this view, including the United States and other wealthy nations, tended to question whether loss and damage should be addressed as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at all, often pointing to the Hyogo and Sendai Frameworks for Disaster Risk Reduction as more appropriate international mechanisms. They also categorized loss and damage policy as a part of the United Nation’s work on climate change adaptation, rather than a separate work stream which would signal enhanced institutional legitimacy and require additional resources.

The rhetorical emphasis on risk has several implications. First, it shifts attention away from questions of blame, causality, and accountability and minimizes any relationship between the “perpetrators” and “victims” of climate change. Second, the emphasis on insurance plays strongly on the idea of uncertainty, that when we are not sure of the exact impacts, we should create general reactive systems rather than focus on issues of causation or liability.

However, as Juan Hoffmaister and Doreen Stabinsky argued in a series of briefing papers, not every impact of climate change is so uncertain. Insurance as a solution becomes less appropriate as the predictive power of climate science becomes more precise and as the number of slow-onset (and therefore easier to track) impacts increases.

Developing countries, meanwhile, raised questions of harm and, ultimately, of liability. The negotiators for these states pointed to the injustice of climate change: that the vulnerable communities that bear the brunt of its impacts have contributed least to the problem. According to this view, addressing loss and damage should involve the provision of compensation in addition to risk management measures. Many in this camp also understand loss and damage as something “beyond adaptation.”

For Better or Worse

So how have the two sides come closer together in recent years? An analysis of the different frames presented in newsletters circulated at the UNFCCC negotiations between 2003 and 2013 gives an overall picture of how discourse evolved.

Before 2009, loss and damage tended to be discussed either in terms of an “insurance and risk” frame or a “compensation and liability” frame. This changed dramatically after 2008, when a broader and ultimately more ambiguous frame emerged, in part as a result of the language in the Bali Action Plan that came out of COP-13. We argue that the more ambiguous terminology allowed actors to hold on to their previous understandings but also find common ground, which led to the adoption of the WIM at COP-19 in Warsaw.

Recent research has drawn conflicting conclusions about whether this ambiguity is ultimately helpful or harmful. While we found that it played an important role in laying the foundation for agreement in Warsaw, Edward Page and Clare Heyward in a recent article suggest that “a major stumbling block to further progress in this arena is a series of gaps in our understanding of the meaning, application, and justification of the concept of loss and damage.”

Emily Boyd and her co-authors propose a middle ground in their paper on typologies of loss and damage: that while an official definition may not be necessary, “it is difficult to have practical conversations about actions to address loss and damage and science to support these actions, if different stakeholders have contrasting perceptions and definitions in mind.” That has certainly been true for the work of the WIM Executive Committee which is responsible for guiding the implementation of the functions of the WIM.

Back to Specifics?

The divide in rhetoric that characterized climate negotiations in the past tended to stoke conflicts over culpability for greenhouse gas emissions and over the appropriate realm in which climate-related harms should be addressed. The new, overarching master frame of loss and damage has obscured these divisions and allowed parties to attach different meanings to the policy, making agreement easier.

The embedding of loss and damage policy in its own article in the Paris Agreement last year was seen as an important victory for vulnerable countries, especially in light of proposals from some parties to completely scrap it. The Paris Agreement also offers some additional guidance on what loss and damage means – or rather what it doesn’t mean. The United States and its partners insisted on explicit exclusion of liability or compensation claims under the UNFCCC in an accompanying decision.

The climate conference in Marrakech starting this week is due to review the WIM’s “structure, mandate, and effectiveness.” There are signs that loss and damage is an important issue for the Moroccan Presidency. It held informal consultations at the request of the Alliance of Small Island States in May and loss and damage is on to the agenda of both the COP and its subsidiary bodies. COP-22 may play a critical role in helping clarify what addressing loss and damage really means. What effect that clarity will have, however, is unclear.