PDD and IMPACT Initiatives explore the use of humanitarian data to understand loss & damage

Together with IMPACT Initiatives, PDD looked at how displacement and disasters and climate impacts interact to produce non-economic loss and damage in fragile and conflict-affected situations. The product of this work is a brief which underscored a crucial data gap, and suggests potential approaches to fill it.

The brief explores how data from Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessments (MSNAs) can be used to better understand climate impacts, and inform policy decisions – especially in complex humanitarian environments. Extensively gathered across contexts and settings, and widely used by humanitarian actors, MSNA data offer a robust framework for analysing various aspects of displacement and related non-economic losses. They are however under-leveraged in the global Loss and Damage (L&D) debate, as well as in national L&D assessments.

The brief focuses on a variety of non-economic losses suffered at the individual and household level, felt through impacts on well-being and access to basic services, by analysing and comparing findings from MSNAs in Central African Republic, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Photo Credit: IOM2022/Claudia Rosel