Page - 91 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

4 TheRiskandPolicySpace forLossandDamage… 91 TheIPCChasattributed trends inslowonsetclimatechangeprocessesandmany climate extremes to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC2012).More- over,climatemodelresultsevaluatedinthelatest IPCCreportshowpeakwindstorm velocityof tropicalstormsisset to increase, rainfall tobecomemorevolatileandsea levelstoriseasicecapsmelt,altogetherleadingtoevenmoresevereadverseimpacts of climate change in the future (IPCC2013). Thesefindings imply an explicit and moral obligation for enhanced action onmanaging climate-related risks.Different principles of distributive justice, such as capacity to pay or greatest needs,maybe applied to share the associated costs among agents, a principle which indeed the international community has built on as it supports themost vulnerable countries1 (Posner andWeisbach 2010). In addition, climate change also brings along a need for considering issues of compensatory justice due to the unequal distribution of historical and current emissions as the root cause of global warming, the adverse distribution of impacts of climate change between the globalNorth and the global South,andthefact thatclimatechangeisprojectedtoleadtounavoidableandpoten- tially irrecoverable losses anddamages, suchasof low-lying islands in thewakeof strongsea-level rise (Roser et al. 2015). Climate science has beenmaking great progress in climate attribution research evenwithregardtospecificevents(seechapterbyJamesetal.2018).Recentresearch has shownasignificanthumanelement inmegaevents (Trenberthet al. 2015) such as superstormsSandy in2013 in theUS, theAustralianheatwave in2013 (Herring et al. 2014), the 2016 drought in Kenia (WWA2017).Mann et al. (2017) found that amplified arctic warming, influenced by climate change, makes temperature patterns (so called “planetary waves”) that cause heatwaves, droughts and floods across Europe,NorthAmerica andAsiamore likely. Yet, causally linking anthro- pogenic emissions to extremeweather events andeventually to risksonpeople and propertyhasnotconclusivelybeenachievedandwill remaincomplex,as risks from climate-relatedeventsareshapedbymanyfactors, includingclimatevariability, ris- ingexposureofpeopleandassetsaswellassocio-economicvulnerabilitydynamics (Stone et al. 2013).While basic evidence to link anthropogenicGHGemissions to climateimpacts is there(Schalleretal.2016),makingtheconcrete,enforceablecase will remainmuchharder (Huggeletal.2015;chapterbyBouwer2018).Hence,and asarguedabove, thecausalattributionandstrict liabilityprinciplecannotbeinvoked currently(e.g.forlegalaction).Nevertheless,wesuggestit iskeptinthebackground, whendecisionsaremadeinthemeanwhilebasedonprinciplesofdistributivejustice. In themedium to longer-term, as evidence fromclimate change attribution studies potentially increases,weargueforagradual integrationof thecompensatory justice dimension. 1Current international support for the most vulnerable countries is primarily based on implied responsibility andmoral duty, aswell as humanitarian reasons.Donor countries are currently not actingonexplicit responsibilities.