The post Bonn bulletin: Fears over “1.5 washing” in national climate plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

Thousands of country representatives have spent the last two weeks in Germany at the UN Bonn Climate Conference, marking the mid-year point to the biggest climate summit of the year: COP29. 

But despite being a core milestone each year for global climate discussions, there is troublingly little to show for it. And with less than six months before COP29 – and after years of negotiations – there has been a shameful lack of commitment on delivering for those on the frontline of the climate crisis.   

Climate finance and adaptation play imperative roles in ensuring communities are able to thrive in the face of unpredictable and unforgiving weather patterns. And while both topics have been heavy on the Bonn agenda, finance negotiations so far have failed to really consider those living with climate uncertainty right now. 

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WaterAid has been on the ground at the Bonn talks, calling for robust water, sanitation and hygiene indicators to flow directly through key climate adaptation frameworks, especially the Global Goal on Adaptation and the Loss and Damage Fund – both of which will change the course of the future for those living on the frontlines of the climate crisis. 

Support lacking for those on the frontline

Yet countries at Bonn have hit a roadblock on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), with discussions struggling to go beyond a shared acknowledgement of the value of including the support of experts to progress on areas of concern. Progress on GGA targets remains stagnant as parties grapple over country-specific concerns instead of coming to a collective outcome, with less than two days left of the conference. 

Meanwhile, the most recent talks on the Loss and Damage Fund failed to consider the urgency of the escalating climate crisis at hand and the scale of financing needed to ensure frontline nations can recover and rebuild from impacts of climate change. 

North Africa’s disappearing nomads: Why my community needs climate finance

The new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) – a new and larger target that is expected to replace the current $100bn climate finance goal – is also high on the Bonn agenda. Many core elements of this new climate fund goal are yet to be agreed.

WaterAid is calling for the NCQG to have sub-goals for adaptation and loss and damage, as well as for the finance pot to have a direct channel to vulnerable communities so they can be involved in ensuring the funds go to where the support is most needed.  

Too much or too little water

Whilst conversations at Bonn have been lukewarm, the climate crisis has remained red hot. Right now, countries around the world are watching it unfold in real time. From flooding and cyclones to drought and deadly heatwaves, communities are dealing with the terrifying reality of living with too much or too little water.  

Southern Asia is being exposed in particular to a dangerous and chaotic cocktail of unpredictable weather, making life unbearable for those on the climate frontline. 

In late May, Cyclone Remal hit coastal parts of southern Bangladesh with gale speeds of up to 110km/h causing devastation across the country for 8.4 million people, leaving many without power, damaging crops and making tube wells and latrines unusable.  

Meanwhile, record temperatures were recorded in Bangladesh through April and May where temperatures soared above 43 degrees Celsius, scorching 80% of the country and leaving thousands without power. 

At the same time, Pakistan witnessed its wettest April since 1961, with the south-western province of Punjab experiencing a staggering 437 percent more rainfall than usual, fuelling the malnourishment of 1.5 million children and damaging 3,500 homes.  

Water infrastructure key to adaptation

Water, sanitation and hygiene equip communities like those across South Asia with the ability to adapt to climate change, protecting livelihoods and farms. These basic essentials ensure people are not subject to the spread of waterborne diseases while preventing families from being forced to migrate due to sea level rises.  

From flood defences to drought resistance, water also acts as a guiding light as to where donors should direct climate finance, ensuring long-term support reaches the people who need it most. Investment in water-related infrastructure in low and middle-income countries is expected to deliver at least $500 billion a year in economic value, protecting countless lives and boosting economic prosperity. 

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Now is the time for global leaders to put pen to paper and set plans in motion to ensure that we see real progress on how we achieve the GGA targets at the grassroots and that the necessary level of climate funding reaches those who need it most, without further delay.  

This truly is a matter of life and death – and prioritising action on water, sanitation and hygiene across global adaptation goals may be our only hope to prevent climate change from washing away people’s futures.  

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Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh has been sweltering under 52°C heat in recent days. Not in the news however is that wet-bulb temperatures in the region – a more accurate indicator of risk to human health that accounts for heat and humidity – passed a key danger threshold of 30°C.  

Climate change is increasing the risk of deadly humid heat in developing countries like Pakistan, Mexico and India, and without international support to adapt, vulnerable communities could face catastrophe.  

What is wet-bulb temperature? 

Wet-bulb temperature is an important scientific heat stress metric that accounts for both heat and humidity. When it’s both hot and humid, sweating – the body’s main way of cooling – becomes less effective as there’s too much moisture in the air. This can limit our ability to maintain a core temperature of 37°C – something we all must do to survive. 

A recent study suggests that wet-bulb temperatures beyond 30°C pose severe risks to human health, but the hard physiological limit comes at prolonged exposure (about 6-8 hours) to wet-bulb temperatures of 35°C. At this point, people can experience heat strokes, organ failure, and in extreme cases, even death. 

Climate change and deadly heat 

Globally, around 30% of people are exposed to lethal humid heat. This could reach as much as 50% by 2100 due to global warming. To date, the climate has warmed around 1.3°C as a result of human activity, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels. And along with the extra heat, with every 1°C rise the air can hold up to 7% more moisture. 

A comprehensive evaluation of global weather station data reveals that the frequency of extreme humid heat has more than doubled since 1979, with several wet-bulb exceedances of 31-33°C. Another recent study predicts a surge in the frequency and geographic spread of extreme heat events, even at 1.5°C warming.   

Rich nations meet $100bn climate finance goal – two years late

What this shows is that the humid tropics including monsoon belts are all careening towards the 35°C threshold, which is very worrying for countries like Pakistan. The city of Jacobabad has already breached 35°C wet bulb temperatures many times. More areas of the country are likely to be exposed to such life-threatening conditions more often due to climate change.   

At 1.5°C of warming, much of South Asia, large parts Sahelian Africa, inland Latin America and northern Australia could be subject to at least one day per year of lethal heat. If the world gets to 3°C, this exposure explodes, covering most of South Asia, large parts of Eastern China and Southeast Asia, much of central and west Africa, most of Latin America and Australia and significant parts of the southeastern USA and the Gulf of Mexico.  

Areas of the world that will experience at least one day of deadly heat per year at different levels of warming   

Source: ScienceAdvances 

 Even at 1.5°C of warming, there will be high exposure to lethal heat in large regions where billions presently live. This terrible threat to human life calls for urgent action to limit warming and help at risk communities adapt.  

Adapting to hard limits 

 While 35°C can prove deadly, one study suggests a 32°C wet-bulb threshold as the hard limit for labour. More realistic, human-centred models found this overly optimistic, as direct exposure and other vulnerability factors were ignored. Vulnerable groups including unskilled labourers would be most at risk of losing their income.  

In densely populated urban centres, lethal humid heat is not just a future projection but a current reality. This calls for urgent adaptation measures which integrate the risk of deadly heat into urban planning, public health, early-warning systems and emergency response.  

Investments in green spaces, heat-resilient buildings and urban cooling are vital adaptation strategies. Community initiatives like awareness campaigns, indigenous cooling strategies and local heat action plans are also essential. Households could consider investing in cooling technologies or migrating – options mostly available to the wealthy.  

In Malawi, dubious cyclone aid highlights need for loss and damage fund

As climate change makes lethal humid heat a growing threat in some of the world’s most populous areas, more attention must be paid to understanding its risks – especially in vulnerable regions with huge data gaps. This demands a multidimensional response that combines scientific research, policymaking and community engagement.  

The potential scale and level of risk to human life also reinforces the importance of ensuring that the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming limit is met. To do this, we need to halve emissions by 2030. Countries should therefore strengthen their 2030 emissions targets in line with the warming limit as they prepare equally ambitious 2035 targets in updated NDCs. 

The Pakistan heatwave is a terrible reminder of this often-underestimated threat. We must act now to limit warming while we adapt to the growing danger of deadly heat if we are to avoid potentially wide-reaching tragedies in the future.  

The post Developing countries need support adapting to deadly heat appeared first on Climate Home News.

Just a few kilometres further south, however, local fishermen in Mbour, the country’s second-largest fishing port, are struggling. The beaches where they keep their boats are being progressively eaten away by rising seas that also threaten their homes.

The stark contrast between the neighbouring coastal areas highlights how global funding for climate projects – largely taxpayers’ money from rich countries – often fails to help those shouldering the burden of warming impacts, especially when it is being used to mobilise more private investment for green aims.

“They prioritise Saly because the hotels are wealthy,” said Saliou Diouf, a retired fisherman who lost his house in Mbour to encroaching waves. “The World Bank should help the most vulnerable.” 

Map showing the location of the neighbouring communities of Saly and Mbour on Senegal’s coast (Graphic: Fanis Kollias)

Le Lamantin is one of a dozen upscale hotels in sub-Saharan Africa acquired by Mauritius-based Kasada Hospitality Fund LP – whose investors are Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and multinational hotel giant Accor – which it is revamping in accordance with EDGE, a green building certification created by the World Bank.

Kasada was granted over $190 million in guarantees by the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and loans of up to $160 million by its private-sector lender, the International Finance Corporation, to help it snap up hotels across Kenya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Namibia and Senegal, and spruce them up as Accor brands like Mövenpick.

The Mövenpick Resort Lamantin Saly, where a standard hotel room costs about £220 a night (Photo: Jack Thompson)

MIGA, the little-known insurance arm of the World Bank Group, has counted its backing for the hotels as part of its climate efforts for the past three years, according to annual sustainability reports.

The five-star resort in the West African nation of Senegal, where rooms cost at least £220 a night ($270), is being refurbished to consume at least 20% less energy and water than other comparable buildings by its owner Kasada, which expects it to obtain EDGE certification this year.

Teresa Anderson, global lead on climate justice for ActionAid International, told Climate Home it is “shocking that what little funds there are for climate action are benefiting luxury hotels”.

 

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“Climate finance must be used to help those most vulnerable – not to help the world’s wealthiest add a climate hashtag to their Instagram posts by the pool,” she said.

MIGA told Climate Home its support for Kasada is primarily aimed at developing Senegal’s tourism sector and creating jobs, adding that refurbishing hotels can also have beneficial climate impacts and play an important role in decarbonising the hospitality industry.

Mbour, just a few miles from the pristine beaches of Saly, is the second-largest fishing hub in Senegal with 11,000 fishers. (Photo: Jack Thompson)

‘The money is missing’

In nearby Mbour, however, the fishing community feels left behind.

“I was born here, I grew up here – when I was a child, the sea only came up to the last pole,” Diouf told Climate Home, pointing to the remnants of a Portuguese-built pontoon used to moor colonial ships in the 1800s. 

In just one generation, he said, the sea has gobbled up more than 100 metres of beach in Mbour, forcing 30 families to abandon their houses and threatening hundreds more. A quarter of the Senegalese coastline – home to 60% of the population – is at high risk of erosion.

Mbour’s fast-disappearing shore is a crisis for its 11,000 fishers as big swells destroy their boats, crammed into the remaining patch of sand.

But in Saly, it’s a different story. Here, between 2017 and 2022, under a separate project, the World Bank invested $74 million in beach protection, building 19 stone walls, groynes and breakwaters to reclaim 8-9 kilometres of hotel-lined beachfront, popular with tourists.

The World Bank Group said the project helped preserve around 15,000 direct and indirect jobs by saving tourism infrastructure, while also protecting two fishing villages in Saly.

Satellite data shows the changing coastline in Saly (north), where protective infrastructure was developed, and Mbour (south), which has none. (Photo: Modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2024]/Sentinel Hub)

The World Bank Group (WBG) said its units work together to avoid trade-offs. “It’s not to either support hotels and the tourism sector as a driver of development, or to enhance the resilience of local communities – the WBG does both,” it said in a written response to Climate Home.

But fishermen in Mbour – which was outside the scope of the Saly coastal protection infrastructure project – are not benefiting from that approach, and even say the works in Saly have exacerbated erosion in their area. The Mbour artisanal fisheries council has devised a climate adaptation strategy to address the problem. 

One of its coordinators, Moustapha Senghor, said seawalls and breakwaters are needed, but there are no funds for what would amount to “a colossal investment”. “We know exactly what we need to do, but the money is missing,” he said.

Sea level rise is threatening beach-side homes and swallowing coconut trees that protect the coastline in Mbour, Senegal. (Photo: Jack Thompson)

Private-sector trillions

Governments and climate justice activists are putting pressure on the World Bank to significantly step up its role in funding climate projects, especially to help the most vulnerable countries and communities. 

For the past three years, a group of countries led by Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley has called for reforms so that the bank can better address climate change.

At the same time, wealthy nations have been reluctant to inject more capital into its coffers, while attempts at tinkering with the balance sheet to squeeze out more climate cash only go so far. 

For World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, the real solution lies in greater private-sector involvement, using scarce public money as a lever to help mobilise huge dollar sums for climate and development goals this decade.

“We know that governments and multilateral institutions and philanthropies all working together will still fall short of providing the trillions that we will require annually for climate, for fragility, for inequality in the world. We therefore need the private sector,” Banga told media ahead of this week’s annual Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

MIGA’s guarantees can be a key driver of climate investments in developing countries. (Graphic: Fanis Kollias)

Following suggestions from a group of CEOs convened by Banga, the World Bank Group announced in February a major overhaul of its guarantee business to enable “improved access and faster execution”. The goal is to triple issuances, including those from MIGA, to $20 billion by 2030, with a significant proportion of that expected to support green projects.

