Grounding the conversation on loss and damage: insights from sense-making analysis with Pacific leaders

The concept of Loss and Damage (L&D) is gaining increased attention within and outside of international climate negotiations, and by a broader array of actors looking to address the personal, practical, and political changes wrought by the impacts of climate change. While the original use of the term has developed within the international negotiations, the concept is increasingly tasked with making sense of, and dealing with, the impacts of climate change at national and local levels. In this context, there is a need to understand how the concept of L&D relates to people’s experiences of and potential responses to the impacts of climate change. We address this gap by drawing on dialogical sense-making analysis, that highlights how language both shapes, and is shaped by, the social interactions in which it is used. Our in-depth qualitative analysis builds on ten conversations with Pacific leaders familiar with Loss and Damage in international discussions as well as national and local-level experiences of actually-occurring losses and damages. We show how the depth and range of experiences that people articulate are often at odds with the meanings associated with the concept of Loss and Damage, which are primarily orientated towards the international climate negotiations. We therefore question whether and how the concept is relevant to these experiences and forms of sense-making. Grounding the concept of L&D will require attention to the kinds of conversations it is enabling, and how they can become more inclusive of plural perspectives, needs, knowledges and values.