Stories of Loss and Healing: Connecting Non-Economic Losses and Damages with Gendered Wellbeing Erosion in the Asia-Paci�c Region

It is well-known that the climatic impacts affect women and men differently. However, more empirical evidence illustrating how, where, when and who are needed to help address gendered vulnerability. Speci�cally, research investigating the connections between mental health, wellbeing, and climate change can foster responses to avert, minimise and address loss and damage impacts on vulnerable populations. Few studies explore climate-induced mental health impacts, although this is a crucial area for the conceptual framing of non-economic loss and damage. Declining mental health and wellbeing is at the core of non-economic losses taking place all over the world. The existing literature body recognises the disproportionate environmental impacts on women, this study explores non-economic loss related to mental health and wellbeing for women in the Global South. The article uses empirical storytelling and narratives gathered through �eld work conducted in Bangladesh, Fiji and Vanuatu. The research �ndings described how climate change risks and extreme weather events negatively impacts women’s mental health and wellbeing, while providing proactive recommendations to address the gendered mental health consequences of climate change.


Introduction
The impacts of climate change affect the health and wellbeing [1]  ). Furthermore, research on female experiences of wellbeing and climatic stress is scarce. This is concerning as various scholars for decades have drawn attention to the lack of critical studies investigating gender vulnerability in the area of climate change (Rivers 1982;Fothergill 1996;Enarson 1998; Alam and Rahman 2014).
Science and policy negotiations on Loss and Damage [2] have evolved at the UNFCCC, with Article 8 of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change explicitly requiring the urgent need to address non-economic loss and damage that often disproportionately impacts vulnerable populations (UNFCCC 2015;McNamara et al. 2021). Empirical cases from vulnerable societies illustrate the increasing severity of environmental and climatic impacts on people with likely limits to adapt (Huggel et al. 2015; Barnett et al. 2015;Mechler and Schinko 2016). In an attempt to conceptualise and capture the non-nancial losses that money cannot buy back, a body of work describing Non-Economic Losses and Damages (NELs or NELDs) associated with the impacts of climate change is gaining ground (Barnett et  and men is of particular concern to the framing of the concept given the evidence on gendered vulnerability to climate change. A gendered lens can aid in articulating the channels through which losses can entrench vulnerability and make good adaptation decisions to reduce the risk of non-economic losses. Even though the literature suggests that climate variability and change negatively impact women's mental wellbeing, cases illustrating how this is manifested as well as empirical evidence of noneconomic losses among vulnerable countries and populations are scarce (Barnett et al. 2016;Boyd et al. 2017). The connections between gender, wellbeing and climate change is likely to engender the policy framing of Non-Economic Loss and Damage. This article therefore provides valuable empirical contributions on how environmental impacts in uence women's health, wellbeing and healing [3] processes using cases from Bangladesh, Fiji and Vanuatu.
Footnote: [1] In this article, 'wellbeing' refers to "a subjective and dynamic state of feeling healthy and happy that ties into life satisfaction and in uences a person's (or a collective's) psychological and social function" (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020c:2). [2] In this article, Loss and Damage, and Non-Economic Loss and Damage refer to the two concepts (noun), while loss and damage and non-economic losses are used to refer to when something is lost or damaged (adjective) as well as the action of something being lost or damaged (verb). [3] In this article, we understand healing as a wider social and psychological process of making and becoming healthy, happy and well again. This process includes elements such as collectively rebuilding what was damaged, grief and recover what was lost, or putting words on and working through traumatic experiences.

Mental Health And Climate Policy
The IPCC has over the last decades been clear and coherent in their message. As climate change impacts and disasters are becoming more frequent and intense, they are likely to affect the world's vulnerable populations the most (IPCC 2014(IPCC , 2018

