Formally the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage. It pays for harm from climate change that has already happened and cannot be adapted to. It was agreed at COP27 in 2022 and made operational at COP28 in 2023.
It exists because of a distinction that took thirty years to win. Cutting emissions is mitigation. Preparing for impacts is adaptation. Loss and damage is what is left when neither worked: the village that has gone, the harvest that will not come back. Developing countries argued for a dedicated fund for decades and were refused each time.
The money is the weak part. Pledges stood at 788.8 million US dollars as at June 2025, of which 361 million had actually been received. The fund’s trustee reported 443 million available as at 31 May 2026. Pledged, signed and available are three different numbers, and they are frequently reported as if they were one.
For scale, the sums involved are a rounding error against estimates of annual climate-related losses in developing countries, which run into the hundreds of billions.