MIGA – as a provider of guarantees aimed at encouraging private capital into developing countries – may not be the obvious choice to help low-income communities like Mbour’s fishers. 

But, in its 2023 sustainability report, the agency wrote: “because the poorest are the most vulnerable to climate change, MIGA is working to mobilize more private finance to scale up climate adaptation, resilience and preparedness”.

Last year, less than one percent of MIGA’s total guarantees directly supported climate adaptation measures, according to its annual report.  

The guarantees generally act as a form of political risk insurance, making an investment less risky and giving companies access to cheaper loans as a result.

MIGA’s 2023 sustainability report showcases the Kasada-owned hotels as an example of its efforts to “rapidly ramp up” private capital for climate action, with the agency providing its highest volume of climate finance last year.

Struggle to fund adaptation

But some experts argue the World Bank Group should be targeting its efforts more closely on communities who are struggling to survive as global warming exacerbates extreme weather and rising seas. 

Vijaya Ramachandran, a director at the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based environmental research centre, said projects like the Kasada-backed hotels are “not where the dollars are best spent from a climate perspective”.

Ramachandran, a former World Bank economist, co-authored a study last year analysing the climate portfolio of the bank’s public-sector lending arms, which exclude MIGA. It found a lack of clarity over what constitutes a climate project and showed that hundreds of projects had been tagged as climate finance despite having little to do with emissions-reduction efforts or adaptation.

Ramachandran told Climate Home that, in the case of MIGA’s backing for the African hotels, Kasada “should just be doing the energy saving itself as part of its own efforts to address climate change”. 

Holidaymakers enjoy a spacious, ocean-side pool at the five-star Le Lamantin resort in Saly, Senegal. (Photo: Jack Thompson)

Olivier Granet and David Damiba, managing partners of Kasada Capital Management, told Climate Home the hotel investment fund had always planned to be “a leader in energy and water efficiency in its properties”. 

But, they added, the financial and technical support of MIGA and the IFC had helped them implement their strategy “further and more easily”, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight Kasada-owned hotels have already been certified under EDGE and the rest are expected to achieve the standard this year, they noted.

Ramachandran said making hotels energy-efficient is a good thing – “but from a public finance perspective, for poorer African countries the focus should be on adaptation and making them more resilient”.

Developing countries need an estimated $387 billion a year to carry out their current adaptation plans, but in 2021 they received only $24.6 billion in international adaptation finance, according to the latest figures published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

MIGA to miss climate target?

Once regarded by campaigners as the “World Bank’s dirtiest wing” for its support of fossil fuels, MIGA has come under mounting pressure to shift its subsidies in a greener direction, in line with broader institutional goals.

In response, the agency has committed to throw more of its financial weight behind projects that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions or alleviate the impacts of climate change. 

In 2020, it revealed a plan to dedicate at least 35% of its guarantees to climate projects on average from fiscal year 2021 through 2025, embracing a target set by the wider World Bank Group. 

MIGA conceded at the time this would be “a challenge” – and it now looks likely to fall short of the goal. In 2023, climate finance represented 28% of its guaranteed investments.

According to the agency’s 2023 sustainability report, 31 out of 40 projects it supported with guarantees last year had a climate mitigation or adaptation component, but it did not disclose what percentage of each was counted as climate finance.

Meanwhile, over the last three years, MIGA has backed three gas-fired power plants in Mozambique and Bangladesh, while it is also planning to support an additional one in Togo. 

In monetary terms, MIGA’s annual provision of climate guarantees has risen from just over $1 billion in 2019 to $1.5 billion in 2023, pushing up the total size of its climate portfolio to $8.4 billion. But the headline numbers only paint a partial picture, clouded by a lack of transparency in the data.

MIGA’s portfolio of climate investments has grown in the past six years. (Photo: MIGA Climate Change)

In response to Climate Home’s request for a full list of MIGA’s climate projects, the agency said it could not disclose the information for confidentiality reasons. 

“Our clients are private-sector investors or financiers, and we do not have agreement to release disaggregated information about their investments and financing,” a MIGA spokesperson said.

The only clues about the make-up of MIGA’s climate portfolio come in its glossy annual sustainability reports, which highlight a handful of initiatives. 

Climate Home News reviewed these reports from the last three available years – 2021, 2022 and 2023 – and tracked highlighted projects, which are framed as positive examples of climate finance. 

Motorways and elite universities 

They show that support for renewable energy made up a quarter of MIGA’s climate guarantees in 2023. 

But its track record of climate investments raises questions about the agency’s criteria for designating projects as climate finance and how it allocates those resources to help people most in need, experts said. 

Karen Mathiasen, a former director of the multilateral development bank office in the US Treasury, said MIGA should not be using its resources to expand investment in things like luxury hotels and then counting them as climate finance. 

“There is a real problem in the World Bank Group with greenwashing,” added Mathiasen, who is now a project director with the Center for Global Development.

World Bank approves green reforms, appeals for more money

MIGA said it calculates the climate co-benefits from its projects using the same methodologies as other multilateral development banks, and applies them consistently according to a “rigorous internal consultation and review process”. 

Large infrastructure projects feature heavily in MIGA’s climate portfolio. 

For example, a group of international banks, including JP Morgan, Banco Santander and Credit Agricole, have received a total of €1.4 billion in guarantees to bankroll the construction of a new motorway in Serbia, in an area prone to severe flooding. 

The 112-km dual-carriageway, in the West Morava river valley, is implementing measures to reduce flood risk, including river regulation – and so was counted as climate finance.  

In 2022, MIGA’s largest climate guarantee – worth €570 million ($615 million) – helped finance the construction of a new campus in Morocco’s capital Rabat for the Mohammed VI Polytechnic, a private university owned by mining and fertiliser company OCP Group and frequented by the country’s elite.

According to MIGA, the project would seek to obtain LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) green-building certification “for key facilities”, and include hydraulic structures to enhance the climate resilience of the campus.

Similarly, support for a new hospital in Gaziantep, Turkey, was tagged as 100% climate finance because it features energy efficiency measures and flood drainage works. 

In 2023, just under half of MIGA’s climate guarantees went towards “greening” the financial sector in mainly middle-income countries like Argentina, Colombia, Hungary, Algeria and Botswana. 

These guarantees are intended to help local banks free up more capital and boost loans to climate projects, although in some cases they are only expected to do so on a “best effort basis” involving no strict obligation, according to MIGA’s annual reports.

MIGA said this clause is included for regulatory reasons and requires banks to “take all necessary actions to provide climate loan commitments” as far as is “commercially reasonable”.

UN climate chief calls for “quantum leap in climate finance”

Call for clarity 

Ramachandran of the Breakthrough Institute said MIGA should demonstrate the outcomes of its climate finance projects “in terms of reduced emissions or of improved resilience, (and) what the overarching strategy is to make sure the money is best spent”. 

“Instead the focus is simply on dollar amounts,” she added – a criticism rejected by the World Bank Group. 

MIGA said it supports projects in all sectors that contribute to development and enables the inclusion of emissions-cutting and climate adaptation measures in their design and operation. 

Former U.S. official Mathiasen believes MIGA could be a powerful engine to mobilise more private money for climate action, but said it needs a cultural change to focus more on results rather than numerical targets which give staff an incentive to “pump up the numbers”. 

“A little bit of an add-on – that is not a climate project. There needs to be clear, transparent criteria of what constitutes a climate project,” she said. 

(Reporting by Jack Thompson in Senegal and Matteo Civillini in London; additional reporting by Sebastian Rodriguez; editing by Megan Rowling, Sebastian Rodriguez and Joe Lo; graphics by Fanis Kollias)

This article was amended on April 17 to clarify that the Qatar Investment Authority and Accor are investors in the Kasada Hospitality Fund. It is run by Kasada Capital Management.

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At the Thimphu ambition summit on Wednesday, members of the least developed countries (LDC) group set out how they were trying to show leadership but needed support to put their plans into action.

In a national submission to the UN the day before the summit, Nepal announced that it aims to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, by investing in renewables, electric transport and reforestation. Adaptation will be  a “constant requirement” for the country due its vulnerability to climate change.

The mountainous country, which has among the lowest carbon emissions per capita in the world, is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Himalayan glaciers in Nepal have been losing almost half a metre of ice each year since the start of the century and floods and landslides are common. By 2030, the country aims to have adaptation plans in place in all its 753 municipalities.

Achieving those goals depends on international climate finance, said the country’s forest and environment minister Shakti Bahadur Basnet. “The scale of climate finance must grow to meet the needs of the most vulnerable,” he said.

Analysis: After five years, here are five things the Paris Agreement achieved — and didn’t

That call comes ahead of a virtual climate summit to be attended by more than 70 heads of state on 12 December, marking the five-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement. While many leaders are expected to tout upgraded carbon-cutting targets, there has been little sign of new money.

In 2009, rich nations agreed at UN climate talks to mobilise $100 billion a year by 2020 to support poor countries combat the impacts of climate change. But there remains a funding shortfall. 

Climate finance provided to developing countries rose by 11% to $78.9 billion in 2018, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“We need developed countries to fulfil their climate finance commitments. That includes the decade-long goal of mobilising US $100 billion a year for mitigation and adaptation. We are not there yet,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said at the Thimphu summit. 

Guterres urged donor governments and development banks to commit to directing at least 50% of their climate finance towards adaptation and resilience before Cop26 next year. “Until now adaptation represents only 20% of climate finance, reaching only $30 billion on average in 2017-2018,” he said.

UK energy minister Alok Sharma told the summit that he was “totally committed to the $100 billion climate finance goal.” He added that as Cop26 president-designate he aimed to make finance “much more accessible and to champion locally led adaptation”.

Last month the UK government cut its overseas aid budget from 0.7% to 05.% of national income from next year. Money earmarked for climate projects was protected from the cuts, but the move was criticised by poorer nations, many of which are facing crippling debt following the coronavirus pandemic.

‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate

Despite the disruption brought by the Covid crisis, 38 of the poorest countries are preparing to submit new or improved climate plans for this decade, or have done so already. Many place a strong emphasis on adaptation.

Rwanda was the first country in Africa to submit its new plan to the UN, in May. Rwanda said it would need around $11 billion to achieve its goals, including $5.3 billion for adaptation measures across seven sectors.

“Our country is already counting the cost of climate change. We have already tragically lost more than 140 citizens and more than 3,000 homes due to floods and landslides this year alone,” said environment minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya.

At the Thimphu summit, named after the capital of Bhutan which chairs the LDC group, poor countries also called for more loss and damage finance to help them recover from climate disasters. There has been a “staggering” rise in climate disasters over the past 20 years, which have led to global losses of $2.97 trillion, according to the UN. 

In 2013 the Warsaw International Mechanism was set up to address loss and damage, but rich countries have resisted calls to put money behind it.

Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh, said: “Loss and damage provisions should be mainstreamed [as] extreme weather events are already displacing many more people than violent conflicts.”

Sharma agreed: “We hear your call to the world: to increase its focus on averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage.”

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Parts of Africa and South Asia are particularly vulnerable to climate change (Pic: African Union-United Nations)

By Leo Barasi in Nairobi

Projects to reduce the impact of climate change in poor countries are failing, according to a leading African specialist in climate and development.

Despite billions spent around the world, adaptation projects are not helping communities prepare for climate change, warns Irene Karani, a Kenyan consultant.

Climate adaptation projects are frequently driven by the short-term interests of donors and fail to address the problems that make people vulnerable to climate change, she says.

As a result, she tells RTCC: “We are very far from having impacts that are at the level we want.”

Report: Greening Africa’s deserts could stem tragic tide of migrants

Threats from climate change are expected to be particularly severe in places that already suffer climate extremes, including much of Africa and south Asia.

These regions are home to some of the poorest people in the world, who are particularly vulnerable to impacts like higher temperatures and more frequent droughts.

In 2013, the Climate Policy Initiative estimates US$25 billion was spent helping people adapt to threats from a changing climate worldwide.

Most of this funding was spent on water supply and management, with a smaller amount on making infrastructure more resilient to climate change.

Climate adaptation projects are often designed to help people to cope with changes that would otherwise threaten their survival.

But Karani warns that many of these projects fail to meet the needs of people affected by climate change.

Donors

While communities are sometimes involved in the initial design of adaptation projects, Karani says funders often set too narrow a focus.

“When you’re talking about adaptation, everything is interlinked. If your project does just one thing, don’t call it adaptation.”

Another problem is the timescale: most projects run for no more than five years.

“You can’t have impact in five years: you have to make a sustained commitment,” she says.

Climate adaptation projects would be more effective if they were designed and managed by communities, argues Karani.

“Communities can be helped to get technical expertise. You make them centre stage and then leave them with what they have come up with.”

Communities

Fiona Percy, an adaptation expert at CARE International, agrees that adaptation projects often reflect short-term priorities of donors.

She says: “The traditional paradigm is that donors have the money and decide what they want to see. The development community has grown around that.”