Case Studies
The article builds upon three qualitative empirical case studies gathered through storytelling methodologies (using ethnography and involving individual and focus group discussions) in Bangladesh, the ). These research designs may not necessarily be the most effective in capturing the longer-term, non-linear, and complex casual mental health impacts that follow extreme weather events and climatic stress. This is a serious concern as mental wellbeing is at the very core of the three global 2015 policy frameworks.
The identi ed storylines describe the impacts of climatic changes upon women's mental wellbeing that are often disproportionate to other social groups. A storytelling approach is an effective way to research mental health as the wellbeing impacts often are di cult to register and to quantify. Unlike physical illhealth, mental ill-health builds on causal psychosocial relations. After hurricane Katrina, for example, researchers found that many women did not develop mental ill-health impacts, such as depression, anxiety, acute stress disorder and PTSD, until one to two years after the strike (Binu et al. 2008; Rhodes et al. 2010). The proposed research design therefore provides a comprehensive way of informing climate policy of the potential non-economic losses and damages that are associated with climatic changes. shorter-term, through temporary, seasonal and permanent migration or sudden evacuation, is one of the oldest and most common adaptation strategies on earth. The stories encountered in Bangladesh cover gendered experiences of rural-urban migration as well as gendered immobility. [4] The narratives included women's (im)mobility opportunities while dealing with environmental stress, as well as their (im)mobility spectrum after having migrated to to the cities. The living conditions in the informal settlements often contributed to a lower quality of life (including struggles with mental ill-health) where women, girls, but also children overall, faced social risks that often did not apply to adult men (

Gendered activities and spaces
The storytelling sessions described a social shift that came with starting to work outside of the house after having been a housewife. Some women felt that this provided them with a new exciting opportunity, but others felt that it came with a loss of identity, value and honour. In some of the narratives it was explained that women tending to outside work represented a step away from God's righteous path which could even be punished:

Extract 1
Why are there so many disasters? Because we must have left his [Allah's] path. Women are working outside the house and going here and there. This is not good. We have to return to his path. Otherwise, we will have to face the consequences. The cyclone shelter will not be able to save us then. I can feel that the weather is changing. I think it is happening because we forgot about Allah. It is the punishment of Allah.
/…/ The cyclone strikes are holy creations. The same way God created man, he created cyclones. Therefore, God will decide how they will affect you. Those who have done him right, and who have followed in his footsteps will be put in safety (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2019:763).
Some women felt that their social value decreased with the labour activities. They were no longer considered as honourable or healthy. One woman, for example, explained that she believed that her and her daughter's health issues were a consequence of the income earning activities. It was a punishment for the housemaid work: It is very rare for a girl to go to Dhaka alone. One girl in hundred perhaps goes alone. What generally happens is that after some time her character changes. She ends up marring someone and forgets about her family. If a girl moves to Dhaka for work, she should keep in mind that she has to send money to her parents, and that she must wait to marry until her parents want her to do so. If she forgets this and gets into a relationship with a man, marries him and starts a new family, she may suffer in the long run. Girls often meet men in the garment factories and start a relationship, but the husband may leave her even after she has had his child. This is the punishment for marring someone without knowing enough about him. The rst six months or so the husband may behave well, but then, what generally happens is that he changes. It is the girl then who has to suffer. In this situation, she can no longer go back home to her parents -she will have to work to provide and care for his child. She will have to work alone to support herself and her child. Perhaps she keeps her child somewhere under a tree while she works, and when the child cries, she comes running to calm her down. That is what her life has become, miserable. If she only would have listed to what her parents said and kept to her work, she would not have to face such a reality.
Though she only cared about herself and ended up ruining her life instead. / … /A man can surely get married again, even a girl if she is a dreamer. She could get married to another man too. Though it is the child who suffers the most in this kind of situation. A mother can re-marry with the child, or she can leave the child behind. / … / The mother got another husband, the father got another wife, but what is there for the child? What did she get out of all this? Shame and hatred! This is why the child suffers the most (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020b:6).

