Abstract
Climate change has caused more and more serious impacts to the Earth’s environment, such as sea level rising, global surface average temperature heating up, and glacier wastage. In recent times, extreme whether events and disasters have posed a great threat to our existence. These adverse effects of climate change have resulted in loss of life, property, infrastructure, and livelihoods, and have severely disrupted the normal functioning of affected societies. Both natural resources and human communities have been affected by climate change; however, there is a specific group of people who have suffered the worst. People who live geographically on or near the hazard lines of climate change impacts, at the same time, who withholds little resources to tackle with climate change, are the most vulnerable groups under climate change. In the international climate regime, this kind of harm is called “loss and damage associated with climate change impacts”. Due to inadequate mitigation and adaptation efforts, climate change loss and damage is now a reality. Stern Report in 2007 has addressed that loss and damage is the residual cost of the total cost of climate change, which is unavoidable by the human society. Thus, the Conference of Parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (namely UNFCCC) has adopted “the Warsaw International Mechanism” to deal with the issue of loss and damage. The core value of current Warsaw International Mechanism is the risk of climate change. The context has established some approaches of risk assessment, risk management, and risk transfer to assist the developing countries tackling with loss and damage. The problem is, the legal basis of loss and damage, which shall be implied as “liability” and “compensation” for those who bears the harm which is indirectly caused by human induced climate change, is still absent in the official document and texts of UNFCCC. This thesis contributes to the study of Warsaw International Mechanism lex lata (law as it is) and the arguments based on lex ferenda (law as it ought to be). Methodologically, this thesis has firstly explored the international instruments dealing with climate change loss and damage. Then focus on the analysis of Warsaw International Mechanism by legal discussion. In conclusion, this thesis tends to incorporate the legal basis of “liability” and “compensation" under the context of Warsaw International Mechanism and UNFCCC.