Published February 17, 2026
By Lien Vandamme, CIEL Senior Campaigner at the Climate and Energy Program.
When Cyclone Ditwah struck Sri Lanka just one week after the climate negotiations in Belém (COP30), it ripped through homes, farmland, roads, and power systems with devastating speed. Entire communities were left without shelter, livelihoods, or access to basic services, exposing how unprepared the world is to confront escalating climate harm.
Now, as Sri Lanka prepares to seek support from the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (Loss and Damage Fund or FRLD), one reality is clear: the damage runs over 4 billion USD, but the institution created to address such harm worldwide doesn’t even have a fourth of these resources on hand. Cyclone Ditwah exposed with brutal clarity the limits of adaptation and the fragility of a global climate regime that still treats climate harm as charity, not responsibility.
The storm spotlighted in real time how the climate talks have long failed to answer fundamental questions: when climate harm destroys lives and violates human rights, who is responsible for repairing the damage and ensuring that funds reach impacted communities? Recognition of the need to address loss and damage has slowly increased, but COP decisions putting that recognition into practice – especially through the provision of finance – are still lacking.
While diplomatic fora, such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), fail to deliver meaningful solutions for climate harm or pathways to accountability, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began answering some of these questions last year with a groundbreaking Advisory Opinion. 2026 presents key opportunities to move the needle further.
A Fund That Exists — Mostly on Paper
On paper, the Loss and Damage Fund was created precisely for this purpose: to provide finance to climate-vulnerable countries and communities that experience climate harm. In reality, the gap between needs and response is staggering. The Fund’s initial phase – launched at COP30 — is meant to disburse 250 million USD in total, an amount that would barely scratch the surface of Sri Lanka’s losses alone.
This mismatch is the result of the global climate regime’s failure to create enforceable mechanisms to ensure States uphold their legal obligations, including in relation to climate finance. While public climate finance provision in general is lacking, this is particularly true for loss and damage, for which wealthy countries have long denied their responsibility to pay. This became once again clear when States agreed to a new climate finance goal at COP29: it recognizes the urgent need for enhanced support for loss and damage, but once again contains no new commitments to fill this gap, including by providing money to the FRLD.
Beyond underfunding, the Loss and Damage Fund also faces serious challenges in its operationalization. The FRLD has yet to establish simplified, rapid, and direct access modalities that can reach affected communities in a timely manner. As climate impacts intensify, the FRLD risks becoming disconnected from the very communities it was designed to serve.
The latest climate negotiations failed once again to signal a shift: There were no binding commitments to scale up loss and damage finance, no guarantees that such finance would be grants-based, and no push to establish clear pathways for funds to reach climate-vulnerable communities directly. The outcome reflects a familiar pattern – political recognition of loss and damage has advanced; upholding legal and financial obligations has not.
This failure is especially consequential because the FRLD is entering a decisive phase. In 2026, its Board is expected to make significant progress on developing long-term operational modalities (how the Fund will actually work), as well as finalize its strategy to collect resources (its Resource Mobilization Strategy). Without strong guidance, that strategy risks being built on the same voluntary, contributor-driven logic that has undermined the delivery of climate finance for decades.
The absence of financial commitments underscores a widening gap between States’ political positions under the UNFCCC, their legal obligations under international law, and the realities faced by frontline communities.
When Negotiations Fail, the Courts Step In
As climate talks continue to stall, countries and communities are increasingly turning to courts to seek what political processes have failed to deliver: true reparations for climate harm.
Last year’s ICJ climate Advisory Opinion (ICJ AO) marked a watershed moment, affirming that the climate crisis is a human rights crisis and that States have legal obligations not only to prevent further harm but also to address damage already caused, including through remedies and reparations.
The ICJ AO affirmed that addressing loss and damage is binding law, not charity. Fragmented or symbolic financing is not enough. Meaningful reparations require acknowledging responsibility, stopping the harm, and fully repairing what was lost. That recognition has given even more legal weight to what affected communities have long understood: when political systems fail to deliver justice, accountability must be sought elsewhere.
A new climate case brought by 43 Pakistani farmers against two major emitters, RWE and Heidelberg Materials, illustrates this shift powerfully. The farmers are seeking compensation for losses suffered during the 2022 floods — floods that were among the main political triggers for the establishment of the FRLD at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh. It is telling that more than three years later, the communities affected by those floods have decided to seek recourse elsewhere.
