ABSTRACT
Losses linked to climate change impacts are already manifesting around the world, and their consequences will compound and cascade over time. This article maps different disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to recognizing, defining, assessing, and addressing climate change loss and damage. Drawing on the current literature, the article identifies some of the characteristics of climate change loss, including its multiple forms (eg, tangible and intangible) and its nonfinite nature, that make finding policy and regulatory solutions particularly challenging. We examine four sites where the relationship between law and climate loss is being shaped: within the UN Climate Change Regime and the associated science-policy arena, the International Human Rights arena, national-level policy-making forums, and processes of climate change litigation. The article argues that the conceptual, epistemic, and legal ambiguity of the concept of climate change loss has implications for questions of law and governance from the global to the local level. It carves out a set of research questions for future research.
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Lisa Vanhala and Friederike Hartz, Climate Change Loss, Law, and Society, Annual Review of Law and Social Science volume 22. First posted online on 12 June 2026. (Changes may still occur before final publication.)
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