User:ClimateArchivista/Loss And Damage

Early Negotiations
Ahead of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, representatives from eight African countries demanded a right to "full compensation and reparations" for ecological damage of their natural and human environment by colonial powers. The representatives met at the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, and agreed to a six-page set of guidelines outlining their right for reparations and compensation for "damage and pillage" of natural resources.

As the UNFCCC was being drafted in 1991, the AOSIS proposed the creation of an international insurance pool to "compensate the most vulnerable small island and low-lying coastal developing countries for loss and damage arising from sea level rise". In the proposal, the amount to be contributed by each country to this pool would be determined by their relative contribution to global emissions and their relative share of global gross national product, a formula "modelled on the 1963 Brussels Supplementary Convention on Third Party Liability in the field of Nuclear Energy". This proposal was rejected, and when the UNFCCC was adopted in 1992 it contained no mention of loss or damage.

Loss and damage was first referred to in a formally-negotiated UN text in the 2007 Bali Action Plan, which called for "Disaster reduction strategies and means to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change".