Given its geographical location and socioeconomic conditions, Ecuador is highly vulnerable to external factors of various kinds, including from natural or man-made events to external market impacts. Past events such as the El Niño phenomenon of 1997 and 1998 caused losses estimated at $2,869.3 million, equivalent to 15% of the country’s GDP in 1997. Of these, 783 million (27%) were direct damage and 2,086.1 million (73%) were indirect damages in productive sectors and infrastructure. Additionally, during the period 2012 - 2018, Ecuador registered 7,957 dangerous events related to floods, landslides, subsidence, and undermining, including those from the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (from 2016 – 2017) which caused economic losses in the agricultural sector of around USD $3,500 million and affected more than 2,000 medium and small producers. Despite the magnitude of losses and damages caused by these events in the past decades, there is no official economic quantification in Ecuador that enables the country to participate effectively in the national or international negotiations related to the UNFCCC Loss and Damage (L&D) mechanism.  

The main goal of this Readiness support is to create, and bolster enabling conditions in Ecuador to effectively conceptualize the L&D mechanism and set the institutional, technical, and operational capacities for its future implementation in the country.