Climate change is one of the greatest challenges that humanity is facing today. Over the last three decades, international community tried to reduce greenhouse gas emission to address this challenge but was not as successful as expected. We also focused on adaptation to the deleterious impact of climate change and variability but adaptation has a limit. What happens if we fail to mitigate and adapt with the adverse impacts of climate change? The answer is loss and damage. While there are huge economic losses and damages due to the adverse effects of climate change that can be recovered financially, there are also losses and damages that money cannot bring back or cannot be traded in markets. For example, identity, culture, honor and dignity, health, cultural heritage, ecosystem services etc.

Based on a nine-month fieldwork with the marginalized coastal Bangladeshi populations, this paper focuses on non-economic loss and damage (NELD) and claims that NELD hold intrinsic value to the respective communities and if we do not pay adequate attention to NELD it may exacerbate economic loss and damage and undermine sustainable development in the long run. This paper also claims that environmental studies particularly environmental social science is well suited to study NELD and environmental social science may consider to focus on this issue.