Instead, she says, adaptation projects’ priorities “need to be decided by communities on a seasonal or annual basis, because what works now may not work over time”.

Projects are evaluated on their success in carrying out planned activities, not on their impact on making communities more resilient to climate change, says Karani.

And communities sometimes help to cover up failures: “These people gave them money, so when things have gone wrong they brush it under the carpet.”

Long term

Clare Shakya, head of climate change for Africa at the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), agrees climate adaptation projects need to take long-term approaches.

This is reflected in DFID’s programmes, she says: “You can only show success over a long timescale. I have projects that last 20 years and I would have to be really convinced of the case to fund something for less than seven years.”

DfID funds projects to have a “thinking stage” of up to a year, which they spend working with communities to design programmes that meet their needs.

For example its BRACED programme Shakya says was designed to respond to communities’ needs. Under parts of the programme, communities can spend several months developing their project plans before beginning work.

Self-determination

Percy agrees that some donors are getting better at designing effective climate adaptation projects:  “Not all projects should be condemned.”

However, she warns that many funders of climate adaptation projects still try to decide themselves what activities the project should carry out.

Instead, she says, “funders should allow communities to be the ones that determine their own futures”.

According to Percy, climate adaptation will never be effective as long as it seen as a one-off activity that can be introduced from the outside.

“It is still common to think that adaptation mean a new technology” she says, “when actually it’s a decision-making process.”

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A tree nursery grows Acacia Senegalensis to be planted in the Louga region of Senegal (Pic: Elvis Paul Tangem)

By Megan Darby 

Up to 920 people are thought to have perished when their overcrowded boat sank in the Mediterranean last week.

The most deadly of a series of migrant shipwrecks, it prompted soul-searching across Europe over the treatment of those seeking safety on their shores.

In Africa, meanwhile, the question is how to improve people’s prospects and security so they are not driven to such dangerous journeys.

With climate change likely to worsen drought, food insecurity and conflict in the Sahel region, efforts to green the desert can be part of the answer.

That is the hope of Elvis Paul Tangem, coordinator of the Great Green Wall Initiative – an ambitious programme of land restoration across a dozen countries – for the African Union.

“If you are following the news these days, you realise how many young people are dying in the Mediterranean,” he tells RTCC from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“They are coming from the drylands of Africa, because they think their lands are barren and they cannot do anything with them. That is not true…

“We have a challenge to use the opportunity of the disaster happening in the Mediterranean to show the world that the Great Green Wall can be one of the solutions.”

Comment: Lampedusa tragedy shows need for humane climate migration plan

Olesegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s president at the time, conceived the Great Green Wall in 2005 as a band of trees across the continent.

Stretching 7,100 km from Djibouti to Dakar, this green belt would halt the spread of the Sahara desert.

Together with measures to harvest rainwater, it would allow farmers to grow crops all year round, explained Abdoulaye Wade, former president of Senegal and champion of the initiative.

“With the regeneration of biodiversity, we plan to give our planet a new ‘green lung’ and contribute thus to the fight against climatic changes,” President Wade said at a Food and Agricultural Organization conference in 2008.

In practice, the “wall” idea has evolved into a patchwork of projects, with a range of backers.

Report: Countries reveal progress on 2020 forest restoration challenge

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multilateral development bank, supports one of the biggest programmes, providing some US$100 million of grants to 12 national projects.

It works out at around US$8m for each country, matched by around US$80 million from the World Bank and national governments.

“The main challenge has probably been to convince all partners and donors that the Great Green Wall was not a tree planting initiative,” says Jean-Marc Sinnassamy.

A sustainable land management expert at the GEF, Sinnassamy aims to develop projects to regenerate the whole landscape, tackling poverty as well as environmental degradation.

“In a nutshell: better ecosystems mean better vegetation cover (including more trees), better soils, better surface and underground water management, better productivity of lands for better livelihoods and income of rural communities.”

In the Maradi region of Niger, for example, he says women proudly showed him the soap and cattle feed they were able to produce.

SAWAP Field Trip to Tigray from Connect4Climate on Vimeo.

With some 60% of the continent classed as “dryland”, making arid zones productive is essential to support Africa’s growing population.

Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions is only increasing the strain on water resources in such regions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns.

Temperatures are expected to rise faster than the global average, while rainfall is likely to decrease in northern Africa.

Report: Global warming raises tensions in Boko Haram region

Experts say competition for water and natural resources increase the threat of conflict.

Risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft blames drought and food insecurity for the Arab Spring and rise of Islamic extremists Boko Haram.

African Union’s Tangem says there is a “very strong relationship” between desertification and conflict in the Sahel.

Young people struggle to find work and are drawn to terrorist groups like Boko Haram, he says.

“They want to have money. The next thing is: I have lost my goats, my parents have lost their heritage… I either migrate or I join the terrorist groups.”

It is another reason Tangem is keen to show well-managed drylands can support jobs. “We can engage the youth.”

The post Greening Africa’s deserts could stem tragic tide of migrants appeared first on Climate Home News.

Potatoes are the staple food crop in the high Andes (Pic: Fabiola Ortiz)

By Fabíola Ortiz

A silent threat has emerged on the last twenty years in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, 3,000 meters high above the sea level on the Andean plateau.

The rise of temperature in the remote part of the country has endangered the survival of over 2,000 Quechua indigenous families who have been traditionally growing potatoes for centuries.

Abrupt climate variation and shortage of rainfall patterns over the last three decades are the core of this change.

In December 2014, Peru hosted the UN climate talks, COP20. For two weeks the world’s specialists, activists, civil society and international leaders and negotiators gathered to discuss ways of tackling climate change and to reach a draft for Paris this year.

Meanwhile  in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, the Quechua “potato guardians” – Papa Arariwa – assembled to report about how high temperatures and scarce rainfall regime have directly affected their crops.

“Pachamama [Mother Earth] is nervous from what we are doing to her”, a fifty-year old Papa Arariwa named Mamani Huarka told RTCC. He lives in the Sacred Valley near a mountain range called Kinsa Cocha.

“Growing potatoes has everything to do with our life style, with our traditional food, culture and spirituality. Potatoes are sacred and we should treat them well as they are essential to our living. We thank to our Gods for safeguarding this region and the potatoes,” he said.

“We are being pushed further up the mountains and the cliffs to grow our potatoes. All the crops are moving up the hills due to the change of the temperatures. There shall be a time with no more space in the mountain to plant.”

Potato farmers must trek ever higher up the mountains to find suitable growing conditions (Pic: Fabiola Ortiz)

Before he goes trekking through the high and steep mountains, Huarka takes a few sips of coca tea to help with the altitude and murmurs a prayer asking for protection and blessing of the entities that live in the mountains – the Apus. He says that the real effects of climate change can be seen and felt there.

The Potato Park is a biocultural conservation unity located around 3,000 meters high and has 9,200 hectares of area in the Pisac district part of Cusco region. There are 6,000 indigenous people spread through five small villages – Amaru, Paru Paru, Pampallaqta, Sacaca and Chawaytire.

The creation of the Potato Park dates back from 1997 when an NGO called Andes Association promoted the conservation of the indigenous heritage regarding local rights, livelihoods and sustainable use of agrobiodiversity.

The huge number of 1,400 varieties of native potatoes are being grown in the Sacred Valley –  one of the world’s major food crops that has been protected for centuries by the deeply rooted local food systems maintained by the Quechua communities.

The Potato Park represents a new model of protected area in the Andes that allies sustainable management of the landscape, cultural heritage and indigenous cosmovision. With the help of Andes Association, the Park is run by the Quechua communities without the interference of local government.

“The Potato Park designed a pioneer model of a protected area without being dependant on public resources and is managed by local indigenous communities. The Park has already been recognized by the Peruvian government and was awarded several times from conciliating food security, traditional knowledge and biodiversity”, said Alejandro Argumedo, director of Andes Association.

The Potato Park was developed to sustain the 1,400 varieties of potato native to the region (Pic: Fabiola Ortiz)

However potatoes that used to be grown 3,200 meters high in the past are now growing only above the mark of 4,000 meters up in the mountains that are no higher than 4,500 meters. The Quechua people make an appeal for their survival.

“Nature used to tell us the best time of the year to work on the land but now forests are confused and are not talking to us anymore. We are losing our natural references from plants and animals. We need help to adapt to those new weather conditions that we are facing,” said Huarka.

Without really understanding what climate change is and possible consequences, this new expression is on the tip of the Quechua’s tongue. They are having to deal with a different time for their food production.

“I keep wondering what would be my family’s future and how life would be from now on. Will we be able to grow our food in the future?” asks Huarka.

The agronomist René Gómez, who represents the gene bank of the International Potato Center, estimates that in 40 years there will be nowhere to grow potatoes. This could be the end of the Potato Park and the food sovereignty of this ancient crop and conservation of Andean biodiversity.

“For the tubers to keep their nutritional properties they need a cold temperature. The native potatoes require temperatures between 4° and 8°C, some reach up to 12°C,” said Gomez.

But some action has been taken to help the indigenous communities settled in the Sacred Valley to survive. According to Gomez, the only way out to adapt and overcome scarcity is based on scientific research. The answer is in the genes.

“We’ve identified at least 11 different crops resistant to very dry conditions (of up to 200 mm a year), as well as high temperatures and heladas, periods of sudden drop in temperature that freeze crops and usually happen after long days of dry,” he explained.

The post Climate change threatens staple potato crop in high Andes appeared first on Climate Home News.

The stupa team gathers around ice cone prototype (Pic: Ice Stupa Project)

By Sanjay Pandey in Ladakh

“If you cannot stop it, adapt to it.”

This is the mantra of a tiny village — situated on the slopes of breathtaking Himalayan desert mountains of Ladakh — to survive climate change in the extreme north of India.

With the glaciers they depend on for water melting too fast in summer and not enough in the spring planting season, the farmers of Phyang struggle to grow the crops they need.

Help is at hand from engineer Sonam Wangchuk, who has raised US$125,000 through US-based crowdfunding website Indiegogo to create a series of “ice stupas” that promise to solve the water scarcity crisis.

“Though we have little or no contribution in climate change, we are at the receiving end of it,” Wangchuk told RTCC.

Under his project, Wangchuk wants to build “ice stupas” – or artificial cones of ice – that store water for crops to combat shrinking glaciers.

Wangchuk is not the first one to come up with the idea of an artificial glacier. His mentor Chewang Norphel earned the nickname “ice man” for pioneering work in the area.

But Norphel’s creations had limitations, in that they would have to be built above 4,000 metres and in locations that were shaded by a mountain on the south.

If not built in specific location, the glaciers would melt away before crucial, months of April and May when farmers needed water for irrigation.

This difficulty in walking up and down the mountains made it extremely difficult for the villagers to maintain the glaciers.

“With ice stupa formed of artificial glaciers, I tried to fix these limitations,’ said Wangchuk.

Wangchuk realised the melting speed of artificial glaciers was linked to the surface area exposed to sun and wind.

“The challenge was make ice last (that too in the lower altitude through) May and June, when the farmers needed it the most. Then, I thought the shape of the ice was key.”

The conventional glaciers would be 2 metres deep and spread over a wide area. Wangchuk’s brainwave was to make them taller, reducing the surface area for the same volume of ice.

The challenge was to store water vertically without pumps and power. Wangchuk figured out how to use gravity to get the shape he wanted.

“Look, every Ladkhi village is sloping down and the water starts at a higher point and flows down towards the Indus,” he explained.

“We can just put a pipe upstream higher than the height of the glacier that you want. If you want a 100 ft glacier then place the pipe 120 ft higher up and let the pipe come down along the slope. When it comes down the desired water would naturally rise to almost the same height.

“This not only gives you the way of making a conical shape, it gives you protection from the sun’s intense heat in places like Ladakh.”

The founder of the SECMOL alternative school started working on the hypothesis and last winter tested the prototype.

Within two months, Wangchuk’s team built a two-storey ice stupa that could store around 150,000 litres of water. This prototype was put to test. Built at the warmest possible location and lowest possible altitude on the banks of the Indus river at a height of 3,200 metres, it lasted till May 18.

Scaling up

“That’s all we needed. Now, we are going to make ice stupas 100 times bigger than the prototype. The chances are that it will last though July and August. In this case, it may last the whole summer and go into next winter. This will mean they are actually seen as glaciers,” said the engineer.

The full sized stupas will be 35 metres to 40 metres high and store up to 16,000 cubic meters of water each — enough to irrigate 10 hectares. Eventually there will be up to 80 such stupas.

Buoyed by their success, Wangchuk and his five-member team plan to construct 80 to 90 ice cones in the vast deserts of Phyang village that houses some 2,000 people, most of them farmers.

These stupas will be 100 times bigger than the prototype and if all goes to plan, will easily meet the water needs of people till the end of June.

The cost of constructing these stupas is estimated at US$100,000 (Rs 6,134,800). Wangchuk sought to raise $119,500 (Rs 7,331,086) to cover the extra costs of platform fees, bank/credit card charges, rewards, perks and shipment costs for supporters.

Crowdfunding

In the past when the people of Ladakh built stupas, they would donate labour. As the internet has made the world a global village, Wangchuk’s team appealed to the global citizen for help through crowdfunding worldwide. And the response was overwhelming.

