Pre-COP31 Side Event / Pacific Loss and Damage: Evidence to Action
Background
Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) are on the frontline of climate change and disasters. The region is already experiencing escalating impacts from tropical cyclones, flooding, drought, sea-level rise, coastal erosion, ocean warming and salinisation. These impacts are resulting in significant economic losses, damage to infrastructure and livelihoods, displacement of communities and increasing pressure on already constrained national budgets.
However, many of the most profound impacts experienced across the Pacific are non-economic in nature and remain largely unaccounted for in global climate and financing discussions. These include the loss of cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, identity, language, spiritual connections to land and ocean, biodiversity, ecosystem services and community cohesion. Slow-onset events and increasing human mobility and relocation concerns are further intensifying these losses.
Recognising the growing importance of understanding and addressing loss and damage, Pacific Governments, together with regional and international partners, have developed a growing body of national and regional evidence. This included the evidence base prepared by SPREP under the BOLD Programme, the outcomes of the Loss and Damage Symposium held in Samoa in 2025, and evidence generated through SPC, UN agencies, the Santiago Network, civil society and other partners.
The need to clearly articulate and assess the non-economic dimensions of loss and damage is also prominently reflected in technical assistance requests submitted to the Santiago Network, including from countries in the Pacific. This highlights a clear gap and an opportunity to strengthen culturally aware and context-specific responses to non-economic loss and damage.
Rationale for the Side Event
As discussions on climate finance continue to evolve under the UNFCCC process, there is increasing recognition that robust evidence on loss and damage is essential for informing investment decisions and improving access to financing mechanisms, including the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, adaptation finance and emerging regional financing instruments
The Santiago Network’s experience across the Pacific shows that strengthening evidence systems is not only a technical need but a prerequisite for accessing climate finance. In Vanuatu, the Network’s technical assistance connected community perspectives with national planning, enabling the development of a costed long-term L&D programme and a FRLD funding request.
Yet significant challenges remain. Economic losses are often underestimated, while non-economic losses are rarely systematically assessed or incorporated into national planning and financing proposals. Data gaps, inconsistent methodologies and limited institutional capacity constrain the ability of Pacific countries to fully articulate the scale and nature of climate impacts.
Understanding both the economic and non-economic dimensions of loss and damage is essential for ensuring that the full realities faced by Pacific communities are recognised and appropriately reflected in policy, planning and financing decisions. By strengthening the evidence base, Pacific countries can better advocate for the resources needed to avert, minimise and address loss and damage and to build a more resilient future.
Sharing this complementary evidence at Pacific Pre-COP provides a strategic opportunity to elevate Pacific perspectives ahead of COP31 and inform climate financing decisions. The discussion will also support future collaborative work on a Pacific Outlook, building on existing evidence and focusing on practical approaches, financing and potential methodological approaches.
Objectives
- Share key messages from existing Pacific evidence on economic and non-economic loss and damage, including the SPREP/BOLD evidence base and the outcomes of the 2025 Loss and Damage Symposium in Samoa.
- Highlight emerging evidence on slow-onset events, displacement, cultural loss and ecosystem impacts.
- Demonstrate the importance of robust loss and damage data and analytics in strengthening financing readiness, informing investment priorities and supporting engagement with relevant climate and resilience financing mechanisms, and showcase on the ground impact of loss and damage finance and benefits of international funds utilising national systems.
- Showcase how the Santiago Network’s technical assistance is strengthening Pacific evidence systems, national coordination, and financing readiness, including lessons from Vanuatu’s technical assistance implementation, and from active requests in the Pacific region