Investigating Climate Justice Preferences for Financing Instruments for Loss and Damage
Project Description
Background
Within the international climate policy negotiations, unavoidable ‘residual’ damages have been acknowledged by using the term Loss and Damage (L&D). It describes damages caused by Climate Change that are “beyond adaptation” and will occur no matter which measures for adaption and mitigation are taken. Examples are losses through sea level rise, soil salinization, droughts or sudden extreme weather events, like storms and floods. The need to address L&D has led to the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) as a third pillar of the international climate policy framework within Article 8 of the Paris Agreement complementing mitigation and adaption.
Aims and central research question
Yet, the interpretation of the term Loss and Damage as well as which financing schemes should be implemented to cover these costs continues to be subject to discussion. While developing countries demand a liability-based regime stipulating compensatory transfers for residual damages suffered, Annex I countries favor the interpretation of L&D as a mechanism promoting disaster risk management and insurance schemes in vulnerable countries. Hence, the first part of this project assesses systematically what different schemes to finance Loss and Damage have been proposed within the current climate policy negotiations.
As any type of L&D scheme, be it insurance-based or compensatory, will involve monetary transfers from Annex I-countries to low-income developing countries, a successful implementation of L&D policies depends on the level of public support for such payments. The key research question we thrive to answer within the scope of this project is what drives voter preferences with respect to contributions to international climate policy schemes addressing Loss and Damage. We investigate this via two incentived lab-experiments with students of the University of Innsbruck and a conjoint choice experiment using a large-scale representative sample of the Austrian electorate.
Methods
- Incentivized laboratory experiments
- Survey experiments
Literature
Gampfer, R., Bernauer, T., & Kachi, A. (2014). Obtaining public support for North-South climate funding: Evidence from conjoint experiments in donor countries. Global Environmental Change, 29, 118-126.
Mechler, R., Singh, C., Ebi, K., Djalante, R., Thomas, A., James, R., ... & Revi, A. (2020). Loss and Damage and limits to adaptation: recent IPCC insights and implications for climate science and policy. Sustainability Science, 15(4), 1245-1251.
Page, E. A., & Heyward, C. (2017). Compensating for climate change loss and damage. Political Studies, 65(2), 356-372.
Disciplines
Economics, Political science
Starting date
October 2020