Confronting the Irreplaceable: Priority Actions for Responding to NELs

Our loved ones who have passed away, when we bury them, we say ‘sili vakarua’ (‘bath twice’) because one is the bath before they are put in the coffin, and they bath again after they are buried as the waves come in and enter the new burial site. This is just traumatizing for us… – Resident of Togoru Settlement, Fiji

Credit: ©Bianca Vitale

Climate change is not an abstract threat – it is a lived and accumulating trauma for communities around the world. Slow-onset processes and extreme weather events are destroying homes and livelihoods, degrading ecosystems, severing relationships between people and nature, and obliterating cultural and natural heritage. From ancestral burial grounds and sacred sites to forests, glaciers, and coastal lands, climate impacts are eroding the cultural and ecological foundations that shape identity, knowledge, well-being, and resilience.

These are non-economic losses (NELs): profound, sometimes irreversible harms that are difficult to capture in monetary terms but that fundamentally affect people’s lives, their histories, and their futures. This brief extracts key insights from the WIM ExCom NELs technical paper¹ to support stakeholders in recognizing and responding to these losses. It focuses on three interlinked areas – biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage – and outlines priority actions for urgent, equitable responses.

¹WIM Executive Committee. Non-Economic Losses: Featuring Loss of Territory and Habitability, Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity, and Cultural Heritage. Technical paper. UNFCCC, 2024.

Loss of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Climate change is reshaping ecosystems, altering their composition, structure, and function. As biodiversity declines and ecosystems degrade, essential services such as food and freshwater provision, climate regulation, hazard mitigation, soil formation, and cultural meaning can become eroded. These losses can cascade across socio‑ecological systems: climate‑risk exposure rises, basic needs shrink, livelihoods falter, and health and well‑being deteriorate. As ecological foundations degrade, habitability declines, contributing to migration or relocation; opportunities for sustainable development narrow; and dignity and identity erode. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, flooding of arable land has destroyed food crops and market sales – a loss of provisioning services that has deepened food insecurity, reduced income, and diminished well‑being.

Loss of Territory and Habitability

Sea‑level rise, desertification, glacial retreat, coastal erosion, and related hazards are driving the loss of land, both physically and in its ability to sustain life. Loss of territory refers to the disappearance of physical land from the jurisdiction and use of communities, while loss of habitability concerns land that remains but is less able to reliably support human life. These forms of loss affect well-being, identity, cultural heritage, social cohesion, and biodiversity and ecosystem services. In Bangladesh, rising tides, saline intrusion, and riverbank erosion have washed away homes and fields in some areas, contributing to landlessness, food insecurity, psychological distress, and the erosion of identity and belonging.

Loss of Cultural Heritage

The erosion of cultural heritage in all its forms – from archaeological sites and architectural marvels to historic cities, cultural landscapes, artifacts, living heritage elements, and underwater heritage – is resulting in the loss of distinctive forms as well as accumulated knowledge, skills, livelihoods, governance systems, innovation, food and water security, and resilience. These losses often overlap and have impacts at various scales, from local communities to the global level, depending on the value of the heritage. In Cameroon, climate impacts threaten sacred sites along the Lobé River and the Nguon festival, ritual events whose loss could pose risks to community resilience, traditional governance, and the cultural fabric that binds communities across generations.

Interlinkages and Cascading Impacts

NELs rarely occur in isolation. Loss of ecosystems can reduce habitability, increasing pressures that may lead to relocation and sever cultural ties. The erosion of cultural heritage can undermine community capacity to steward ecosystems, accelerating environmental decline. These intertwined losses compound harm and deepen inequalities across generations. Effective responses must therefore be integrated, locally led, rights‑based, coherent across sectors and scales, and attuned to the complex ways climate change disrupts lives, landscapes, and legacies.

NELs are not peripheral. Recognizing and supporting responses to these losses is important for building resilience, advancing equity, and securing sustainable futures.

