Increasingly severe climate change impacts are wreaking destruction across the world, with disastrous implications for human health, wellbeing, livelihoods, culture and security. How to deal with 'loss and damage' caused by climate change was for long a controversial topic within the UN climate negotiations, but at COP27 in 2022 governments agreed to establish a dedicated fund to assist developing countries in responding to the challenge.

In this episode of the Climate Briefing, Anna Aberg and Nina Jeffs (standing in for Ruth Townend) speak to Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, the Executive Director of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, about what progress that has been made in operationalizing the fund, what lies ahead, what some of the main challenges are and how the fund interacts with the wider economic architecture.

To learn more about how loss and damage finance has featured in the climate negotiations, please see the Chatham House research paper 'Loss and damage finance in the climate negotiations: key challenges and next steps' (available here) and the expert comment 'The historic loss and damage fund' (available here).