COP19 (19/11/13) – Saleemul Huq, Senior Fellow, International Institute for Environment and Development talks about why neither mitigation nor adaptation is sufficient to prevent the loss and damage that will be caused by climate change.

He says developing countries, in particular the Small Island States, want the issue of loss and damage to be discussed as a separate problem and are calling for an international mechanism, distinctive from existing mechanisms, to be created.

Huq says there are currently three proposals that are being discussed in Warsaw. These have been put forward by China, Norway and both the USA and the European Union.

He says Typhoon Haiyan, and Yeb Sano’s emotional speech last week about the impact of the typhoon in the Philippines, illustrates that climate change action needs to go beyond mitigation and adaptation now. He warns events like Haiyan will become the norm in the future. As a result, the inevitable loss and damage that will be caused needs to be addressed.

He emphasises that the proposals at the talks are not about asking countries for compensation but to create a mechanism where the issues of loss and damage can be discussed.

He says it is a global problem and requires global solutions.