This year alone we have seen extreme weather events and slow-onset processes resulting in catastrophic loss and damage (impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided through adaptation and mitigation activities), leading to serious human rights harm all across the world affecting millions of people, for which historical and present responsibility lies with wealthy, highly industrialized countries and powerful corporate actors. Loss and damage is a human rights crisis (more on our analysis here), and States, particularly wealthy and highly industrialized nations, have clear legal obligations to urgently and meaningfully address loss and damage, both in terms of the symptoms and the root causes. Many ESCR-Net members confront climate impacts on the frontlines and forcefully resist the structural drivers thereof. Loss and damage has thus been taken up as a collective ESCR-Net priority for the past three years.
