Page - 140 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

140 R.A. Jameset al. lockedbehindadoor called attribution.Thekey to that door lieswith the scientific community, it is still being forged.” These interviews tookplacebefore theParisClimateConference,when the fol- lowing textwas included inDecision 1/CP. 21, referring to the article of the Paris Agreement about L&D:“Article 8 of theAgreement does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation;” (UNFCCC2015, paragraph51). Subse- quentanalysissuggeststhatthisdoesnotpreventliabilityorcompensationperse,but ratheronlyinconnectionwithArticle8(MaceandVerheyen2016;Calliari2016). It doesnot, forexample,preventactionsoutside theframeworkof theUNFCCC,such as legal actionagainst individual countriesor companies. Thepotential for attributionevidence to support adhoc litigation, outsideof the UNFCCC,hasalsoreceivedconsiderableattentionintheliterature,withmixedviews aboutwhether the sciencewould be strong enough to standup in court (e.g. Farris 2009;Adam2011;Wrathalletal.2015;Hannartetal.2016;ThorntonandCovington 2016; seealso thechapterbySimlinger andMayer2018). Drawingon the reviewofavailableevidence inSect. 5.3, itwould seemthat any formofliabilityandcompensationwhichreliesonacomplete“causativechain”from monetary losses—to weather and climate—to anthropogenic climate change—to emitters,might currently struggle to findmany exampleswith sufficient evidence. Given theprogress of the science, such exampleswill however emerge, albeitwith uncertainties (Otto et al. 2017). It will then become a legal question of whether andhowthesemight support individual lawsuits.Existinganalysis suggests that the requirements of quantitative evidencewould be rather different, for example if the case is examined in tort lawor in thecontextofhumanrights (MarjanacandPatton 2018). Beyondadhoc litigation, the ideaofaglobalcompensationmechanismbasedon fully attributable losses anddamages is currently far fromreality.This is not to say that somekindofglobal insuranceand/orcompensationmechanismisnotpossible, but rather that trying tobasepaymentsonquantitativeattributionevidenceata local level is unlikely to lead to fair outcomes, as the strength of available evidencewill varybetweenplacesandevents.Infact,theevidenceatthedisposalofpoorcountries, typicallyhighlyvulnerable toclimatechange, isvery limitedascompared to richer countrieswith long-termandhigh-qualitydataseriesand information(Huggeletal. 2016b;Fig.5.9).Severalproposalsforglobalinsurancemechanismsinthecontextof L&Dhavebeendeveloped(e.g.Linnerooth-Bayeretal.2009;chapterbyLinnerooth- Bayer et al. 2018),28 and these have not necessarily required a full causative chain ofattributionevidence (seealso introductionbyMechler et al. 2018). 28Theoriginalproposal fromtheAllianceofSmall IslandsStates for toestablisha‘collective loss- sharingscheme’ to‘compensate themostvulnerablesmall islandandlow-lyingcoastaldeveloping countries for losses anddamages’ is described inMaceandVerheyen (2016), andcanbe found in anannexathttp://unfccc.int/resource/docs/a/15_2.pdf.