On Tuesday 23 December, Phyang Monastery and SECMOL school announced that their ambitious Ice Stupa Project had exceeded its US$119,500 target on the American crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. More than US$125,000 was raised as part of the campaign. Around 330 contributors from 31 countries donated for the cause.

Engineers and volunteers along with the villagers and monks of Phyang have started working on the project.

The water from these ice stupas would help the villagers in the crucial planting months of April and May, as well as helping them green a vast patch of desert.

Once this project is scaled up, these ice stupas are expected to hold enough water to green 1,500 acres of hard desert land, said Wangchuk.

The post Crowdfunded “ice stupas” help Ladakh adapt to climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Philippines city of Tacloban was ravaged by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 – highlighting the need for better warning systems (Pic: UN Photo/Evan Schneider)

By Ed King in Washington DC

Ask a meeting of 50 climate change specialists what they mean by “resilience” and you’re likely to get 50 different answers.

Like “sustainability”, it is a word much abused by the media, policymakers and big business.

But as extreme weather events linked to climate change start to bite around the world, the importance of resilience will grow.

What’s important says Dennis Bours, a Bangkok-based climate consultant, is that the term no longer simply applies to infrastructure.

“I think resilience means you don’t just look at climate action, which in the past you would talk about hard measures like sea walls,” he says.

“Instead you must look at a complete picture including policies, governance and management structures on a national and community level, and a combination of hard and soft measure that you look at as a complete package. It’s not just about one intervention.”

It’s a sentiment delegates attending a Global Environment Facility climate evaluation conference in Washington last week repeatedly stressed.

Communities best placed to cope with extreme weather are not simply those with the best flood defences.

The best protection is often local radio or the mobile phone, provided there’s a working network.

Farming threat

Meseret Kassahun works with pastoral communities in Ethiopia, who range over grasslands with their herds of cows, goats and – a recent addition for many due to their ability to withstand drought – camels.

“Having up-to-date information is challenging for them, and drought is a major risk for their day-to-day existence, and they are suffering a lot,” she says.

Most of these groups are illiterate says Kassahun, and get information by word of mouth. Their nomadic lifestyle means they rarely have a mobile signal. Text alerts wouldn’t work as no-one could read them.

Resilience for these tribes comes in the form of community radio stations, which are being set up at market places and offer weather forecasts and tips on how to protect their livestock.

In Uganda farmers are also facing fluctuating rainfall, says Julian Bagyendera, a consultant who monitors the effectiveness of local adaptation plans.

With the country’s burgeoning population relying heavily on local farmlands for food, a failed harvest can have serious implications.

“The towns depend on rural communities for food and milk. Once the rural communities are affected, the whole country is. Prices go high and commodities are scarce,” she says.

Again, communication technology is central to plans to help farmers adapt. Weather forecasts from central government are only broadcast once a day.

At a time when rainy seasons are becoming unpredictable that’s insufficient, says Bagyendera.

Better education is another solution, helping farmers develop “climate smart” techniques, such as planting more trees, choosing crops that survive arid spells and conserving water.

These need to be led by communities, rather than be imposed by government or aid agencies. Where villages and farmers are involved right from the beginning “those projects tend to be more sustainable even when donor funding closes,” she adds.

For Uganda, resilience is empowered communities and better weather forecasting.

Empowering villages

In the foothills of the Himalayas, Nepal’s farmers are facing similar problems, exacerbated by high poverty levels and a barely functioning central government, weakened by a brutal civil war that ended a decade ago.

The blistering heat that sears the Indian subcontinent in the summer is usually alleviated by the monsoon, which sweeps up from Sir Lanka, blanketing India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal with welcome rains.

But where once farmers could predict when the first drops might fall, now it’s far more unclear.

“The monsoon is not happening at a proper time – it is delayed – and the farmers are affected,” says Jeeban Panthi, a Kathmandu-based climate expert who works with farmers across the country.

Drought is increasingly common – odd for a country sliced through by huge rivers sourced in Himalayan glaciers, surging towards India and the sea.

A major problem he faces is another surprise. “The main obstacle is that if they hear the climate is changing, they think they will benefit,” Panthi says.

He has been conducting three pilot projects at different altitudes in Nepal, sowing drought-resistant seeds in an effort to show local villagers how they could benefit from new ways of farming.

It will take another five years to see if this has worked, he says, but the real breakthrough is reassuring locals this is a problem they can tackle. Believing you can be resilient is the first step.

Thousands of miles away, on the sandy shores of Jamaica, people can see the azure waters of the Caribbean, but are suffering because so little rain is falling from the sky.

Water use was restricted to two days a week in the capital Kingston, says Kimberley John, who assesses climate adaptation projects in the country for international donors.

Jamaica’s thriving mobile phone industry and media is evidence that communicating to the masses is not the issue.

What does need to change is an appreciation of where water actually comes from, she says.

“Often people think third world countries are very close to nature. In the Caribbean we’re not that close to nature, so we often don’t respect the linkages between forests on the mountain and water in taps.”

Old habits like rainwater harvesting that could help have been ditched. Once something every household would do without thinking, now few households or businesses store water for a dry day.

“Sometimes the things we used to do when we were poor we need to get back to,” says John.

“So many people were happy to kiss it goodbye as it was a sign of backwardness, but if it’s in policy that homes and businesses have to have catchment areas I think we’ll be able to deal with whatever shocks climate change brings.”

The good news is that these types of simple initiatives are paying dividends around the world, according to Rob Van den Berg, a veteran climate project evaluator.

And initial interventions to showcase farming techniques in arid areas, storing water or the development of new communication tools are just the start.

“Usually the impact takes place outside the project,” he says. “The project is just a vehicle to get something going.”

Report: Meet the climate sleuths keeping carbon reporting honest 

The work in Ethiopia, Uganda, Nepal and Jamaica illustrates the increasing importance of education and information in preparing for the worst.

But the real test will come as climate impacts intensify, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent synthesis report suggested they will.

Lives are at stake. Early warning systems and an effective evacuation plan saw 700,000 Indians evacuated as Cyclone Hudhud smashed into the Orissan coast last month.

A year ago an estimated 6,000 Filipinos were not so lucky, many unaware that Typhoon Haiyan was bearing down on their small fishing villages. The storm surge overwhelmed defences, killed thousands and caused an estimated $2.84 billion in damage.

The IPCC projections mean countries, regions and cities will need to develop tailored strategies to “enhance resilience to climate change”, a term used in the Compact of Mayors released at the UN climate summit in New York this September.

In drawing up their plans, they will need to identify the specific risks they face, says Timo Leiter, a consultant for the German government’s development arm GIZ.

He cites a recent meeting with a city and was asked to offer a plan to help it become resilient to conflict, ebola, climate change and a host of other possible problems – a task that would take years to complete.

Instead Leiter, along with other climate development experts in Washington, advocates ambitious but focused projects, which knitted together can offer protection.

As for what resilience really means?

It does’t really matter, suggests Bours. It’s a personal decision, and each community needs to work that out for themselves.

“There are various definitions that are clear to various audiences. To some people adaptation, resilience and sustainable development means the same, while to other people resilience is more clearly defined,” he says.

“You can either look at the capacities you need to deal with shocks and stresses that can point towards resilience in the long term, or you can have other definitions.

“I personally think it’s most important that if you work on a climate change adaptation intervention that at least within your group of stakeholders you agree on a definition you all feel most comfortable with, opposed to adapting one that is the most sexy or trendy at the moment.”

The post What does it mean to be climate resilient? appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Source: Give Water Give Life)

By Sophie Yeo in Marrakech

Sisene is one of Burkina Faso’s most thriving villages. 

In the world’s third poorest country, it is acutely vulnerable to climate change, yet now the villagers keep gardens and grow fruit trees. There are chickens, two cows, and a donkey. Some of the women run a beer brewing business. And there are men.

It wasn’t always the case. Before 2008, Sisene’s 2,000 people were suffering the impacts of drought and a series of military coups.

And almost all of its inhabitants were women. Due to drought and irregular rainfall, the village’s men had left to farm more fertile land in the Ivory Coast or Ghana, sending money home to sustain their families.

The women and children were walking up to four hours a day to find water. The six wells in the village had run dry.

The situation is not unusual: women are often more vulnerable to climate change than men. Their stronger ties to the land and family means they are less able to migrate away from deteriorating conditions or disasters.

(Source: Give Water Give Life)

Solange Kaboré was one of a very few women born in the village to receive an education. She moved to Ouagadougou, the capital city, after her mother died when she was very young.

In the 1970s, she took up a job in the Burkina Faso branch of the US Peace Corps office, where she met a young American girl, Kathleen McDonald. The two stayed in touch. And over thirty years later in 2007, when Kaboré called to ask for help on a water basin project for her native town, McDonald was able to raise US$ 100,000 to fund the project.

By May 2008, the basin was built, almost entirely by the women of the village, who dug and pounded the clay soil to create an impermeable surface.

The location was decided by village elders, who pointed out the spot where the ground stays dampest the longest during the dry season.

McDonald recalls: “On 1 June I had an email from Solange that said: ‘Great news. The woman from the village just come into town to tell me that the basin was finished, that the rains have come and we have fish and a crocodile.’”

The basin, capable of holding up to 6,000 cubic meters, has not been empty since, even at the end of the dry season.

The men return

As the basin filled, the men returned to the village to their families, again able to farm their own land.

Among those who returned to his big family and three wives after 15 years away was François Ramdé, Kaboré’s brother. Together with McDonald and others, he now helps run the charity that emerged from the Sisene project: Give Water Give Life.

They hope to expand to other areas, but it is no small task. There are around 8,400 villages across the nation, and villages Guinea, Mali and Kenya have also expressed interest.

They hope to create an improved model, combining satellite imagery with solar powered irrigation and water filtration pumps.

It is part of a growing trend across the region.

A report released this week by the UK-based think tank Overseas Development Institute revealed that Burkina’s poorest farmers have restored 300,000 hectares of degraded land using such techniques, producing food for half a million people, over the past three decades.

Sisene illustrates the benefits of getting women involved in projects, says McDonald. Despite their vulnerability to climate change, women are often underrepresented in discussions, both politically and at the grassroots level.

“It’s unfortunate that even in Burkina, it’s mostly men who are in charge, but there are some men who know the value of starting with the women,” she says.

“If you go with the women they will lead the way. If you give them the opportunity, they know how to do it.”

(Source: Give Water Give Life)

The post Climate adaptation brings men back to women-only village appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate change increases the risk of drought for African farmers (Pic: Australian Department of Foreign Affairs/Flickr)

By Megan Darby

Two thirds of Africans can benefit from low-cost climate change adaptation measures, according to a report from the UN Environment Programme.

Africa’s population is set to double to 2 billion people by 2050. At the same time, climate change will increase the likelihood of drought, flooding and sea level rise.

Around two thirds of Africans’ livelihoods are directly linked to agriculture, nearly all of which is dependent on rainfall.

Climate change impacts could reduce water availability by 20-50% and cut crop yields in parts of the continent by 15-20%, the report said.

Achim Steiner, executive director at the UNEP, warned: “Such a scenario, if unaddressed, could have grave implications for Africa’s most vulnerable states.”

Solutions

A number of pilot projects have shown how to protect against these risks.

In Togo, a US$100,000 scheme to build up two reservoirs gave more than 7,000 people better access to water. That in turn improved agricultural productivity.

Legislation to include rainwater harvesting in school building codes in the Seychelles, coupled with education in ecosystem management, helped save schools an average of US$250 on monthly bills.

Training in land management in Rwanda and Uganda protected forests and improve the quality of farming land.

“By integrating climate change adaptation strategies in national development policies governments can provide transitional pathways to green growth and protect and improve the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of Africans,” Steiner said.

This round-up of practical solutions follows last year’s Africa Adaptation Gap Report, which outlined the “potentially crippling” costs of climate change.

It found adaptation to climate change caused by past emissions would cost Africa US$7-15 billion a year in 2020.

If the world agrees a deal to limit global temperature rises to 2C, the cost rises to US$35 billion a year. In the absence of such action, it could be even higher, at US$50 billion.

Binilith Mahenge, Tanzania’s environment minister and president of a pan-African forum on the environment, said: “Incipient threats posed by climate change, particularly in terms of potentially overturning decades of development efforts in Africa, suggest that future development efforts should incorporate greater resilience to climate change impacts.”

As part of a three-day summit of African leaders in Washington last week, the US Agency for International Development and the Rockefeller Foundation announced a US$100 million “global resilience partnership”.

This was to help African states cope with the effects of climate change, poverty and food insecurity.

Monique Barbut, head of the UN desertification body, has called for the flagship Green Climate Fund to prioritise cash-strapped African adaptation projects.

The fund, which aims to raise starting capital of US$15 billion by the end of the year, is to finance both mitigation and adaptation projects in the developing world.

The post Low-cost climate adaptation can help African farmers – UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate vulnerable countries need to develop plans to deal with future weather extremes (Pic: Stuart Price/UN Photos)

By Saleemul Huq

For the last decade or so, we have known that human induced climate change will bring adverse impacts around the world.