And Pakistan is not alone. Many other cases have been filed in the last few years, including:
- Asmania et al. v. Holcim: four Indonesian islanders demanded compensation from the cement company Holcim, a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, and participation in adaptation measures, and the Swiss court accepted the case.
- “Odette case”: Sixty-seven Filipino survivors filed a lawsuit against the multinational oil giant, Shell, seeking damages for personal injuries, property damage, and loss of life caused by Super Typhoon Odette.
These cases — all pointing out the responsibility of corporations — are more than just litigation. They represent a movement demanding justice directly from those most responsible and stepping into the accountability vacuum left by stalled multilateral processes.
Toward a Reparations Regime Grounded in Justice
While these cases are crucial, they are not a solution in and of themselves: most climate-vulnerable communities don’t have the option to go to court. Litigation is expensive, slow, and procedurally complex. It requires legal expertise, access to evidence, and the resources to sustain long legal battles — all of which are out of reach for many frontline communities.
Relying on courts alone risks creating a two-tier system of justice, where only a few can secure remedies while the majority remains without redress. This is precisely why structural mechanisms for reparations and accountability are indispensable and urgent. And while States are working to establish such new mechanisms, existing cooperation-based mechanisms also remain key and need to be strengthened.
The main existing mechanism is the FRLD, and it must urgently be structured to meet the needs of frontline communities, requiring effective and timely relief and remedy. Decisions regarding the long-term operations of the Loss and Damage Fund must start from the law – the duty to cooperate rather than voluntary approaches – and rights:
- Prioritize community-led, rights-based solutions, and ensure frontline communities have direct access to funding;
- Close the gap between available funding and assessed needs, including by anchoring resource mobilization in international law, including the polluter pays principle and equity;
- Provide finance exclusively as grants to avoid exacerbating debt distress.
Making the FRLD urgently operational at scale and aligned with human rights is a key part of upholding legal obligations related to loss and damage, and should be a priority in 2026.
But it is not the full picture. At the insistence of climate-responsible countries themselves, the FRLD is not designed to address States’ liability for climate harm or to deliver compensation. The ICJ made clear that States have the responsibility to provide reparations, so that begs the question, where will true compensation and reparation come from?
During the ICJ AO oral proceedings, several States proposed concrete options, including the establishment of compensation funds, claims commissions, and damages registries. Various options can be explored, based on existing examples and beyond the imagination of traditional climate funds, to build a more robust climate regime rooted in responsibility, accountability (of both States and corporations), and justice.
As Vanuatu — together with a core group of States — is leading the charge for a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution aiming to implement the ICJ AO, a key opportunity arises to give consideration to these ideas. The objectives of the resolution are not only to welcome the Advisory Opinion that was requested by consensus in a previous UNGA resolution, but also to strengthen climate action in line with legal obligations, and through mechanisms driving the Advisory Opinion’s operationalization. A zero draft of the resolution circulated in January 2026 includes important proposals to establish an International Register of Damage, tasked with evidence gathering on climate-related damage, loss, or injury, and an International Mechanism for Climate Reparation. At the time of writing this blog, countries will discuss this zero draft in New York, and a vote is expected as early as the end of March.
Other processes also can support responsibility-based mechanisms and finance. Examples at the national level can be found in the United States, where several States are advancing the establishment of “Climate Superfunds” to make the fossil fuel industry pay for climate damages, and in the Philippines, where a Climate Accountability Act is proposed, aiming to do the same. At the international level, ongoing negotiations on the UN Tax Convention present an opportunity to develop mechanisms to make polluters pay for the damage they are causing. Finally, structural solutions for debt, as also highlighted by several States during the ICJ hearings, are essential for meaningful repair. Calls for a UN Debt Convention are growing louder to untangle one part of the deeply colonial global financial architecture that keeps Global South countries vulnerable to climate impacts.
While the general outlook for 2026 seems bleak, those defending international law can build on these moments and opportunities to radically choose to uphold human rights law and build effective pathways towards reparations for communities, while holding polluters accountable. In the absence of such accountability, the wave of litigation will only grow stronger. For communities rebuilding homes and lives, the call for climate reparations is not abstract; it is survival. Storms will keep coming. But justice is on the horizon.
Picture: Oil Change International, climate negotiations, COP27, Sharm el Sheick