Eight Priority Actions for Addressing NELs

Recognize cultural heritage, biodiversity and ecosystem services, and territory as sources of vulnerability and resilience

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

Integrate these dimensions into national, subnational, and local adaptation plans, disaster risk reduction strategies, and other policy areas and relevant legislation to ensure NELs are fully considered.
Ensure assessments reflect their ecological, social, and cultural significance, recognizing both their exposure to climate impacts and their critical role in supporting resilience.

Target audience:

🏛️ National, Subnational, Local Governments – policy, planning, land, environment, and cultural heritage authorities

💰 Donors and FRLD – funders shaping funding decisions, windows, and instruments

📊 Research Institutions – data, monitoring, and knowledge-system management

Strengthen coordination across sectors and scales

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

Improve coordination across institutions, levels of government, and sectors to support responses to address interconnected losses.
Build multi-stakeholder partnerships involving governments, international agencies, Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and technical experts.

Target audience:

🏛️ National, Subnational, Local Governments – policy, planning, land, environment, and cultural heritage authorities

🌍 Implementing Agencies – entities delivering programmes and providing technical support

🧭 Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities – rights‑holders and knowledge-holders leading locally grounded responses

Ensure responses are locally led and community-centred

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

Prioritize approaches grounded in local values, knowledge systems, and lived realities.
Direct finance and support toward groups facing barriers to access, including women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, and those without formal land tenure.

Target audience:

💰 Donors and FRLD – funders shaping funding decisions, windows, and instruments

🧭 Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities – rights‑holders and knowledge-holders leading locally grounded responses

🌍 Implementing Agencies – entities delivering programmes and providing technical support

Invest in nature- and ecosystem-based solutions

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

Scale up culturally grounded, science‑based initiatives that restore ecosystems, sustain biodiversity, and support habitability to help avert and minimize NELs.
Embed these solutions in national policies and community‑led planning processes.

Target audience:

🏛️ National, Subnational, Local Governments – policy, planning, land, environment, and cultural heritage authorities

🌍 Implementing Agencies – entities delivering programmes and providing technical support

🧭 Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities – rights‑holders and knowledge-holders leading locally grounded responses

Support context-dependent, rights-based approaches to planned relocation

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

As a last resort where relocation is identified as necessary, ensure processes are community-driven, rights-based, and supported by sustained finance.
Draw on emerging frameworks, such as Fiji’s national framework for planned relocation, that integrate cultural, social, environmental, and technical considerations.

Target audience:

🏛️ National, Subnational, Local Governments – policy, planning, land, environment, and cultural heritage authorities

💰 Donors and FRLD – funders shaping funding decisions, windows, and instruments

🧭 Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities – rights‑holders and knowledge-holders leading locally grounded responses

Safeguard and mobilize cultural heritage as part of climate action

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

Strengthen laws, governance arrangements, and management systems that protect tangible and intangible cultural heritage, recognizing that safeguarding cultural heritage is itself a component of climate action.
Support initiatives that inventory, document, safeguard, and transmit all forms of cultural heritage.

Target audience:

🏛️ National, Subnational, Local Governments – policy, planning, land, environment, and cultural heritage authorities

🧭 Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities – rights‑holders and knowledge-holders leading locally grounded responses

📊 Research Institutions – data, monitoring, and knowledge-system management

Expand monitoring, data, and diverse knowledge systems

To address the cascading and interconnected NELs of biodiversity and ecosystem services, territory and habitability, and cultural heritage, priority actions should:

Invest in ecosystem baselines, cultural heritage registries, and community‑defined indicators relevant to NELs, with continuous monitoring to identify emerging impacts.
Integrate scientific assessments with Indigenous knowledge systems and other place-based cultural knowledge.

Target audience:

📊 Research Institutions – data, monitoring, and knowledge-system management

🏛️ National, Subnational, Local Governments – policy, planning, land, environment, and cultural heritage authorities

🧭 Indigenous Peoples & Local Communities – rights‑holders and knowledge-holders leading locally grounded responses