Lost without a trace? Capturing immaterial loss and damage for climate justice 

What happens when climate change uproots lives, erodes belonging, and makes home feel unfamiliar? 

Communities like those on hurricane-prone Saint Martin face not only material destruction of infrastructure, livelihoods, and ecosystems, but also profound immaterial losses such as ecological grief, loss of ancestral land, disrupted heritage, and diminished identity. Yet these harms remain invisible in international loss and damage debates, dominated by economic metrics. 

This project develops a new interdisciplinary framework, combining legal scholarship, data science, and community-based ethnography, to identify, analyze, and represent immaterial loss and damage, ensuring these deeply felt but overlooked harms are recognized in law and policy.