An emerging governmentality of climate change loss and damage

Abstract

Loss and damage is the “third pillar” of international climate governance alongside mitigation and adaptation. When mitigation and adaptation fail, losses and damages occur. Scholars have been reacting to international political discourse centred around governing actual or potential severe losses and damages from climate change. Large gaps exist in relation to understanding the underlying power dimensions, rationalities, knowledges, and technologies of loss and damage governance and science. We draw from a Foucauldian-inspired governmentality framework to argue there is an emerging governmentality of loss and damage. We find, among other things, that root causes of loss and damage are being obscured, Western knowledge and technocratic interventions are centred, and there are colonial presupposed subjectivities of Global South victims of climate change, which are being contested by people bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. We propose future directions for critical research on climate change loss and damage.