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At COP26 in Glasgow, the Scottish Government became the first country to explicitly pledge funding to address Loss and Damage. Three years on, much progress has been made, and it is hoped the newly entitled "Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage" will soon start to disburse funds to people already unjustly suffering from climate impacts.

As the first mover on finance for Loss and Damage, the Scottish Government has funded a series of fore-runner projects. While small-scale and time-limited, the learning can provide valuable insights before and during COP29 to inform the global discourse on this issue, and help maximise the impact and effectiveness of the global Fund.

In late 2023, our 4 organisations and local partners were each awarded £250,000 to test how Loss and Damage funds could most effectively reach and support vulnerable communities in acute climate shock but also those suffering from both longer term economic and non-economic impacts of increasingly erratic and extreme weather.

Projects were chosen via a ‘peer review’ process by a panel of international agencies appointed by the Scottish Government to support delivery of its Humanitarian Emergency Fund, (HEF). This Fund was set up in 2017 to provide emergency life-saving assistance to those facing both high profile and under-reported humanitarian crises, the majority of which include extreme weather cycles as a key driver.

Adopting a test-and-learn approach, the Scottish Government wished to use this pre-existing humanitarian mechanism as a means of allocating funds to address climate-induced loss and damage. It allocated a total of £1m from its wider Climate Justice Fund to the HEF. This allocation for a dedicated loss and damage funding round was additional to existing finance for humanitarian response. The Government stipulated that projects should be a maximum value of £250,000 and be deliverable in around three months.

Below we share insights from projects in Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia and Pakistan, led by Christian Aid, Oxfam, SCIAF and Tearfund - and their partners - respectively. In particular, they share their learnings on how best to engage affected communities on the most appropriate responses, with a strong emphasis on the inclusion and leadership of women as part of locally-led responses.

Zambia – Insights provided by Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF)

Large parts of Zambia, like many neighbours in this region are already being crippled by multiple climate impacts. The brutal cycle of floods and drought and its effects on the land is forcing the most vulnerable families to confront a stark reality: how will they maintain their livelihoods, how will they feed themselves when they are at the mercy of such an unstable climate.

This food insecurity has been at its most extreme in Zambia’s Western and Southern Provinces where children are often too hungry to attend school or forced to forage for food. Damage to roads, bridges and the energy network have further compounded the crisis.

With learning from a recent similar Scottish Government funded project in Malawi, SCIAF and its local Caritas partners proposed an holistic and integrated response which recognised what it sees as the limitations of a hard distinction between economic and non-economic impacts of loss and damage.

With community co-design at the heart of the response, the urgent imperative of food shortages was tackled primarily through unconditional household cash transfers. Supply of vegetable seeds and sustainable agriculture training was also provided to help with longer term food security; livestock were supplied alongside investment in village savings and loans, benefiting a total of 1,700 households. To address loss and damage to infrastructure, a police post, community school, and community health clinic were refurbished and the construction of a new bridge allowed 280 children to return to school.

Women’s groups were central, including identifying key loss and damage issues, such as gender-based violence and child marriage. Gender champions were trained to help build community awareness on issues such as the risk to women collecting water or firewood, with a shared commitment to work beyond the end of the project.

It’s clear that the direct cash delivered by this project helped many people endure the toughest of times. SCIAF has previously reported that cash transfers ought to be part of the broad spectrum of initiatives supported to address Loss and Damage globally, but that they are not in and of themselves a panacea. Rather, they should be part of a wider package of responses, both at a local and national level, addressing household and national infrastructure needs in tandem.

Kenya - Insights provided by Oxfam

The arid and semi-arid region of central Kenya has been similarly affected by a prolonged cycle of drought and flash flooding. Again, this is impacting water supplies and other vital infrastructure as well as incomes, while exacerbating resource-based conflicts.

Through community engagement, Oxfam in Kenya, the ASAL Humanitarian Network, and implementing partners, Strategies for Northern Development in Samburu and Merti Integrated Development Programme in Isiolo, developed a project with three components. Firstly, the rehabilitation and construction of water systems damaged in the floods, particularly benefitting women and girls who often have to take responsibility for this household duty. Secondly, community managed cash transfers were made to help address people’s livelihoods. Finally, the project aimed to relieve non-economic loss by strengthening local peace committees to try and reduce community tension due to increased competition for scarce resources.

The project rehabilitated five water systems and built six water points for domestic water collection and one for cattle. Fifteen community led initiatives were funded – eight led by women’s groups – which, for example, repaired damaged schools and re-established goat herds to rebuild incomes. Three peace committees were strengthened by increasing the participation of women and young people with training on conflict resolution.

While small-scale and time-limited, this HEF’s rapid funding was an effective test-and-learn mechanism, generating valuable insights. It clearly reinforced that, with support, local communities are best placed to propose and implement initiatives. The community-led cash transfers fostered local ownership and legitimacy, while enhancing impact and mobilising additional locally resources. However, the short delivery period meant partners had insufficient time to develop truly gender-transformative projects with communities unfamiliar with loss and damage finance. Whilst embedding women’s participation and leadership, there wasn’t time to fully include survivors of gender-based violence, with many women reluctant to self-identify. The project reinforced the importance of addressing non-economic losses and damages, such as the loss of peace.  

Find out more about this project in this short film:

Ethiopia – Insights provided by Christian Aid

In South Omo in Southern Ethiopia, the mercury can nudge 40 degrees and a scorching, dusty wind blows sand across the arid landscape. Once again, these climate linked extremes deprive the most acutely affected from growing food, to make a living and thrive.