This is likely to hit the poorest countries and communities hardest. Their adaptive capacity is lowest, but some countries have been moving ahead on first planning and then implementing adaptation actions around the world.

The countries that have done this the longest are the group of nearly 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) who were the first set of countries to carry out their National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) over the last decade and have also started implementing many of the activities identified in their respective NAPAs.

They are on the cusp of moving towards the next generation of adaptation activities called National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and as adaptation is a learning-by-doing process they had a two-day NAP Expo in Bonn recently to elicit lessons from the first generation of NAPAs that could feed into the next generation of NAPs.

Some of the main lessons are shared below.

NAPAs to NAPs:

The NAPAS were meant to identify a set of most “urgent and immediate” adaptation projects based on a cursory assessment of vulnerability in different sectors of the economy and different parts of the country.

This was meant to produce a set of prioritized and fundable adaptation projects that would then be funded from the LDC Fund.

The countries realized very soon that tackling the adverse impacts of climate change in the longer term will need a much more strategic development approach rather than a piece meal project-by-project approach.

This is one of the key differences between the first generation of NAPAs and the next generation of NAPs, which means moving away from project based approaches to a more systematic programmatic approach.

Learning from mistakes:

A second lesson was that as adaptation to climate change was something new and uncharted, mistakes were bound to happen and must be learned from, and not simply brushed under the carpet.

Thus countries were asked to share their shortcomings and mistakes in an open and frank manner. One such lesson was the failure to include lesson-learning in the design of the NAPAs, thus missing an opportunity to make it a more robust learning process.

Hardwiring learning:

Thus in the NAPs there is an active learning process which requires allocation of both budgets as well as skills to do the evidence gathering and analysis in parallel to activities.

Thus the “learners” need to have dedicated people who are different from the “doers” and together the doers and learners will co-produce the next generation of knowledge on what constitutes effective adaptation.

Mainstreaming adaptation:

Another major lesson, which is being absorbed in the NAPs is the need to move away from stand-alone adaptation actions towards mainstreaming adaptation to climate change into national development planning.

One indicator of this is to move away from the Ministry of Environment being the primary government institution involved (although they still have a major technical role to play) to the Ministries of Planning and Finance who decide on major investments in infrastructure where climate change adaptation (as well as mitigation) needs to be taken into account.

The NAPs are very much aimed at ensuring that such mainstreaming takes place over time.

Ensuring participation:

The previous generation of adaptation planning had attempted to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including civil society, but with limited success.

In some cases such consultations were deemed to have been very perfunctory and not really engaging with the key stakeholders.

Thus the next generation of NAPs will need to take such consultation and participatory inputs into NAPs much more seriously.

Fortunately civil society is now also much more aware and able to engage more effectively with the government as it prepares the NAPs.

Most vulnerable:

One of the normative principles that need to be adopted is to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable countries (such as the LDCs) at the global level, and communities within each country.

The community of practice on Community Based Adaptation (CBA) at its recently held 8^th International conference on CBA came out with the Kathmandu Declaration which demands that at least 50% of global funding for climate change goes to the poorest and most vulnerable countries while in each country at least 50% of the funding for adaptation is directed to the most vulnerable communities in the country and that this be reported on in their respective NAPs.

Not just LDCs:

In conclusion, one of the major differences between the previous generation and next generation of adaptation activities, is the realization that it is not only the LDCS who need to do so.

Even other bigger developing countries as well as indeed the richest countries will all have to develop adaptation plans and actions as no country will be safe from the adverse impacts of climate change.

However, as the LDCS have been doing it for longer and have gained valuable experiences that they can share, they can indeed become leaders in showing the rest of the world, how to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.

The presence of a significant number of people from other developing countries, as well as developed countries, at NAP Expo underlined that this sharing of knowledge is already happening.

Saleemul Huq is Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Climate Change and Development (IIED), based in London and Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) based at the Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).

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Finance minister Arun Jaitley prepares to deliver budget

By Sophie Yeo

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first budget promises to boost renewable energy and pivot attention towards the threats of climate change.

The budget, presented today by finance minister Arun Jaitley, is the first time that the government has explicitly set aside domestic funds for climate adaptation, and is the first real test for India’s new leader Modi.

“Climate change is a reality which all of us have to face together. Agriculture as an activity is most prone to the vagaries of climate change,” said the finance minister, unveiling the budget at the Indian parliament in New Delhi.

He said the establishment of “National Adaptation Fund” would focus on providing funds to agriculture – a sector which contributes towards almost one sixth of India’s GDP. This is to be replenished with an initial sum of Rs 100 crore (around US$ 16.5 million).

India’s landscape and economy are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, due to its 8,000 km of coastline and its dependence on rain-fed agriculture and fisheries.

Yet the government has so far been reluctant to take action directed specifically at adaptation, preferring to focus efforts on mitigation, including renewables, efficiency and improved urban planning, as part of its eight “National Missions” on climate change, launched in 2008.

“Recognising the threats of climate change to India is a pretty positive move,” said Sanjay Vashist, director of Climate Action Network South Asia.

Concern

But observers were still in some doubt on whether this money would prove effective.

The Adaptation Fund must first be established before the funds can be disbursed, and even then deciding how to spend the money over India’s 3 million km land mass.

“Adaptation is by definition a local issue, so different people have different needs,” said Jyoti Parikh, a member of the Prime Minister’s advisor council on climate change. “Prioritisation is harder. Mitigation is easier: it’s more about technology.”

Nitin Sethi, an environmental correspondent at the Business Standard in India, expressed further concern that the Adaptation Plan was a “mere token” from a government wanting to prove it was engaging with climate change.

“The real test of the government lies in funding and supporting the existing eight climate change missions, which includes adaptation in urban areas, water resources and agriculture sector besides the ones on energy efficiency and solar power,” he said.

“The economic survey put out yesterday shows India is slipping on several of them and that the missions have fallen from the political agenda of the government in previous few years.”

Renewable energy

The budget also provides a boost to renewable energy, which came as no surprise, given Modi’s apparent enthusiasm for solar power during his time as chief minister in Gujarat.

Jaitley announced that the government would provide Rs 500 crores (around US$ 80m) to set up “ultra mega solar power projects” in four states: Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Laddakh.

He allocated a further Rs 400 crores for solar-powered pumps for use in agriculture, and another Rs 100 crores for the development of 1 MW solar parks on the banks of canals.

Many of the materials needed to develop wind and solar plants were exempted from excise duty, which is likely to provide an incentive to develop renewable energy. The doubling of India’s clean energy cess – a levy on coal, peat and lignate used to finance clean energy initiatives – will be another lift.

Equally, the government looks set to continue to rely more heavily on fossil fuels in the future – there are still around 400 million people in India without access to electricity, and Modi’s decisive victory in May was largely attributed to his promises of development for all.

But claims that this is a wholly green budget need to be placed into context.

Alongside a pledge to provide 24/7 power supply to all homes, Jaitley announced that he would enhance coal production, while exploiting old wells of petroleum and natural gas as a “clean” source of energy.

India has the world’s fifth-largest coal reserves, and according to the US Energy Information Administration ranked third largest in terms of both production and consumption in 2012.

Despite the prospect of more investments in the most carbon intensive of fossil fuels, NGOs say the news must be taken with a dose of realism.

“One should look at it positively,” said Vashist. “India is going to remain dependent on coal for years to come. But simultaneously they are investing in renewable technologies. Unless they have a sustainable and reasonable option, then no country is going to switch over to cleaner technology.”

Sustainable development

India’s promised development will also depend upon how it deals with a growing urban population, greater pressures on its transport system, and its management of its natural resources.

Its success in tackling climate change in the future will be partly determined by its ability to ensure this development is sustainable.

Improved infrastructure, crucial for development, will help to resolve the problem of food loss – an issue that is set to get worse in India as the planet warms.

Currently, up to 40% of fruit and vegetables perish en route to their destination, according to Tim Fox, head of environment and energy at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, who was in India when the budget was announced, and recently launched a study on food loss in countries facing climate change threats.

Inefficient supply chains and storage have led to rampant price inflation of vital basic foods – now close to 10%.

Fox said that the improvements to infrastructure announced in the budget could make headway in tackling this problem. “Investment in roads and energy supply, particularly green energy supply, will help food get where it needs to go.”

Details on other programmes remain sketchy, but the new budget hints at greater integration between development and climate agendas, with promises to build 100 smart cities, new Metro systems and a National Centre for Himalayan Studies.

“The budget demonstrates that the government of India is creating infrastructure for everybody, which is important for growth and sustainable development,” said Vashist.

“We need to ensure that this development happens with the least carbon footprint.”

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A Kyrgyz family in front of their yurt in the Tchonkymyn Valley in the Tien Shan Mountains. (Pic: UN Photo/F Charton)

By Sophie Yeo

A network of 25 indigenous communities from 10 countries has come together to share traditional knowledge on how to adapt to climate change.

Countries in the network include China, Peru, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Tajikistan and Papua New Guinea.

Seed sharing between the groups will ensure that farmers grow crops that are resilient and diverse enough to withstand major damage in the face of unusual weather.

“We are from different communities but we have similar problems relating to climate change,” said Akylbek Kasymov, an economist at Kyrgyz National Agrarian University, and leader of the Kyrgyz delegation at a workshop for indigenous people in Bhutan.

The International Network of Mountain Indigenous People was created by communities from mountainous regions, speaking 22 languages between them, to swap ideas, information, and even seeds, so they can be resilient in the face of a changing climate.

These mountainous regions will face similar problems as the impacts of climate change become more severe, threatening the livelihoods and traditions of their indigenous communities.

These problems include melting glaciers, changes in rainfall patters, failing crops and more pests and diseases.

For instance, in Papua New Guinea, agriculture is the largest economic activity, and its natural climate means that most of its crops are fed by the rain.

At a recent meeting in Bhutan, Papuan farmers highlighted how changing rainfall patterns mean that the islanders have a growing need for irrigation to keep their crops alive. Local knowledge of this system is lacking. Through the network, indigenous communities will be able to help each other by sharing this kind of information.

According to the UN’s science report from the IPCC, indigenous knowledge can be a valuable asset in helping small farmers figure out how to adapt to climate change.  It also warns that the impacts of warming increase with altitude, putting mountainous communities at particular risk.

This means that these traditions need to be preserved as well as shared, says Kasymov, who says that some local indigenous knowledge was lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when large-scale immigration interrupted the transmission of information between old and young generations.

“Kyrgyz people, our parents, they somehow lived in harmony with nature,” he said. “Farmers and custodians of traditional knowledge, they have very rich experience even now.”

At the workshop in Bhutan, which took place last month, indigenous communities signed a Bhutan Declaration, calling on governments to support adaptation based on traditional knowledge, since “The survival of our knowledge systems is critical for the survival of humanity.”

The next meeting is scheduled to take place next year in Taiwan, around six months before the UN signs a global climate change treaty in Paris.

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Source: Flickr/…your local connection

By Sophie Yeo

Efforts to prepare the Solomon Islands for the impacts of climate change have received a US$9.1 million boost from the World Bank.

The money will go help set up early warning systems to alert people if an extreme weather event is about to hit, helping to save lives in the event of tsunamis or other natural hazards.

The investment will also help build community projects in climate change adaptation, such as building ‘climate proof’ buildings in four provinces across the islands.

Rick Houenipwela, the Minister of Finance for the Solomon Islands said the money would help to “kickstart” the efforts to enable communities to be “better prepared for climate change.”

Around 566,000 people live on the Solomon Islands, which is one of the Pacific’s poorest countries, and has been hit by successive global food, fuel and financial crises since achieving independence in 1978.

This week’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted the particular vulnerability of small islands to climate change.

Among the 2,600 pages, upon which were painted a bleak picture of the future impacts of a warmer world, was a warning that the Solomon Islands have already experienced disruptions due to sea level rise.

In 2008, widespread flooding displaced 63,000 people across Papua New Guinea and the Solomon islands alone. The Solomon Islands have a population of 549,600. It is an example of the kind of event that could come to “threaten the habitability of low-lying islands” in the future, according to the report.

“The Climate and Disaster Resilience Project is vitally important in a country where communities face very real, very present threats from natural disasters and climate change, especially in remote Outer Islands, said Franz Drees-Gross, World Bank Country Director for the Pacific Islands.

The World Bank invested a further US$ 13million to improve the reliability and efficiency of electricity supply for the 65,000 residents of Honiara, the capital city of the Islands.

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(Pic: David Cameron/Flickr)

By Ed King

The catastrophic flooding experienced by parts of the UK is a result of successive governments ignoring the possible consequences of global warming for the past 20 years.

That’s the view of Lord Deben, the former UK Environment Secretary and current head of the body that advises on how the country should cope with climate change.

In a series of tweets he said inadequate funding, the construction of houses on flood plains and an ignorance of climate impacts was responsible for the current situation. “We have not had a national flood programme with single focus and proper funding under any government,” he said.

“Problem for Treasury thinking is that climate change demands long term investment in everything from building standards to flood prevention.”