Extract 4
A father can leave his children, but a mother can never leave her child. I had hoped that my children would help me in my future days. I was very sad when I found out that my children neglected these duties. I have no stable happiness in my life. I was forced to nourish them poorly, so now they are not that sound either (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020b:7). Young and unmarried women face additional social and gendered risks in the factories that through shame and stigmatisation can have serious implications on their mental wellbeing. This stigma can also be passed along to their children or even the next generation. In this way, marrying the 'wrong man' may end up costing a woman a lifetime of sadness that only God will be able to save her from: If there was any chance to live a better life where my children had the opportunity to work, then I would go back to the village [on Bhola Island]. However, I was left by my husband, and then I got sick. I do not have any hope left for my future. / … / Life was good until my husband got re-married. My husband used to treat me well. I was very happy until he married again. / … / It is unbearable to utter the words of my miserable story to you. I never want to speak of them. My husband married three other women besides me. You cannot do anything to relieve my sadness or misery. Only Allah can help me. (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020b:7).
Child marriage is described as a common way for household to cope with income loss, food insecurity and poverty. It however came with serious implications for the girls. One woman, for example, describe struggling with health issues and kidney damage after giving birth to her son at a very young age. She seeks medical attention and end up visiting a female doctor. She gets sent home to notify her husband. He needs to attend the hospital to receive her diagnosis. However, he never tells her what is wrong. Instead, he tries saving up enough money to get her the treatment that she needs: Extract 6 I got married when I was twelve years old. A few years later I gave birth to my rst son. I faced a lot of problems giving birth to him. / … / A woman from work was a doctor so she took me to Dhaka Medical Hospital. There they did some tests and noticed that my kidneys were failing. She gave me an injection and told me that I had to go home and ask my husband to meet with her. Then she gave me some pills and sent me home. I told my husband that he should go and met with her. She was the one who noti ed my husband about my kidney failure, but she never told me what was wrong. My husband looked worried when he returned home so I tried to nd out why, but he never told me what was wrong. He just started to work really hard, saved up money, and even took out a loan. The family I worked for at the time also gave us some money. / … / At one point when I was sick and he could not do enough, he even thought of selling his blood, but I warned him not to do so. He does not have that much blood so he would surely have died. If we are both dead then who would look after our children? (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020b:7).
In his efforts to gather enough money for her treatment, the husband also ends up getting unwell. The family is now struggling nancially and are therefore forced to take out a loan. When this is not enough to cover the treatment, the husband even considers selling his blood. These di cult circumstances put tremendous strain and emotional pressure on the wellbeing of the whole family. A family where both parents are worrying about whether they will survive long enough to raise their children, while the children are terri ed of losing their mother as well as their father. The woman explains how it is not that common to marry your daughter away at the bare age of 12, but her household struggled too with health issues and poverty. At one point, her parents could not afford to keep her within the family any longer. She had to marry as it would alleviate food-and household expenses.
Physical and mental health are closely interlinked. Life in the informal settlements go hand in hand with di cult living-and working conditions that contribute to the wellbeing erosion. People end up facing health issues that sometimes stretch over a lifetime as a result of, for example, work related injuries or the poor dwelling. A large extent of their income then has to pay for the medicine and medical attention, or people get forced into debt. Child marriage is therefore often used as a desperate nancial coping strategy, but it ends up resulting in a lifelong erosion of the girls' mental wellbeing. It becomes a vicious cycle of poverty, physical-and mental ill-health, where poverty aggravates physical and mental ill-health which in turn exaggerate poverty.

Gendered disaster loss and healing
In relation to gendered disaster (im)mobility, the narratives explained that women and children were more vulnerable than men during the cyclone strikes. For example, more women and children died as they did not know how to swim. Women also sometimes got stuck in trees and branches with their hair and clothing or drowned as they were trying to save their children:

Extract 7
Women and children are mentally weak. They get afraid easily. Children cannot swim so sometimes mothers hold onto their children, and that may cause the death of them both. Men are brave and have often faced the storm out on the sea, while women have not lived through experiences outside of the house (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020a:6).

Extract 8
Women die because of their hair and clothing. They are also emotionally weak. Children are always fond of their mothers. Women cannot leave them during such an event. That is why they too become victims of the disaster (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020a:6).
Adding to this, gendered immobility itself put women, and particularly unmarried adolescent women and girls, at increased risk during the cyclones. As poor families feared that sexual harassment and genderbased violence could ruin their chance to marry and put the household at nancial risk, they sometimes believed it was safer for them to stay behind and not evacuate to the shelters: It is not right [for unmarried women to go to the shelter] because it could create problems./ … /I do not like women going to the shelter. It just does not feel right. Wherever they go, things happen (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020a:6).
The economic-and non-economic losses that people faced due to the cyclones were delicately described in the sessions. The loss of mental health and wellbeing were key factors that people themselves highlighted as some of the most important non-monetary losses:

