Climate Manifesto:
Policies to deliver action and justice

Urgently progress the UN Loss and Damage Fund

The Scottish and UK governments should use whatever roles they have to help ensure the new global Loss and Damage Fund is effectively and equitably operationalised and speedily funded in line with surging financial needs.

Principles to govern the UN Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) include:

• international cooperation and solidarity, historical responsibility and the polluter pays principle
• new and additional funding (to ODA and climate finance commitments)
• needs-based, adequate, predictable and precautionary
• locally driven with subsidiarity – enveloping gender responsiveness and
• equitable representation
• public and grant-based, not loans
• balanced and comprehensive – being available for both short – and long-term needs, and
  addressing non-financial losses

The steps that need to happen, both at COP28 and beyond it, to make the Loss and Damage Fund work include:

• use COP28 to report progress on, and confirm, the governing arrangements and delivery structure of the Loss and Damage Fund
• after COP28, urgently deliver an ambitious and speedy process for needs-based resource mobilisation for the LDF, with finance being channelled to developing countries
• regular and multi-year country contributions based on the UNFCCC principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities
• national loss and damage finance needs become a core element of the UNFCCC Global Stocktake
• loss and damage being included as a dedicated sub-goal in the new collective quantified
• climate finance goal (NCQG) post-2025 under the Paris Agreement.
• mainstream gender by making loss and damage a core element in the UNFCCC’sGender Action Plan, including ensuring all action has an explicit gender lens so it does not exacerbate existing inequalities

Among other routes, the Scottish Government can argue this case through the Under 2 Coalition,⁶⁹ of which it is currently co-chair, and other states and regions networks such as the Marrakech Partnership and ICLEI.

For further information:

• The Loss and Damage Finance Facility – Why and How, Christian Aid, 2022, https://www.christianaid.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-10/the-loss-and-damage-finance-facility.pdf
• The Loss and Damage Fund – Where does the money come from?, Christian Aid, March 2023, https://www.christianaid.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-05/the-loss-and-damage-fund_may-2023.pdf
• Fair Sources of Finance for a New Loss and Damage Funding Arrangement, Quakers United Nations Office, 2023, https://quno.org/sites/default/files/resources/Fair%20Sources%20of%20Finance%20for%20a%20New%20Loss%20and%20Damage%20Funding%20Arrangement__31%20May%202023__QUNO__Carlson.pdf
• Footing the Bill: fair finance for loss and damage in an era of escalating climate impacts, Oxfam, 2022, https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/footing-bill-fair-finance-loss-and-damage-eraescalating-climate-impacts