FLOODING POLITICS: ignore climate change:20 years inadequate funding:build widely on flood plain:blame EA working all hours for your failure

— John Deben (@lorddeben) February 10, 2014

Deben was echoing remarks made by heir to the throne Prince Charles last week, who described flooding as a “classic example” of what happens if society pays “little attention to the accumulating impact of climate change”.

Records from the UK Met Office suggest January 2014 was the wettest on record since 1910, 35% above the long-term trends. This weekend it released an analysis of the conditions linking the heavy rainfall to climate change.

“Nobody has come forward to counter the basic premise that if you have a warmer world you are going to get more intense heavy rain rates…as we’re beginning to detect now over the UK,” the organisation’s chief Dame Julia Slingo said on BBC Radio.

Last week intense storms washed away the main railway line between Cornwall and the rest of the UK. Around 16,000 acres of the Somerset Levels in the west country are now submerged, while flood warnings have been issued to thousands of home owners alongside the River Thames.

The scale and intensity of the rainfall and floods has a major concern of Prime Minister David Cameron, who has now taken control of the response, hosting the daily ‘COBRA meeting’.

The coalition has agreed to increase capital spending on new flood defences to £370m in 2015/16. But critics say the government has exacerbated the situation by slashing the numbers of staff employed in flood prevention.

I’ve just chaired COBRA. With more flooding on the way, I made sure every resource is available to help.

— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) February 9, 2014

Budget cuts mean the body tasked with dealing with the floods could lose around 25% of its staff by October.

“People need to be aware that some of the frontline staff are taking a big hit, particularly when we are facing some of the worst flooding ever seen in southern England,” the Guardian quotes an unnamed source from the Environment Agency as saying.

Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Guy Shrubsole says the UK’s ability to cope with extreme weather events has been “dismantled” as a result of successive cuts and a refusal to integrate climate projections into planning.

He said: “The Prime Minister must focus his Cabinet on the crucial job of saving people’s properties, businesses and livelihoods. And then, when the floods abate, Mr Cameron must put in place a long-term action plan that protects us all from the threats posed by a changing climate.”

Simon Jenkins, head of the National Trust, called on government to back efforts to catch water before it hits floodplains, mocking claims that dredging rivers would solve the crisis.

“Flood prevention policy has changed … this involves growing more upland trees, removing river banks, damming and digging ponds, all to cut river spate and reduce soil erosion. Where implemented it has been startlingly effective,” he said.

Insurance premiums

Longer term plans to develop a flood compensation scheme have already received heavy criticism for omitting potential impacts of climate change into their calculations.

This means the proposed Flood Re programme will only cover 500,000 homes, as opposed to 970,000 official figures suggest may be in danger by the 2020s.

“What is clear is that just looking back at the historical record to plan flood defences or set insurance premiums is increasingly misleading,” said Professor Myles Allen from Oxford University “The climate is changing, and the sooner we understand in detail what these changes mean for Britain, the better.”

The EU’s climate change adaptation strategy report, published in April, warns the regional cost of not preparing for extreme weather events is estimated at €100 billion a year in 2020 and €250 billion in 2050 for the region.

Between 1980 and 2011 it says floods killed more than 2,500 people, affected more than 5.5 million and caused direct economic losses of more than €90 billion.

“We haven’t really done what we really need to do to prepare,” Åse Johannessen, a water expert from the Stockholm Environment Institute told RTCC. “We wait until it’s really evident and until it’s a big thing.

“Those are the events that trigger a political and societal response. There is not enough coordination or initiatives have taken place from the EU or national governments. This is an issue that requires big thinking, long-term thinking.”

Code red: Environment Agency flood warnings on February 10

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Source: Flickr/whealie

By Sophie Yeo

London is currently a city under siege from high tides and heavy rain, forcing authorities to raise the gates of the Thames Barrier for the 11th time in 11 days.

Built in 1984, the barrier, which protects key historical and political landmarks in London from flooding, has only closed 138 times for flood defence purposes since it was completed in 1984.

Over two thirds of these closures have taken place since 2000. The last 11 days have been one of its toughest tests yet.

While the Thames Barrier will come under increasing strain as sea levels rise, the Environment Agency says that it will remain effective for another 50 years before serious changes are required – longer than was thought at the time it was built.

“Obviously sea level rise is a concern, but the engineering of the structure was so good in the 80s that, although originally it was thought it would need to be upgraded by around 2035, analysis a few years ago that suggests the barrier will be fit for purpose to about 2070, taking into account climate change and sea level rise,” a spokesperson told RTCC.

Severe weather

As storms sweep through the UK, the Thames’ main flood defence has sprung into action to protect the London’s floodplain from going under water. The Environment Agency has released a map showing how far flooding could reach if the Thames Barrier was not in place.

The barrier was closed just four times in the 1980s, compared to 80 times since 2000. In January 2003, it closed for fourteen days in a row. It was built in response to extreme flooding in 1953, which came within centimetres of breaching the city’s existing defences at the time.

Sea levels have been rising at a rate of 2.8mm per year since 1993, according to the UN’s scientific report, the IPCC. This is due to the melting of the glaciers and the Antarctic ice sheet, and the expansion of the ocean as it heats up. Since 1901, the sea has risen by 19cm.

The Environment Agency’s current plans to protect London against flooding are based on projections of a 2.7m maximum water level – including extreme sea level rise plus surge – as the worst case scenario. This is a revision downwards from its previous worst case scenario of 4.2m.

Roland Gryzbek, the water and environment framework manager at Halcrow, the engineering firm that manages the Thames Barrier told RTCC: “If you look at rising sea levels and the frequency and the size of the events we’ve had more recently then, yes, it will come into more frequent use, but it’s currently very good at what it does.

“Obviously if it does come in for more increased use, it will have to have more frequent maintenance and more frequent inspections, but all the most recent inspections show it to be in really good condition.”

Preparing for climate change

Climate change adaptation is a growing topic of conversation, as it becomes clear that mitigation efforts, which try to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases, are failing. This means that the world will have to prepare itself for the impacts of climate change, of which rising sea levels and more intense storms are just one particularly relevant example.

In November, the European Commission launched a €9 million programme called Helix Climate (High End Climate Impacts and Extremes), bringing together sixteen organisations to undertake a rigorous four-year analysis of what the world might look like with 2, 4 and 6C of warming.

This will help governments draw together plans on how they will adapt their countries to the challenges of climate change, drawing on the varying scenarios that will be faced across different continents.

The research will contain “a lot of new science”, according to Richard Betts of the University of Exeter, one of the collaborators in the project. It will link up isolated studies of what the world will look like in the future in a way that hasn’t previously been done.

“The way we’re framing it in terms of different levels of global warming, policy makers like to see things in those very clear and simple numbers,” he told RTCC.

He added: “The world isn’t always adapted to its current climate. There’s always a lot more we can do to be more resilient to weather and climate on all timescales. It is important we understand what we can do in adapting to climate change and also if there are any constraints or limits on that.”

Thames Barrier adaptation

There will be no major changes to the Thames Barrier before 2070, according to a plan laid out by the Environment Agency in November 2012, although “some modification” will be required for it to continue to protect the 1.25 million people who live and work in London’s floodplain.

“Many improvements are already in train,” said a spokesperson.

@rtcc_sophie @johncurtinEA We will protect to 1 in 1000 levels until about 2030. Our TE2100 Plan has info beyond that http://t.co/cp4PagTPTG

— Alan (@AlanBarrierEA) January 7, 2014

After 2035, London’s flood defences will have to be upgraded, says the report, and rising sea levels may mean another flood barrier defence will be built downstream at Long Reach, which would become operational by around 2070.

Even further into the future, the Environment Agency is considering putting locks on the Thames Barrier after 2135 to deal with the higher tides.

Last year, one of the civil engineers involved in the construction of the Thames Barrier in the 1980s said that it was inadequately prepared for global warming.  “The Thames Barrier was built in response to the floods in 1953. Nobody had heard of global warming then,” he told the BBC. “I think global warming has changed the ball game; obviously the Environment Agency doesn’t.”

This is a claim that Halcrow’s Gryzbek disputes. He says: “On the basis of the predictions that’s not true, but we’re talking about a piece of engineering that is looking to protect London in 2070 and well beyond – in fact to 2100. With the predictions of climate change, there’s a norm and then there are extremes up or down relative to that norm.”

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John Kerry, a Vietnam war veteran, returns to the Mekong Delta to view climate change defences (Pic: State Dept)

Secretary of State John Kerry says the USA has committed an initial $17 million to helping vulnerable communities in Vietnam adapt to climate change.

The funding will be channelled through USAID’s Vietnam Forest and Deltas Program, part of a wider US effort in the region to invest in low carbon infrastructure.

Kerry made the announcement this week on a visit to the Mekong Delta, a vast and fertile area in the south of the country where more than half of its rice grows.

“Vietnam is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world when it comes to climate change. And we will see very serious impacts if we don’t change course today. That’s why all of us need to work together and focus in on these issues,” he said.

Dominated by flood plains, the Delta is at acute risk from rising sea levels, which could displace millions and destroy farmlands with salt water.

Kerry, who was last in the region in 1969 as a US soldier during the Vietnam war, warned that failure to address the underlying causes of climate change could result in catastrophe.

“Hundreds of millions of people throughout Asia and the world depend on that rice as a staple of their nutrition. Here in the breadbasket, the rice breadbasket of Vietnam, higher sea levels mean more salt water spilling into the Mekong Delta.

“And anybody who has ever farmed or grown a garden can tell you that salt water and salt are no friend to rice paddies.”

The country’s National Climate Change Strategy states that between 2001 and 2010, damage caused by weather-related disasters has led to 9,500 dead and missing people and a loss of around 1.5% of GDP per year.

Vietnam is one of the fastest growing economies in South East Asia, and also has some of the world’s most ambitious climate change laws.

Hydroelectricity already provides 35% of Vietnam’s energy, and the government has plans to increase the renewables contribution to the energy mix from 3% in 2010, 5% by 2020, further increasing to 11% by 2050.

Kerry also announced a $94 million deal between General Electric and Vietnamese firm Cong Ly to provide extra turbines to wind farms in the country.

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Hurricane Sandy has moved the Mayor to make drastic changes to the city’s flood defences. (Pic: Dougtone)

By Nilima Choudhary

Asia’s major cities are likely to be the hardest hit by natural catastrophes, both in terms of absolute numbers of lives lost and economic impact, advises a new report.

Reinsurance company Swiss Re indicates India and China, in particular, as facing a significant threat from river flooding, highlighting the urgent need for decisive climate action from city leaders.

The 616 urban areas examined in the study looked at are home to about 1.7 billion people, roughly 25% of the world’s total population, covering $34,000 billion or about 50% of the global GDP.

With 12 million residents potentially affected, the cities based around China’s Pearl River Delta are the most flood-exposed urban areas in the world.

Shanghai (11.7 million people) and Kolkata (10.5 million) follow in second and third place respectively.

In terms of lives lost, not a single European city features among the 20 most potentially affected urban populations. Instead they face economic challenges linked to climatic changes.

The study is a basis for decision-makers, as well as the insurance industry and the broader public to promote dialogue on urban resilience.

“Already today, major river floods alone have the potential to affect 380 million people living in cities; and some 280 million people could be impacted by severe earthquakes,” says Matthias Weber, chief underwriting officer at Swiss Re.

“We need to better understand what makes cities more resilient and what decisions about investments and infrastructure are needed to minimise the loss of life, property and economic production.”

Adaptation

The UK has asked engineers to develop plans to protect London and £200 billion-worth of property from flooding until the end of the century.

Following the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in June called for the reshaping of New York City’s 520 miles of coastline with storm barriers, flood walls, levies and sand dunes, as part of a $20 billion plan to strengthen the city’s defences against climate change.

This investment is not always matched in the developing world. India and Pakistan were recently criticised for allowing the construction of housing on flood plains.

The UN expects 6.3 billion people, or 68% of the world’s population, to be living in urban areas by 2050. Growing populations, and the value of infrastructure also increase potential losses in these urban areas.

Next week during the opening ceremony of Climate Week NYC 2013, reflecting one year on from Hurricane Sandy, Swiss Re and The Climate Group will host an event to explore how government officials and local residents can make cities more resilient to climate impacts in the future.

The session will explore efforts taken by governments, businesses and civil society over the past year to build more climate resilient communities.

It will also identify additional measures that are needed going forward, emphasizing solutions that provide the greatest economic and social benefits.

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A hotel along Gambia’s threatened coastline (Pic: Flickr / Eric Hutton)

By Sophie Yeo

Gambia’s Environment Minister Fatou Gaye says UN climate talks are “frustrating” and are failing her country.

Talks on a global emissions reduction deal are set to resume in Warsaw this November, and Gaye says she is concerned at the lack of progress.

“Each time we are left alone, at the end of each COP, both developed and developing countries express the view that we are just coming here for nothing,” she told RTCC.

“This is a dilemma. We are never satisfied but we never give up.”

Nearly 50% of Gambia’s population are in poverty, according to World Bank data, which also reveals the country’s per capita carbon emissions are a miserly 0.3 metric tons per capita. In contrast Germany’s is 9.0.

The country’s annual GDP is just US$ 917.3 million, and funding for climate adaptation and mitigation projects is a particular concern for Gaye.

She is particularly frustrated by the lack of assistance for their National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA).