Extract 10
These hazards keep coming back every year. Besides the mental traumas that they leave behind, the worst impact upon people is the loss of human lives on an annual basis. Money and time can reduce damages, but they cannot return a lost life. / … / Physical damage and the loss of resources that were emotionally important to us are unforgettable losses. / … / Some internal losses may also take place. / … / During the cyclones, some people get injured internally. Injured within such an important organ that he or she may face complications afterwards. They may approach doctors and seek medical treatment in secret, but some losses cannot be healed by doctors. / … / People face mental issues because of these traumas. Family problems arise as a result, and they grow larger by each day. However, when we talk about oods, it is often the economy that receives the most importance. / … / The only doctors that came to see us [after the cyclone] were [physical] medical specialists. They were not able to give mental or psychological support to the victims here. / … / We noticed that some children would bury their toys after here and there. / … / From the children's behaviour we sensed their fear. They often repeated: 'When will the ood strike again? Will I have to go [to the shelter] again then, or will I die next time? If it happens again, then please promise me not to leave me'. / … / The parents reassured their children that the ood will not come back, and that they should go back to living life in the way they had done before the disaster stroke (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020a:8-9).
People described these wellbeing losses and damages as internal injuries in an important organ that could not be healed by doctors despite seeking medical attention. The narratives explained the severity of these wellbeing losses and damages, that impacted whole families and societies but women and children In the absence of mental health services to support people's healing processes many turned to religion in an attempt to deal with fear, uncertainty and to come to terms with the losses that they had experienced:

Extract 11
When the cyclone strikes, nobody cares about others. People think about themselves. Normally, girls face more problems during the cyclones because of how they dress. They may also get hurt, on their hands, legs, or other body parts. Sometimes, trees even fall on top of people and they die. I know of a mass grave. I have seen many dead bodies in my life due to the cyclones. The people buried there did not even get proper burial clothes. Everyone's lifetime has already been decided upon by God. Allah decides whether you will die or live (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020a:8).

Extract 12
No one can save us but Allah. The NGOs [non-governmental organisations] cannot do anything. If Allah does not want you to survive, all your efforts will be in vain and you will die. We must follow Allah /…/.
During a cyclone, it is Allah's wish that will determine if my house is protected. It is first when my house collapses that I will come out (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2019:762).

Extract 13
When I think about why I survived that day, the day of Sidr, why I did not drown although the flood pulled me away. There is only one answer: Allah looked after me. Allah kept me safe (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2019:762).

Extract 14
I am not afraid. If Allah wants to take me, he could easily do so. What is the point of being afraid? It is out of my hand just like the grief that my land went into the river. It was Allah's property, and he took it away. This is not a problem as he is the one who keeps us alive. He will make sure to feed us. If another cyclone strikes, there is nowhere to go since we lost our land on which we could have rebuilt our houses. You still have to keep your faith in Allah, and wait out the cyclones patiently in your room. What else can you do? This is our story, the story of every single person in this village (Ayeb-Karlsson et al. 2019:762).

Extract 15
It is all left in Allah's hands, who will survive and who will die. For example, in this village a mother and a child who were running towards the shelter got hit and separated by the storm surge. Later on, the mother felt some hair touching her feet in the water only to realise that it was her child. She grabbed hold of a tree to survive. When the storm stopped, people found her sitting in the top of that tree with her child.
People think that this is a miracle, that she and her child survived the cyclone. It all depends on Allah (Ayeb-Karlsson 2020a:8).
In this way, God became a source for healing and people put their faith in this greater power that would protect and save those who believed. Religion therefore gave people a belief system that made it easier for them to carry on living with the cyclones. Post disaster assessments show increased violence against women and girls in and around evacuation centres during and after disasters, with elderly women and girls with disabilities being more at risk. This is because socio-cultural factors such as gender inequalities, power relations, and discrimination of marginalised persons, further amplify the risk to domestic and other forms of gender-based violence and child abuse. Incidents of rape, sexual exploitation and incest among women and children in evacuation centres have been reported during disaster emergencies in Fiji:

Extract 17
In the dark they have to go out and this places women in unsafe conditions. In evacuation centres women and children get exposed to sexual dangers -children's rights are ignored. In this country disaster management is not a very quick recovery for women and children (Suva, Informant 22, 7 April 2010).
For example, the 2009 and 2013 oods increased incidences of domestic violence were reported generally due to additional stress, pressure and traumatic psychological experiences (UN Women 2013).
Following, TC Winston, cases of rape were reported in the media outside of evacuation centres, while some women and girls engaged in sex work as a coping strategy (Charan et al. 2016). The nancial burden after disasters also results in girls being forced to quit education or get married at an early age.   Mental health impacts can also occur pre-disasters. Women and children in Fiji experience heightened feelings of anxiety levels, negative emotions, sadness in the context of their local ecology, fear for the younger generation, hopelessness, and helplessness. This is characterised by social fear, trauma and emotions that are echoed through the perceptions of disasters in vulnerable villages. As one religious leader shared the collective experiences of parishioners, where people associate oods and cyclones with loss of belongings, death of family members, food and water insecurity, hunger and suffering, periods of increased crime and loss of livelihood and income:

Extract 22
As soon people hear about oods, they run to higher places. Women take the children to hospital and schools. Husbands stay behind in house. People put their vehicles in higher places. The Meteorology O ce and news tell people quickly, so deaths are reduced. Climate is changing, there is more rain, the earth cannot soak so much rain which is a lot now days (Nadi, Informant 37, 18 March 2010. Research on vulnerable locations in Nadi town showed negative psychosocial and emotional phenomena triggered by approaching extreme events and weather warnings amongst women. Within hours after intense rain, cyclone and ood warnings are issued to residents, people start vacating the town and lowlying areas (Chandra and Gaganis 2016). Among women living in informal settlements and marginal farming societies, fear is also characterised by the reluctance to evacuate homes. Farmers and small businesses are anxious about leaving their belongings, informal settlements reluctant to seek assistance from 'community' networks, while women are apprehensive about speaking about their health conditions and needs due to their social standing. More frequent dry spells and ooding in Fiji affecting many locations have also meant that traditional knowledge and coping mechanisms are becoming less reliable. Women's eroding traditional and local knowledge on coping mechanisms, lack of access to nancial resources, poor participation in decision-making and weak access to information further heightens their feeling of insecurity and exposure to climate-induced disasters.
The Fijian case study provides an example of mental health factors associated with hardship triggered by disasters and psychological impacts of climate change on women. Even though Fiji is undertaking climate-induced relocation and adaptation, increasing severity of disaster and climate impacts places enormous challenge on women and children, owing to their different sensitivities and differentiated emotional and coping capacities. Women and men may be equally aware of climate risks, but women and children experience a higher incidence of gender-based violence, impact on livelihood and have negative emotions related to periods of disasters. Through the FGDs with several of these marketplace vendors, emerging stories of loss and recovery emerged. Marketplaces are a crucial source of income for numerous households across Vanuatu, and women make up the vast majority of marketplace vendors (Busse and Sharp 2019). Household -and indeed, women's -dependency on climate-sensitive crops and other produce can "lock households into a system that is disproportionately sensitive to shocks" (Clissold et al. 2020: 102; see also Bolwig et al. 2010). This case study focusses on women because their voices, experiences and needs in relation to disasters more broadly are often ignored at both micro and macro scales, despite their wealth of knowledge and capacities when it comes to disasters.

Stories of loss and hardship
Marketplace vendors who participated in this study emphasised the risks posed by cyclones and droughts for livelihoods and shared their experiences and stories of loss and hardship. Cyclone Pam was a category 5 cyclone that made landfall over the dispersed islands of Vanuatu on 13 March 2015 -the worst cyclone to make landfall in the country -causing a number of deaths, displacing around 65,000 people, devastating 80% of rural livelihoods including 96% of food stocks (Esler 2015). For these women vendors, they shared stories about how Cyclone Pam had devastating impacts on their gardens, homes and livelihoods, all of which were destroyed: The destruction to houses, gardens and public infrastructure was extensive. The women told the story about how they had to rst try and clean their homes and go to the gardens to see if anything could be salvaged for their families to survive on over the coming days and weeks. But there were added challenges of even accessing the gardens:

Extract 24
They found it very di cult to enter the garden because all the woods are blocking the entrance to their garden. You had to go over the garden or go over the big trees (Emua village FGD 2018).
Once the men were able to clear the garden entrances and remove the large trees, the women returned to their gardens to start the clean-up and eventual re-planting. However, this whole process had a signi cant impact on their ability for self-subsistence and their livelihoods given that selling fresh produce and handicrafts at marketplaces was what they did to support their family. Cyclone Pam had a signi cant impact on their lives and livelihoods and halted marketplace operations for many months and in some cases up to a year or more: After clearing the gardens, plant and it took them one year to actually come back to the market and start selling (Emua village FGD 2018).
Later in 2015, as people were in the process of recovery, the worst drought in 20 years followed, signi cantly exacerbating impacts. This was a heart-breaking situation for the women as: "the crops are all destroyed" (Emua village FGD 2018). For these women, growing crops following Cyclone Pam was a critical matter for survival but the subsequent drought then caused the crops to dry out or become "stunted" (Emua village FGD 2018). In these cases, many of the women relied on only a few key crops that were more drought-tolerant such as manioc and taro and waited for the rain to eventually come.

