For island nations already dealing with more frequent and intense extreme weather events, climate change is an imposing burden. But many island states are responding and becoming “incubators of resilience,” as Lynae Bresser recently wrote.

It had been raining for two full days when the landslide came. Nirjala Adhikari vividly remembers the instant it hit her village in Sindhupalchok District, Nepal. “It was a very scary moment, and I couldn’t think of anything else than grabbing my mobile phone and my school certificate before I ran out of the house,” she recalled. “I secured my certificate because only this will help me establish a bright future.”

“Water is the frontline of climate change. It’s what every report that you see identifies as the sort of first and foremost effect we see from a climate changing world,” said Sherri Goodman, a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center and formerly of CNA and the U.S. Department of Defense, on October 19.

Over the past four years, I have been a member of the Resilience Academy, an initiative of the United Nations University, International Center for Climate Change and Development, and Munich Re Foundation bringing together thinkers from 29 countries to gather insight on climate change resilience and “loss and damage.” Loss and damage has many definitions, but broadly refers to the impacts of climate change that cannot be addressed via adaptation (adjusting to the effects) or mitigation (preventing them from happening at all).

As the international community meets in Marrakesh for the climate change negotiations at COP-22, one of the most delicate issues on the table is the review of what’s called the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, or WIM.

Since the end of World War II, the number of wars between states has declined significantly, but the number of intrastate civil conflicts – as seen in Syria and Afghanistan – has increased.