This paper addresses climate justice and the need to support countries most affected by climate change to cover climate impact costs such as adaptation and loss and damages (L&D). It proposes a pilot global climate impact fund (GCIF) to finance this transition.

The paper identifies three types of climate safety investments; mitigation, adaptation, and L&D. The climate-induced costs are the sum of mitigation and climate impact costs, with the latter including adaptation and L&D costs. The paper suggests a pilot conceptual and methodological framework to assess adaptation and L&D costs and financial responsibility across countries, utilising attribution and contribution studies and standardised criteria.

The paper proposes a new global climate impact fund (GCIF) to divide financing fairly and globally for adapting to and funding L&D costs from human-induced climate change among responsible countries. The GCIF should work as a global insurance mechanism and offer access to countries based on standardized criteria with long-term investment frameworks.

The paper concludes that increased funding for adaptation and loss and damage must come hand-in-hand with the development of long-term resilience and sustainable development pathways, including medium-term investment frameworks, in highly vulnerable countries and other countries. Areas for future research include selecting, prioritizing, and refining the proposed indicators in the suggested frameworks, with the urgent need for robust, granular, and timely data to obtain reliable estimates of adaptation and L&D costs. The paper suggests looking at the role of private sector and innovative financing in the overall financing scheme for climate change.