At the request of the UN, Gambia proposed a NAPA in 2007, identifying their most urgent and immediate needs, but some of them remain unfunded.

“They were designed to be immediate and urgent, but even between 2007 and now, some of them have not been implemented, so how urgent are they? These are the things that are frustrating in these situations,” she says.

Urgent

Meanwhile, she says, climate related impacts in Gambia are worsening.

Last year, the country was forced to declare a drought, and the lingering effects of this mean that the country is not expecting a bumper crop this year.

Sea level rise is a threat to the capital, Banjul, with the greater part of the coastal city lying less than 1 metre above sea level.

With 17.9% of the GDP coming from tourism in 2008, the fact that 90% of the hotels lie along the threatened coastline could place added financial burden on the country.

“I would like to plead with our partners to act quickly to address the adverse impacts of climate change in our country,” adding: “These are real problems and a threat to Gambia. We require assistance.”

Equity

Equity – or who exactly should foot the bill when it comes to climate change adaptation and mitigation – is a key issue in negotiations, albeit a controversial one.

The UNFCCC defines equity as “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”, but its precise definition remains under debate.

Various countries claim different levels of responsibility, based on whether they should be held to account on their historical level of accountability for the problem, or their current capability to remedy it.

“Our capabilities are limited to our vulnerability,” says Gaye. “The more vulnerable you are to climate change, then the less capable you are to responding to its adverse effects, so this is basically what we mean by fair and justifiable.”

“The developed world looks at it from another perspective: how much their economies can afford? For them they are saying ‘what can we do’? But for us, what ‘we can we do?’ is open – we see it as a loophole.”

Stagnation

Speaking from the sidelines of an ACT Alliance session to facilitate informal dialogue between governments, NGO and UN representatives on how to achieve a “fair and just” outcome to climate negotiations, Gaye told RTCC that the stagnating pace of the talks clashed with the urgent need to address climate change in her own country.

She said that while the provisions of the UNFCCC were useful in providing a strong agenda for climate action, countries needed to stop stating their position and start implementing real actions.

“Our position is based on the provisions of the convention, which is our guiding principle,” she said.

“These are provisions that have already been agreed to and we intend to work on that path and engage with our partners and explain to them – and continue to explain to them, because we’ve always been explaining to them – why we have these positions and why we need to pursue them.

“But the provisions have been there forever, and now we need to implement them.”

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Hydropower is claimed to exacerbate the destruction caused by flooding. (Source: Raj srikanth800)

By Nilima Choudhary

The poor construction and locations of hydropower projects in Uttarakhand appears to have exacerbated the recent flooding and raised questions over India’s planning regulations.

Unseasonally heavy rain in June triggered a series of water surges down Himalayan valleys, leading to over 1,000 deaths with thousands more left stranded.

Construction in and around riverbeds has been partially blamed for the level of casualties, as has high levels of deforestation in the region.

But the proliferation of hydropower plants is also a target of local anger. Some say they have eroded riverbanks making them weak and narrow, unable to hold their structure during intense flooding, which experts agree will be a regular occurrence due to the effects of climate change.

It’s a critical issue for India’s government, which faces the twin challenges of generating more electricity and building more resilient communities.

Around a quarter of northern India’s installed power generation capacity comes from hydropower.

The floods in Uttarakhand caused severe damage to six hydro power plants of which four were operational with a total installed capacity of 3,426MW along the Ganges and its tributaries, according to the Indian Express.

Another 95 projects with a total capacity of 12,235MW are in various stages of development.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has authorised sites predominantly near the Himalayas where it envisages 15,000MW to be installed by 2017.

Local resilience

Analysis from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based research and advocacy body, said the small hydropower sector (plants under 25MW) exerts a significant impact on the environment.

“We are looking at deforestation done to construct project facilities such as roads, power houses and transmission lines,” said Chandra Bhushan, Deputy Director General at the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. “There is increased soil erosion, disruption of local fauna and flora, disturbance of hill slopes.”

A report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said there were substantial hydrological and geological risks associated with hydropower development. Development of hydropower puts “stresses on the roads and other infrastructure as well as on the fragile Himalayan ecosystems.”

A recent World Bank study in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand identified shortcomings in the planning and coordination of hydropower development, according to ABD. This was attributed to individual units as well as the lack of coordination among developers.

Despite rising concerns in the region Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Vijay Bahuguna continues to strongly support the hydropower projects in the region.

“World over more than 40% energy generated is from hydro power. We are doing an environment impact study of every river, so that we have a ready data base about the environment condition” Bahuguna recently told The Hindustan Times in an interview.

Blocked rivers

Andrew Jeffries, a senior energy specialist at the ADB, which has invested in several projects in Uttarakhand, as well as neighbouring Himachal Pradesh that were devastated in floods last month told RTCC that “muck” was a dominant force in exacerbating “[flood] damage”.

Muck is rock and debris from tunnelling that is stored or dumped from the construction of hydro power projects. “If you dump muck in the wrong places it can be dire, and then you have torrential water [which] can exacerbate damage,” he said.

“Rock and debris flowing quickly along with the water as opposed to just water… the potential for damage is higher.”

“During the last few years, the river course has narrowed due to dumping of muck generated by hydro power projects. During flood like situations, gushing water and muck can cause extensive damage to population downstream”, said Ghuman Singh, convener of Indian charity Himalaya Niti Abhiyan.

It’s not an issue confined to India. Across the Himalayan region, governments are working out how they can tap into the vast power that the mountain rivers can provide.

Fly east and the controversial Tipaimukh hydroelectric dam could require the destruction of 227 sq km of forest in the state of Manipur, located near the border of Bangladesh. Commissioned in the 1980s, Bangladeshi authorities have held up the construction of the dam citing environmental concerns.

Deforestation

“What is most disconcerting is that despite the losses there is no recognition of the ecological fragility of the landscape,” said Manshi Asher of Himdhara Environment Research and Action Collective.

“The three large hydro-electric projects that have been built and are operational in the valley, and many other which are under construction are central to exacerbation of the fragility of the area – both by bringing about deforestation, climatic changes and by affecting land stability.”

“In Uttarakhand as in Himachal Pradesh, the entire area is considered forest land whether there are trees there or not. Every time you cut down a tree you’re required to plant two more,” said Jefferies.

“Water flow is scrutinised by the central electricity authority as part of getting rid of permits that constructs [hydro] projects. There’ll have to be an environment impact assessment process, a disaster management plan [and] a muck management plan.”

Developers are required to complete a ‘Preliminary Feasibility Report’ that involves conceptual planning, preparation of project, infrastructure requirement, preliminary environmental and geological studies, power evacuation arrangement, cost estimates and economic evaluation.

Despite the apparent regulations in place, Richard Kamei, a blogger at the Indian political website Kafila, noted that in six years, none of the 162 hydropower plants to be developed in northern India were rejected by authorities.

The north eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh has the highest number of plants – 42 with a combined installed capacity of 27,293MW, while Uttarakhand is second with 33 worth 5,282MW, according to figures from the Central Electric Authority.

“This prospect is alarming when many similar projects are coming up in Arunachal Pradesh and other parts of Northeast India,” said Kamei. This area suffered heaving flooding in May this year.

“Did hydro power cause all the problems in Uttarakhand and other regions?” Jeffries asked. “The flooding would have happened with or without hydro power.”

Tipping point

Hydropower projects in countries like Egypt and Brazil are slowly becoming a dirty word, largely due to the savage environmental impacts construction can wreak.

In June, the Egyptian government voiced its complaints against the construction of the 6,000MW Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the river Nile.

Worse yet, indigenous groups in the Amazon have held protests against seven hydroelectric plants planned for the Tapajos region which could submerge half the villages of the Munduruku tribe.

The project is part of the government’s plan to build and auction 33.7GW of hydropower capacity in the Amazon through 2018.

The state utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA said last month that three biologists were kidnapped while preparing environmental studies for the Jatoba dam on the Tapajos River.

It raises a critical dilemma for environmental campaigners, well aware that sourcing low carbon energy is a priority for developing nations.

“Development must take into account environmental concerns so that it is sustainable. Uttarakhand and other states must utilise their hydropower potential in an ecologically sustainable manner,” said Chandra Bhushan

“This means that standards, guidelines and safeguards should be put in place that will bring the much needed balance between environment and development.”

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Countries most vulnerable to climate change could miss out on the funding they need to cope with the impacts of climatic shifts and extreme weather under current finance frameworks.

That’s the warning from a number of NGOs ahead of a donor government meeting on climate finance next week. Observers fear a preference for private rather than public funding could skew investment away from projects to help countries feeling the effects of climate change.

And a report from NGO Tearfund this week says private sector interest in helping countries to cope with changing climatic patterns is minimal, warning that the emerging climate aid regime could leave a gap in funding for adaptation projects.

The US-hosted climate finance conference is scheduled to start next week, and is set to focus heavily on leveraging private flows of capital.

Investors are typically keener on more bankable projects to reduce greenhouse gases, rather than those coping with the aftermath.

Karen Orenstein, international policy campaigner with Friends of the Earth US puts it more bluntly: “Many areas in need of funding, especially adaptation efforts in the poorest countries, simply will not turn a profit.”

Projects to reduce emissions through renewables and energy efficiency programmes can generate tangible returns from fuel savings, carbon credits and offsetting schemes. This has made them the focus for private sector investment.

But as Tearfund’s report observes, these returns are less obvious for projects to protect against coastal erosion for example, where the benefits might be longer term such as avoided infrastructure investment, protection of livelihoods and biodiversity.

“Evidence for private sector engagement with adaptation is minimal, and what little there is indicates a number of problems in relying on private finance to deliver adaptation for the poorest communities,” says the Private Gain, Public Interest report.

Terraced fields in Bhutan. Agriculture is an important focus for climate adaptation efforts (Photo: Curt Carnemark/World Bank)

A State Department spokesperson told RTCC they were confident that next week’s meeting could break new ground on what is a difficult issue.

“This meeting will bring together – for the first time – countries that made a commitment to mobilizing long term finance to promote cleaner, sustainable growth and climate resilience globally,” they said.

“Developing countries are key actors in climate finance and we will continue to work together to implement our international commitments,” they added.

The private sector is also more interested in middle income economies where there are larger emissions to be mitigated and a safer investment environment. Tearfund warns this could further marginalise the countries most in need.

A report by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) found that 99% of a sample of climate finance was used for mitigation and 84% went to middle-income countries. This imbalance is not helped by the guest list at next week’s meeting says the WWF.

“Only developed countries are invited. This would be acceptable if they were talking about how to share the responsibility for dividing up their commitment to mobilize the $100bn for the Green Climate Fund, but clearly that’s not what they are doing,” Mark Lutes, policy coordinator, WWF Global Climate and Energy Initiative told RTCC.

“They are talking about ways to mobilize private finance in developing countries, without any developing countries at the table,” said Lutes.

“It is hard to see how this meeting will do anything but breed cynicism about the willingness of developed countries to deliver on their financing commitments,” he added.

The leaked agenda of next week’s climate finance meeting in Washington reveals that it is dominated by private sector issues. The document includes just one mention of adaptation. The word private features 16 times.

Green Climate Fund

The UN’s main climate finance tool, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is currently under development with arguments brewing over how much private sector investment should be encouraged. The GCF aims to raise $100bn annually by 2020 to help reduce emissions and fund projects to defend against the impacts of climate change.

The UK government has vocally backed as much private sector involvement as possible claiming that this is essential given the spending constraints placed on many donor governments.

“The private sector will be more interested in investing in emerging markets and middle income countries than they are in the least developed countries,” Steve Herz of the Sierra Club told RTCC after the GCF’s latest meeting in Berlin last month.

“On the mitigation side that’s not such a problem because that’s where the emissions are [in the emerging markets]. The bigger problem is on the adaptation side where the poorest countries are in the worst position to respond,” he said.

Loss and damage

In the absence of adequate support to defend against the impacts of climate change, many nations, including the low lying islands, have turned their attention to a loss and damage mechanism.

Put simply, this would provide compensation to those hit by climate change, although the word ‘compensation’ was surgically removed from the negotiating text at the international climate negotiations last year.

“It’s not just about getting money out of developed countries. Mitigation has failed, adaptation is limited and that’s what leads to loss and damage,” Harjeet Singh from ActionAid told RTCC at the talks in Doha, where the concept of loss and damage rose to prominence.

“Let’s create a mechanism to decide how we will deal with that. The draft text is a step in the right direction, even if it is not quite as strong as we would like it to be,” added Singh.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim told an audience of students yesterday that dealing with climate change would be key to meeting the organisation’s new goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030. He firmly believes there is an important role for private investment.

“I was once asked by some high school students what opinion I had changed my mind on in the last 20 years and I told them without hesitation, the importance of the private sector,” Kim said.

The World Bank has been criticised for its record on climate change in the past, in particular for its funding of fossil fuel projects. In 2010 it gave a $3.75bn loan to South African utility Eskom to build a coal-fired power plant.

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From a distance the favelas, or shantytowns, of Rio can look colourful and picturesque, clinging to the steep sides of the mountains which rise above the beaches. Some have even been added to the itinerary of the more adventurous tourist.

