It’s Time for Solutions! Addressing Displacement and Other Human Mobility Challenges in the Context of Climate Change Loss and Damage

This brief advocates for a ‘durable solutions’ approach within the UNFCCC to averting, minimising and addressing displacement in the context of climate change. With the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) now operationalised and the UNFCCC’s Loss and Damage landscape taking shape, this piece discusses how ‘durable solutions’ can serve to avert, minimise and address loss and damage associated with displacement.

Published on November 1, 2024

Loss and Damage and the Challenges of Human Mobility and Displacement Working Group and the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility | idrp, IDPs, Disaster, Climate, United Nations

Cholistan,punjab,pakistan-september,8,2018,-,An,Old,Man,With,His,Solar,Panel,For

Displacement has been described by Walter Kälin as “the human face of loss and damage”, profoundly affecting human rights, well-being and development, particularly in climate vulnerable countries with limited resources to address its impacts. With the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) now operationalised and the UNFCCC’s Loss and Damage landscape taking shape, ‘durable solutions’ approaches can provide a vital means for identifying entry points for addressing loss and damage. Relatedly, addressing the losses and damages associated with displacement and other mobility challenges is vital to the achievement of ‘durable solutions’. This brief highlights the specific actions that the Fund for Addressing Loss and Damage and other UNFCCC stakeholder bodies, expert groups and organisations should take to support, prioritise and mainstream ‘durable solutions approaches’ into policy and practice. The brief also spotlights the critical COP 29 actions and decisions required for ‘solutions’.

This advocacy brief is co-published by the Loss and Damage Collaboration and Researching Internal Displacement. It can also be found also on the Loss and Damage Collaboration webpage.

DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

This advocacy brief was developed by the Loss and Damage and the Challenges of Human Mobility and Displacement Working Group and the Advisory Group on Climate Change and Human Mobility. Both groups are coalitions of practitioners, researchers, lawyers and activists working on human mobility at local, national and global levels.

Image Credits

Cover image: Cholistan, Punjab, Pakistan-September, 8, 2018. A man with his solar panel charges his mobile phone in a remote area of Cholistan Desert. Image credit: Farhan Riaz / Shutterstock.

Loss and Damage Collaboration logo: Sundarbans web, by the European Space Agency, Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

Researching Internal Displacement publishes engaging and insightful short pieces of writing, artistic and research outputs, policy briefings and think pieces on internal displacement.

We welcome contributions from academics, practitioners, researchers, officials, artists, poets, writers, musicians, dancers, postgraduate students and people affected by internal displacement.

Contact the Editorial Team

How to Contribute

A Condition, Not an Event: Rethinking Displacement and Statelessness in Lebanon

By Duaa Nooreddine | Jun 11, 2026

This brief paper highlights the problem of "circular displacement". In Lebanon, displacement is not an event with a clear beginning and end. Nor is it simply a recurring cycle. For many affected people, it is an ongoing condition where the effects of displacement are never fully resolved and where each recurring cycle leaves people's lives further depleted. The effects are especially acute for the many stateless people displaced in a country that does not fully recognise them. Caught in a cycle of conflict and legal exclusion, stateless people in Lebanon, including Dom, Bedouin and Palestinians from Syria, struggle to access formal protection systems, restore documentation or even leave the country. Describing how existing international frameworks intended to address displacement and statelessness fail in Lebanon, the author highlights the need for both operational and legal reforms, including the establishment of a statelessness determination procedure.

The Invisible Tide: Why Climate Policy Must Address the Unspoken Losses of Coastal Youth

By Ranjan K. Panda | May 28, 2026

This moving and insightful blog, from a long-time climate advocate and champion of youth in India, examines the lived experience of 'loss and damage' by young people from the coastal state of Odisha displaced by sea level rise. Describing the broad range of intangible losses experienced by displaced youth - ranging from loss of cultural heritage and identity to adverse impacts on psychosocial health and personal agency - the article calls for a more nuanced and compassionate understanding of 'non-economic loss and damage' (NELD), a concept used in climate change negotiations and other discourses but which doesn't adequately capture the depth and complexity of the losses and damages experienced by displaced young people. The author argues that these experiences should serve as a stark warning: If disaster management policies and climate adaptation planning do not urgently recognise and address the intangible losses of young people, we risk losing an entire generation to displacement, trauma and disenfranchisement.

Safeguarding Children’s Futures: Addressing children’s experiences of loss and damage in the context of climate-related (im)mobilities

By Lucy Szaboova, Laura Healy and Cristina Colon | May 21, 2026

Building on work undertaken at UNICEF, the article examines how children in situations of climate-related displacement, planned relocation, migration and immobility experience interconnected economic and non-economic harms. Losses and damages experienced through such (im)mobilities often cascade over time, adversely impacting children's physical and psychosocial wellbeing and access to child-critical systems and services, affecting children’s developmental paths throughout life. Failing to respond adequately risks entrenching cycles of poverty, vulnerability, inequality and loss of human capital across generations. The authors discuss why advancing child-responsive data systems, policy frameworks and participation mechanisms is crucial for decisions related to movement, relocation and adaptation interventions, where children’s views are often overlooked. Strengthening children’s inclusion is vital for better interventions and governance and for advancing intergenerational justice.