The “Constructive Ambiguity” of Climate Change Loss and Damage

UCL Anthropocene

Vanhala discusses the deepening institutionalisation of climate change loss and damage, long opposed by powerful developed countries

For decades, the scientific community has warned of the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change. Yet it is only very recently that governance arrangements to address climate impacts that we may not be able to adapt to have begun to be put into place at the global level in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The adoption of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (L&amp;D) in 2013 and the creation of institutions – specifically a dedicated UN Executive Committee to develop and implement global policy on loss and damage – came as a major surprise to most observers of climate governance. What accounts for the deepening institutionalisation of an issue that has long been opposed by powerful developed countries?Here, Professor Lisa Vanhala (UCL Department of Political Science) argues that this institutionalisation process is a part of a broader constitutive dynamic between certain meaning frames and an emergent set of institutional practices in this sphere of global governance. Different groups of actors understand and advocate for different conceptualisations of the idea of climate change loss and damage: some frame it as a disaster risk management issue whereas others understand it through the lens of climate justice and advance a responsibility and compensation frame.This research shows that these varying interpretations and contestation over the very idea of what L&amp;D is has specific implications for struggles over 1) the composition of the Committee, 2) the Committee’s workplan and 3) the siting of the Committee's meetings. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic data and interviews with key international policy actors, the analysis emphasizes some of the ways in which constructive ambiguity becomes embodied and material as the micro-dynamics of power play out in climate governance. In doing so it advances our understanding of how ideas become embodied and instantiated in global governance. Lisa Vanhala is a Professor of Political Science at University College London. Her research explores the relationship between climate change, governance and human rights. She is currently the PI on a European Research Council Starting Grant on the Politics and Governance of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD). Her recent work on loss and damage and climate change litigation has been published in Global Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Change, Environmental Politics, Law &amp; Policy and WIRES Climate Change.

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The “Constructive Ambiguity” of Climate Change Loss and Damage

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The “Constructive Ambiguity” of Climate Change Loss and Damage

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