Stories of recovery and hope
This case study reveals how stories of recovery and healing for these women have revolved around social networks, changing agricultural behaviours, and diversifying livelihood streams for a more hopeful future.
Women work together. In time of crisis, this is particularly pertinent. These women vendors provided details about how their social networks extended across islands, and therefore can be useful to rely on in times of produce shortages. The networks developed between women from different islands is impressive and useful in overcoming issues with peripherality. These social networks can also act as safety nets for women when they may temporarily be low on stock for various reasons (i.e. weather, other pressures on time). This has become a particularly important recovery strategy following Cyclone Pam:

Extract 26
She make orders to other islands, to other women. So family members that are in Paama or Ambrym that have nuts, or Epi… they send it over to her and then she resells it and gets her money, but she pays them... oh they do exchange with food. They package them a box of food for that muma and that muma sends things over (Nguna village FGD 2018).
Women are also key agents for ensuring equity and inclusiveness in disaster recovery and adaptation as they consistently help those less abled (i.e. widows, disabled women) to recover following major events and be involved in the gardens and marketplace.
One of the big changes made to these women following Cyclone Pam was the need to save their seeds.
This wasn't a common practice prior to Cyclone Pam but given the often lengthy waits for supplies to arrive to the village from various agencies, including critical seeds and tools, the women now pro-actively collect their own seeds following each harvest. Another key change to agricultural practices is to plant smaller, multiple gardens near the home: Extract 27 I know that if one disaster comes now, I've saved some seeds. /…/ Don't wait [for external assistance] (Epau village FGD 2018).

Extract 28
Like big, massive gardens will go up hill, but these ones like smaller ones, close. So those that can withstand the cyclone can be up there, so the change location of crops (Emua village FGD 2018).
As a way of recovering to signi cant climatic events and preparing for the future as part of a more hopeful future, women vendors are also becoming entrepreneurs and diversifying their livelihoods and income streams; "I paint fabrics and then I sew them the dresses" and "They have built businesses at their homes, little canteens" (Epule village FGD 2018):

Extract 29
It really impacts the life of women in the community. They are doing businesses like food selling, handicraft. They are doing printing, painting and all this stuff just for money before they came back to their communities and they do the same thing as well. This is a very big change that I've seen (Silae Vanua Market Vendor Association FGD 2018).
Women's stories of loss, hardship, recovery and hope are important. The stories reveal how women are at the frontline of disaster response and recovery with extensive knowledge, skills and social networks.
These capacities and capabilities should be recognised and built upon but not without also addressing underlying root causes of vulnerability and inequitable power structures that over-burden and constrain women's overall welling.