Christian Aid in Ethiopia worked with local partner Action for Development (AFD), who supported the community to identify and prioritise their main climate change-related challenges and to propose their own solutions.  Again, women often bear the brunt of the challenges - for example girls can be married off young to enable their family to afford to restock their animals. Attention was given to the sense of hopelessness felt by families and social disintegration through migration, abuse and conflict for remaining pasture lands.  

The 4-month integrated response plan helped nearly 38 thousand people.  470, mostly women led households received cash assistance to meet lifesaving needs such as food, shelter and medicine. Grants were also provided to 15 groups to generate incomes such as fishing. A thousand goats were provided to 200 of the most vulnerable households and nearly 160,000 livestock were vaccinated. In addition, 11 water boreholes were rehabilitated, benefitting more than 3,500 people. The wider, non-economic, social issues were addressed by providing a wide range of activities including training in psychosocial support for 54 health and community leaders.

Every family member has been involved in tasks to sustain their families. Children can fish in the shallow water resulting from the floods - however it comes with risks, including the presence of snakes and crocodiles.  

Raguel Ita, a community development facilitator with AFD, described the project as a “gleam of hope for the communities."

Pakistan - Insights provided by Tearfund

The focus of Tearfund’s work was in the Rajanpur district of Punjab, where communities are still trying to come to terms with the record monsoon in 2022 and some of the worst flooding in the country’s history.

In this area, many people had tragically lost their homes and family members, as well as essential resources like food, seeds, and livestock; most had not received any support since the flooding. Critical community infrastructure, such as irrigation systems, remained damaged, severely limiting farming activities and further undermining livelihoods.

A rapid community consultation with local partner, REEDS, identified key activities that would have the greatest impact on most urgent needs.

615 women were given livestock (chickens or goats) to help restore their assets and restart their poultry and livestock businesses. Additionally, 250 subsistence farmers were provided with fertiliser to help improve crop yields. Over 20,000 feet of water channels, along with 50 tube wells and 10 natural water ponds were rehabilitated and made fully operational, benefitting more than 14,500 people from 20 villages.  This not only increased the availability of water for agriculture but also reduced the risk of harassment and sexual violence faced by women who had previously been forced to travel longer distances to collect water.

Haseena Mai, a widow and mother of six who lost everything in the floods, had no means of support to rebuild. She received a pair of goats and shared how it transformed her family’s situation:

“Goats are ideal for small-scale farmers like me. The extra milk from the goats is used to nourish my children and I plan to sell the male goat for a good profit to continue my goat-rearing business. What I have left will be spent on my children's education. Myself and my children are happy and thankful to have the opportunity to lead a better life.”

Find out more about this project in this short film:

‍Reflections

The learning from these forerunner projects, and the lead organisations' wider diverse experiences and knowledge, suggest the design and implementation of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage should consider the following:

1. Establish a Rapid Response Window

The experience of mobilising Loss and Damage finance through the Scottish Government’s humanitarian architecture has affirmed the need for a rapid and agile response mechanism under the global Fund to be established. From a household perspective, timeliness of interventions is key to preventing communities from resorting to negative coping strategies, such as child marriage or unsustainable debt. At the national level, direct support for rapid responses can be key to preventing the costs of losses and damages from spiralling. Nevertheless, experiences from these projects have also underlined that even within such a rapid mechanism, programmatic approaches are vital and interventions must be holistic and medium-term in duration. These projects, funded for 3 months only, demonstrated that while short-term interventions can deliver meaningful results they are inadequate in sustainably meeting the full-scale of losses and damages experienced by communities. This timescale issue is an important element in distinguishing between ‘humanitarian’ interventions and those that respond to loss and damage, and this must be considered in the approach adopted in  the Fund.

2. Ensure Direct Access to Finance for Communities

The Fund needs a direct access window to empower communities, particularly marginalised groups, by ensuring they can directly benefit from financial support. Simplified procedures and transparent systems are crucial to making funds easily accessible, fostering meaningful participation from women and other underrepresented groups. Community-led processes promote local leadership, fostering a sense of responsibility and ownership in recovery efforts. By giving communities control over their resources, the Fund can help build resilience, strengthen social cohesion, and support long-term recovery, as seen in initiatives like peace committees that sustainably promote reconciliation and dialogue.

3. Secure Adequate and New Funding

It is essential that the Fund is backed by new and additional financial resources commensurate with the scale of the need, without drawing from existing budgets, including - amid a surge in humanitarian needs - those committed through the already badly over-stretched humanitarian system. This can be supported through the establishment of a distinct and standalone sub-goal for Loss and Damage finance as part of the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, which is set to be negotiated at COP29. It is essential that humanitarian and development finance is not simply "rebadged" as ‘loss and damage’ finance, as these are separate but interconnected needs, and the scale of need is only growing in magnitude as climate impacts deepen due to insufficient action to reduce emissions.

4. Support Essential Services Through Holistic Approaches

Community-led loss and damage projects need to be complemented by national governments across the global South having the resources they need to invest in essential public services, such as health, education, and housing. These services are critical in the aftermath of disasters and for addressing slow-onset crises. Again, communities must be active participants at all stages. A holistic approach is also required to ensure that non-economic losses (NELDs), such as social and cultural impacts, are addressed, enabling communities to recover comprehensively.

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This blog has been authored by member organisations of the Humanitarian Emergency Fund.