Tackling loss and damage in countries vulnerable to the effect of the climate crisis: improving evidence and co-generating pathways to impact
The Alliance for Locally-led Transformative Action on Loss and Damage (ALL ACT) directly supports countries and communities experiencing loss and damage by helping them optimise available resources, harness local expertise and enhance their ability to respond effectively to evolving challenges, ensuring resilience and sustainable recovery.
Principal researcher (climate governance and finance team), Climate Change

People wading through the flood waters and carrying their belongings in Mozambique after Cyclone Idai in 2019 (Photo: Denis Onyodi/IFRC/DRK/Climate Visuals, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Loss and damage concerns are urgent and driven by the increasingly harmful effects of climate change. Many countries are facing new types and forms of climate impact with higher intensity and frequency, which they are not equipped to handle.
These impacts are most acute in least developed countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), where vulnerability is high, and where the people have done least to contribute to the problem.
With global temperatures increasing due to climate change, many of these impacts are already ‘locked in’ and unavoidable.
But addressing loss and damage is not straightforward. Loss and damage impacts are:
- Caused by a wide range of factors, ranging from extreme weather events such as flooding, droughts or cyclones, to long-range slow onset events such as sea-level rise, salination, desertification and glacier loss.
- Highly varied, encompassing economic impacts that can be readily quantified, such as damage to infrastructure, loss of land value and reduced productivity, and others that cannot easily be expressed in monetary terms, such as loss of cultural heritage, language or identity.
- Highly contextual: countries that are less able to withstand climate impacts due to the state of their infrastructure, socioeconomic development, fiscal capacities, political structures or institutions are more vulnerable to lower-intensity climate stresses. Impacts are also different for women, children, disabled people, Indigenous Peoples and other marginalised groups.
So, support and finance to address loss and damage risks require diverse, context-specific approaches that are grounded in everyday realities of LDCs and SIDS and tailored to the vulnerabilities of different people and places.
What is IIED doing?
ALL ACT is a coordinated approach co-developed by IIED with LDC and SIDS through a series of multi-stakeholder deliberative dialogues, that:
- Creates a wider understanding of the existing issues and possible solutions: ALL ACT will facilitate collaboration between communities, local institutions and innovators to co-create agile, relevant and cost-effective solutions.
- Creates a social and collaborative knowledge network: the Loss and Damage Research Observatory will help develop a dynamic knowledge network with diverse partners, focused on capturing and sharing best practices and innovations. This platform serves as a repository for methodologies and supports research through the Saleemul Huq Memorial Scholarship, while fostering a mentorship network to enhance the capacity of researchers, ultimately informing policy on loss and damage.
- Develops a comprehensive approach to financing resilience and musters support behind the shared vision: we must shift the narrative on financing approaches for climate resilience by leveraging data and evidence to support clear demands. We will collaborate with willing countries and networks to champion climate justice and build consensus around a shared vision.
- Create national loss and damage facilities to harmonise governance of a range of funds: we will support LDCs and SIDS to establish national facilities that holistically manage loss and damage risks. These facilities will integrate various funding sources, ensuring accountability, reducing transaction costs and delivering tailored solutions at local levels.
ALL ACT's building blocks
Diagram: Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED
This project is also linked to IIED's work to develop tools and approaches for social protection programmes and the Global SIDS Debt Sustainability Support Service to help communities better absorb the effects of climate risks, adapt to climate impacts and transform their capacities to address growing climate stresses.
News and updates
Publications
Additional resources
Video: Women paying the health cost of the climate crisis (March 2024)
Insight: We need a new, layered approach to debt relief and climate financing, Tom Mitchell, Ritu Bharadwaj (June 2023)
Shock-responsive social protection in fragile and conflict-affected states, Ritu Bharadwaj, N. Karthikeyan (2023), Working paper
Strengthening anticipatory risk response and financing mechanisms for social protection: a practical approach to tackling loss and damage, Ritu Bharadwaj, Tom Mitchell (2022), Working paper
Press release: Multifaceted approach best way for vulnerable countries to overcome climate losses and damage (July 2022)
Press release: Low income countries urgently need finance, technology to address losses and damage due to climate change (October 2021)
Press release: Scotland pledges £6m for climate justice (October 2021)
Video: Tackling climate change in fragile states and protracted crisis situations (October 2021)
Connecting the dots: climate change, migration and social protection, Ritu Bharadwaj, Somnath Hazra, Mohan Reddy, Shouvik Das, Daljeet Kaur (2021), Working paper
Climate-induced migration and modern slavery: a toolkit for policymakers, Ritu Bharadwaj, Danielle Bishop, Somnath Hazra, Enock Pufaa, James Kofi Annan, (2021), Toolkit
Event: Tackling climate change in fragile states and protracted crisis situations
Blog: Humanitarian action is part of climate response – but must be early and locally led, by Anna Carthy and Simon Addison (October 2021)
Podcast: Loss and damage – recognising the costs of climate change: Make Change Happen podcast episode 10 (March 2021)
Animation and blog series: Demanding attention for the loss and damage from climate change (2021)
Event: Loss and damage – research, policy and lived experience in least developed countries (September 2020)
Loss and damage in the Paris Agreement’s global stocktake, Brook M Dambacher, Olivia Serdeczny, Ms Kunzang (2018), IIED Briefing
Donors
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
CECG – climate emergency collaboration group