Discussion
The study of loss, perceived threat, and despair to one's identity in relation to environmental stress and livelihood shifts is not new. Gender as a critical factor in shaping environmental vulnerability has however often focused on male loss of productive capacity in natural resource-based livelihoods such as farming and shing. The distress caused by environmental change is a global issue that no socio-cultural setting can escape. Even though societies may adapt to global environmental changes, their adaptation strategies can include irreversible losses of things that people value or trade-offs.
The case studies illustrate spiralling non-economic losses, that directly and indirectly eroded women's wellbeing while impeding coping, risk reduction and adaptation actions. In Bangladesh these related to gendered (im)mobility experiences of rural-urban migration and cyclone strikes, while in Fiji and Vanuatu gendered vulnerabilities before and after the disasters were observed. Women and girls faced patriarchal social risks and vulnerabilities, stemming from gender inequity, that did not affect men in the same way.
Meanwhile, the non-economic losses were shaped by increased exposure to unsafe conditions and workload, food insecurity, loss of employment opportunities, and loss of access to decision-making.
Women are more likely to be exposed to violence, rape or physical and sexual harassment, that leave behind deep permanent emotional scars and damages that take a lifetime to heal and recover. Unlike material losses, the impacts upon women's wellbeing leave long lasting non-material issues such as mental health challenges. Evidence from the stories captured in the two island settings indicate trends around the heightened stress women face due to food insecurity. In our gendered societies, food preparation is generally a responsibility that falls upon women. As illustrated in the Fijian storylines, the loss of food may compound social tensions in the households, making them vulnerable to disproportional risks of gendered-based violence after the disasters. In Vanuatu, women described deep grief and feeling inadequate after losing their kitchen gardens and food insecurity. The gardens represented a more profound loss, including the erosion of their individual self-e ciency, independence, agency, and ability to endure and recover from climate-induced stress.
In the context of the Asia-Paci c region, the loss of social safety nets, less control over natural resources, deterioration of wellbeing, forced sex work or early marriage to support a family nancially can impossibly be measured in monetary terms. Non-economic losses and damages are often characterised as those that are di cult or impossible to estimate and quantify (the lost amount) or valorise (the losses). The storylines illustrated non-monetary losses and how it was di cult to put a value and quantify elements such as honour and dignity in the context of Bangladesh. These losses were often triggered by traumatic experiences such as livelihood shift, abandonment of children, or child marriages. In this way, certain irreplaceable losses were context speci c and associated with local culture and value systems.
The gender dimension to climate-induced loss and damage is highly subjective, closely mediated by cultural circumstances and social issues such as equity, justice, power relations, rights, welfare and basic services. People's subjective understanding of climate-induced losses can therefore result in very different personal experiences of loss whilst being exposed to similar climate hazards in similar societies and regions. In this way, more anthropological understandings of loss built on local narratives can provide policymakers with key insights on what is valued, how people deal with irreplaceable losses, and what damages are lasting. Personal narratives cannot be subjected to standardised measurements and statistical or economic assessments. However, storylines can be recorded and act as stable steppingstones to support adequate adaptation and risk reduction efforts in vulnerable locations, incorporating elements of non-economic losses.
In Vanuatu and Bangladesh, narratives around recovery and healing emerged. This represents an area of research that need to be prioritised in the future. An enhanced understanding of how people recover from the grief of the losses and heal over time can provide valuable tools supporting more inclusive policy solutions. Climate policy better incorporating counselling, assessment of damage and wellbeing erosion, psychological care and mental health services for trauma is key to support vulnerable populations across the world.
In Vanuatu, support groups comprising of women were available in the marketplaces to share the emotional and psychosocial burden. Similarly, in Fiji, in the absence of formal psychological care, women-led support groups enabled others to grieve and exchange stories about their traumatic experiences, and gather strength to boost their coping capacities to respond and recover from the climateinduced impacts. Safe, caring, and stable social networks needs to be strengthened and may provide solutions for people to minimize and address future losses and damages. As observed in the storylines captured in Bangladesh, formal post-disaster mental health and psychosocial support services are often lacking leading to devastating impacts upon societies for several generations to come.

Conclusion
The limits to adaptation literature body provides a basis for understanding ways to measure loss and damage within climate change policies. Yet in the context of non-economic losses, scientists and practitioners have devoted limited time and effort to design methods that can capture mental health consequences for speci c vulnerable groups. To better understand the consequences of non-economic losses and damages associated with the adverse gendered effects of climate-and weather-related natural hazards, this article attempted a bottom-up people-centred research to storytelling approach in Bangladesh, Fiji and Vanuatu. In conclusion, loss and damage may trigger traumatic stress, anxiety, increase gender-based violence, food shortages, and child marriages. These impacts when left unaddressed can have long-term negative consequences for women such as leading to mental ill-health, including trauma, anxiety, stress, depression and loss of social identify and networks.
The empirical insights provide evidence to social networks and healing processes that harness recovery and self-con dence of women. A storytelling approach effectively support the much-needed empirical body of evidence around Loss and Damage. People-centred research designs still receive little attention in the area of climate change, as the general perception appears to be that the right set of indicators will be the 'panacea for all disease'. National policies that address non-economic losses and damages must better prioritise women and other marginalised groups. A stronger acknowledgement within climate policy must accept that losses and damages of what people value the most, cannot and should not be measured according to monetary market terms. Certain elements in life are invaluable, and the fact that we do not attempt to measure them, is precisely what gives them a unique value.