Addressing loss and damage is about ensuring that vulnerable communities are not left alone to face the impacts of the climate crisis. Communities that have contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions are among those most affected, while having limited resources to respond, and need urgent and adequate support to develop and implement solutions that reflect their realities, knowledge, and rights.vThe Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) was established at COP19 in 2013 to enhance understanding of and address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme and slow-onset events, in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to these effects. It also aims to increase action and support for implementing measures to address loss and damage.
The WIM has three core functions: enhancing knowledge and understanding of approaches to address loss and damage; strengthening dialogue, coordination, coherence, and synergies among relevant stakeholders; and enhancing action and support, including finance, technology, and capacity-building, to address loss and damage. The WIM Executive Committee (ExCom) plays a central role in guiding the implementation of these functions.
The Loss and Damage Youth Coalition is sharing its statement for the upcoming 25th meeting of the WIM ExCom, scheduled for 14th-18th September 2026 in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, to express our demands and expectations from the meeting. We call on ExCom 25 to ensure its outcomes strengthen the objective of WIM and its implementation by translating knowledge, coordination, and technical work into meaningful action and support for countries and communities already experiencing devastating loss and damage.
- The voluntary guidelines on including “loss and damage” as a dedicated chapter in Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) must be finalized and adopted. These guidelines should support developing countries in understanding and documenting loss and damage and not create additional reporting burdens. It should also enable the documentation of the experiences and knowledge of affected communities, including Indigenous Peoples, women, local communities, and youth, to inform comprehensive documentation of loss and damage.
- Non-economic loss and damage (NELD) must remain a priority within the implementation of the WIM’s five-year rolling workplan. The work of the experts group should continue with a dedicated implementation agenda, helping countries know how to identify, document, and assess NELDs and how finance can respond to NELDs, taking into account that these NELDs are irreversible and irreplaceable, and it should also identify how communities can participate in the evaluation/documentation of NELDs.
- The action and support expert group should develop a practical mechanism for identifying access barriers to finance and support and collaborate with the funding arrangements to systematically identify and address barriers preventing developing countries from accessing finance for loss and damage.
- Building on the outcomes of the third review of the WIM, ExCom 25 should strengthen the effectiveness of implementation of all three functions of the WIM, with particular emphasis on translating knowledge and coordination into enhanced action and support for developing countries, enabling developing countries and affected communities to act on it.
As evidenced by the catastrophic losses and damages faced by the communities along the Bhotekoshi River basin in Nepal just two weeks before, which has claimed the lives of more than 1300 people, while more than 5100 remain missing, communities on the frontline of the climate crisis cannot wait another year, another meeting for concrete action. ExCom 25 therefore has the opportunity to move from understanding of loss and damage to strengthening implementation, from identifying barriers to tackling them, and from producing knowledge to ensure that this knowledge results in tangible action and support.