Hope in the time of loss and damage: How to finance impactful, community-led responses to loss and damage

​As the climate crisis intensifies, loss and damage is becoming an undeniable reality for communities throughout the Global Majority and across the world.

From the loss of public infrastructure, homes, livelihoods, territories and ecosystems to the erosion of relationships, love, cultures, identities and ways of life, the impacts of a warming planet are changing the shape of life as we have known it. The challenge is not only how we react to emergencies, but also how we imagine our shared futures.

Over the past five years the Scottish Government has mobilised £10 million for efforts to respond to loss and damage. From rebuilding homes and providing psychosocial support and cash transfers in the aftermath of Cyclone Freddy in Malawi to launching Pacific Rising to raise the profile of loss and damage to culture, social fabric and mental and psychological wellbeing, among other aspects of climate change not quantified by economic systems. There are many lessons from this portfolio of work that could be scaled up to support other communities across the Global Majority. It also gives us hope.

​In the face of profound uncertainty and loss, hope is not about looking away from the realities of the crisis or assuming that things will simply get better. It is about choosing to believe that other futures are possible and building the collective imagination, power, strategies and solidarities needed to turn them into realities.

​‘Hope in the times of Loss and Damage’ is an invitation to come together to explore how our beliefs, strategies and shared imaginations can become a foundation for meaningful action. Through collective imagination, we will create space to reflect on what we seek to protect, what we need to transform, who we need to listen to, what solutions offer us a way out and what futures we want to make possible for ourselves and generations to come.

​By bringing diverse perspectives, lived experiences and forms of knowledge from frontline communities across the Global Majority into conversation with decisionmakers, we aim to cultivate new possibilities, solutions and activations for emboldening climate justice, repair, care and collective worldmaking.

​Time and place: 17:30 to 18:30 on 9 November 2026 at the UK Pavilion

​Objective: To inspire participants to imagine the world we collectively want to live in and how we can create that world