But for the millions who live in them, they can also be places of danger, fear and violence, because of the drug cartels which control them. They are also places of insalubrity and disease, with open sewers, precarious water supplies and overcrowding.

Among the tiny brick houses, crammed one on top of the other, there is no room for trees, gardens, plants or beauty.

As they have advanced ever further up the slopes and into the mountains, any remaining vegetation has been chopped down, paving the way for lethal mudslides when the torrential rains of summer strike.

One sixth of Rio’s population live in favelas (Pic: John Parnell)

There are an estimated 700 favelas in Rio, home to over a million of the city’s six million people. Global warming is expected to hit the poorest hardest, producing more extreme events like violent rainstorms. Favela dwellers are always the first victims of such downpours.

The Rio authorities have begun efforts to change this scenario, first with a programme of “pacification” – expelling the drug gangs and their militias and establishing community police bases.

This has allowed all the normal services enjoyed by other Rio inhabitants – rubbish collection, regular electricity and sewage and water services, and postal deliveries – to be installed.

The normalization of shantytown life has also permitted the beginning of an ambitious project to turn the cramped favelas with their narrow alleys into “green communities”.

Sharing their skills

The brainchild of Rio`s environmental department, working with a local NGO, the aim is to plant 34 million trees and plants in shantytowns over the next three years, not only to prevent future mudslides, but to provide jobs and incomes for some of the residents.

The project began in November 2012. Four communities in different parts of the city were chosen as pilot projects: Batan, in the Bangu district, Fogueteiro, in the central district of Santa Teresa, Formiga, in Tijuca, and in the huge sprawling Complexo do Alemão, which spreads over the districts of Bonsucesso, Ramos and Olaria.

These communities have not only been “pacified”, they have space for large-scale planting. Residents who volunteered have been training as community gardeners. Besides planting techniques, the gardeners learn how to plan the landscaping project in each shantytown.

They will also be expected to pass on their new awareness of the environment to the other residents. The plants grown in the shantytown nurseries will be transplanted to the bare hillsides, not only to stop erosion but to improve the microclimate in the favela.

Rio’s environment secretary Carlos Minc, a veteran environmental campaigner and former federal environment minister, is very enthusiastic about the project.

“We want to put green roofs on the houses to reduce the temperature, and plant vegetable gardens,” he says. “We want to reforest the slopes with fruit trees to attract birds, instead of having this dry, cracked earth, which whenever it rains can start landslides.”

Supplying big customers

Minc said they will use abandoned parts of the shantytowns that were previously used as rubbish dumps and as scrapyards for stolen cars: “The idea is to take an abandoned area and transform it into a social meeting place, with lovely gardens and nurseries.”

This, he believes will also help to diminish the day-to-day violence in the communities.

By the end of the first four-month course in the favela of Fogueteiro, the new gardeners had planted 540 trees, all native species, and had also started producing vegetables and salad greens.

Once it gets going, the project has wider ambitions, says Ingrid Gerolimich, the Rio environmental department’s project coordinator. She wants the community gardeners to learn all the stages of the process, from growing the plants to their commercialization, and to form cooperatives.

Besides the environmental aim, there is a social aim – the generation of jobs and income. She explained: “There is a space for improving the technical ability of the people involved in planting the saplings and in producing ornamental plants. We want to have partnerships with the big hotel chains, so we can supply them.”

For the moment, the emphasis is still on recruiting and training the community gardeners – 120 are needed for the four chosen shantytowns in the first stage of the project. Those that complete the course will then earn a monthly wage of £40, for what, at first, will be a part-time job.

If this ambitious and innovative project works it could be copied in other Brazilian cities. But it is early days, and it will depend a lot on the continuing support of the authorities, whoever wins the next elections, and on the enthusiasm and involvement of the shantytown populations themselves.

This article was produced by the Climate News Network

RTCC Video: Rio’s favela communities look to make their lives more sustainable 

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Experts say that developing nations could require more than $100 billion for adaptation each year.

Developed countries say that they have already delivered more than $33 billion so far towards this climate adaptation funding.

However, some question whether these funds are going to the right places and meeting real needs.

Is adaptation finance being directed towards the nations that need it the most? Is it being used to support projects that will allow people to adapt to climate change’s impacts?

We currently don’t have adequate answers to these questions—but we hope to soon.

At the recent UN climate change negotiations in Doha, Qatar, Oxfam, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and WRI launched the Adaptation Finance Accountability Initiative to help civil society organizations find out where adaptation finance is really going.

Countries like Haiti urgently need funds to ensure they can cope with extreme weather events similar to Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the already struggling country in 2012 (Pic source: UN Photos)

The easy answer is that adaptation finance should go to activities that strengthen the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of countries most susceptible to climate change’s impacts. People in developing countries will likely be hit hardest by global warming.

With this in mind, developing countries have carried out national vulnerability assessments to identify their most susceptible geographic areas, ecosystems, and communities.

Such assessments aim to help target activities to critical areas, but there is not yet much evidence as to if and how they drive funding decisions — both from donors and national governments. Furthermore, assessments’ ability to ensure that funding actually reaches local communities is largely untested.

Making sure funding actually reaches the world’s most vulnerable populations is a challenge that decision makers in developing countries and donors have been struggling with for years.

As climate change finance begins to flow in earnest, a new set of players will begin to grapple with the same struggle. Tracking the delivery of adaptation finance will be important to ensure that vulnerable people’s needs are being met.

Tracking finance can also help provide lessons on whether a country is on the right track to respond to sea level rise, water shortages, more volatile weather, and other effects of climate change.

Why is tracking finance so difficult?

Monitoring adaptation finance is difficult due to several reasons, including:

-At the country level, there is no common definition for “adaptation finance.”

In most cases, “adaptation” activities cannot be distinguished from regular “development” activities because of the close relationship between the two. To make matters worse, a Germanwatch report showed that international funding labeled as “adaptation finance” does not always go to projects that have an adaptation focus or address adaptation priorities identified by developing country recipients.

-Very few recipient countries have systems in place that report on the delivery of adaptation finance at the local level.

Meanwhile, donors rarely track funding flows very far beyond the capitol in the recipient country. This makes it very difficult to assess the effectiveness of adaptation funding.

-Project-oriented tracking rarely provides a complete picture of finance flows.

In recent years, several systems have been developed to track international and national adaptation finance. These include the OECD Rio Markers for Adaptation, an approach developed by CCAPS, a recent initiative from the Multilateral Development Banks, and projects aimed at tracking specific funds. Unfortunately, these methods are narrowly oriented toward specific project activities, and typically only indicate whether a project has adaptation as one of its objectives. Moreover, using them requires very detailed and oftentimes unavailable project data.

How will it work?

Civil society organizations (CSOs) can play an important role in tracking government spending and in creating demand for public accountability.

To date, CSOs in developing countries haven’t been much involved in tracking adaptation funding, mainly because they lack country-specific information that looks at financial flows down to the local level.

Providing them with tools to track national adaptation finance will allow CSOs to engage in discussions on improving financial transparency in their countries and help them press for strengthened accountability at national and international levels.

Through the Adaptation Finance Accountability Initiative, WRI and its partners will create new tools for developing country CSOs to track and monitor adaptation funding.

The tracking tools will be developed and tested with local civil society groups in Nepal, the Philippines, Uganda, and Zambia. The goal is to enable organizations to:

-Map the adaptation funding landscape in their countries (including where funding is coming from and what projects it’s going to)
-Assess the total amount of funding available for adaptation
-Track selected adaptation funding streams from source to level of implementation (to ensure that finance labeled as “adaptation” is effectively going to adaptation activities).

In an ever-warming world, ensuring effective delivery of adaptation funding is a must. If given the right tools and access to information, CSOs can play a vital role in ensuring that the world’s most vulnerable populations won’t fall victim to climate change’s dangerous impacts.

Pieter Terpstra is a Senior Associate working for the WRI’s Vulnerability and Adaptation Initiative. His work focuses on adaptation finance and he also assists in supporting and expanding the Vulnerability and Adaptation Initiative. This article first appeared on the World Resources Institute website.

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The livelihoods of 10 million people living on Pacific Islands are at risk from climate change, according to a new study released at the UN climate talks in Doha.

The report examined the experience of 500 island communities and found sea-level rise, tropical cyclones, floods and drought, combined with unsustainable fishing practices and coastal development are leaving them increasingly vulnerable.

Low-lying islands are at particular risk and could face losses of up to 18% of GDP because of climate change, the study found.

New study finds islands in the Pacific Ocean could be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (Source: Rafeal Avila Coya/Creative Commons)

The report comes as the 195 parties under the climate convention meet in Doha to work towards a new global deal on climate change. Developing countries, including small island states, have been calling for a greater emphasis on adaptation at the talks.

One of the big issues in Doha is how developed nations are going to come up with the pledged $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer countries tackle the impacts of climate change.

The new report, prepared by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) calls for action to be taken in the region to enforce environmental legislation.

It also calls for an improvement in the availability of environmental data and the strengthening of environmental institutions.

“Enhancing local capacity to directly monitor and manage the impacts of the region’s changing environment is essential for reducing climate risks, but also for unlocking the potential economic benefits that a transition to an inclusive, low-carbon and resource efficient green economy can bring,” Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director said.

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Biodiversity and climate change are often described as two sides of the same coin.

Protecting biodiversity is often the best answer to both mitigating and adapting to climate change – oceans and forests absorb carbon while mangroves can protect coastal regions from storm surges and rising sea levels.

On the flip side, biodiversity is under increasing threat from advancing climate change.

And if we look at some of the figures on biodiversity loss we see our natural world is deteriorating just as quickly as our climate.

REDD+ negotiations in India focused on the role the CBD could play in supporting the work of the climate convention

The world is losing species at a growing rate. 13% of birds, 25% of mammals, 33% of corals and 41% of amphibians are currently under threat.

So when I arrived in Hyderabad, India for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) biannual conference, I was shocked to find so little interest in biodiversity loss – particularly compared to the interest I saw at the UN climate convention (UNFCCC) talks in Durban, South Africa last year.

Very few journalists, a small youth activist constituency and a smaller venue all helped to make the last two weeks a much quieter affair.

But are people really less interested in biodiversity? If so, why?

Biodiversity loss is an abstract concept for most people. While most of us would notice if the woods we enjoy walking in were chopped down, we would not necessarily equate this to a global problem.

And while we understand deforestation, for example, the degradation of the oceans or the loss of wetlands are much harder issues for us to comprehend, particularly in the developed world.

A public consultation organised by the Danish Environment Ministry in 25 countries found 70% of respondents had little idea of what biodiversity meant. But when the study was over, 84% of those taking part believed that most people are seriously affected by biodiversity loss.

So perhaps it is not that people do not care about biodiversity; maybe we just do not know enough about it.

“I think it is about how tangible the issue is to people. In the climate convention the discussion is about reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Trevor Sandwith, Director of IUCN’s Global Programme on Protected Areas told me. “You can put a very specific number to that in the sense that this is the emission level, this is where it needs to go and this is the rate of change.

“When you talk about protected areas globally and how they have to represent biodiversity we have literally hundreds of thousands of things to measure – all the threatened species in the world and how they are doing.”

All about climate change

Along with the UN Convention on Desertification, the CBD and the UNFCCC make up the three Rio Conventions. Established at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, they each tackle a different aspect of sustainable development.

The CBD and the UNFCCC have both existed for 20 years and in many respects work on the same issues; forests, oceans, agriculture. But the climate change convention has been raised to a prominence the CBD seems unable to match.

Even the term Conference of the Parties is now so associated with the UNFCCC – particularly since COP15 in Copenhagen – that when I told people I was heading to India for COP11 I was met with blank faces.

Climate change at the CBD

REDD+, geoengineering, biofuels and agriculture are all topics discussed in both UN forums.

But rather than the conversation at the CBD building on those already had, conversations seemed stuck on concerns that work under this convention could somehow counteract the work done in the climate discussions.

Patrick Mulvany from the CBD Alliance, a collection of NGOs following the work of the convention, says the conventions both play a vital role but he warned the crossover between the two is wasting time.

“It is essentially counter-productive; it uses up a lot of negotiating time,” he said. “What may be achieved in one forum could get lost in another. The transaction cost of doing all of these discussions become significant and really reduces the opportunity for finance for implementation.”

While certain topics seem to move between one convention and another, a more joined up approach could provide positive results.

David Ainsworth, Information Officer at the CBD warned that while a lot of work had already been done on connecting the science between the two conventions, the politics need to be strengthened.

“It is the policy interface we have to work on. We share the same data but how do we make sure that the same ministries are involved in both discussions?” he said.

Take REDD+ as an example. Brazil were particularly vocal when discussing the biodiversity safeguards of this much-hyped mechanism.

In the years since the last CBD meeting, countries had met twice under the climate convention, and had discussed the safeguards of REDD+ within this forum. In some ways this made the discussions taking place in India outdated.

Brazil also raised concerns that by limiting forestry discussions within the convention to REDD+ – essentially a climate change initiative looking at forests for their carbon stocks – they could ignore what should be a much deeper discussion on forests in terms of biodiversity and the drivers of deforestation.

While REDD+ is limited to the developed world, deforestation is a global issue and focusing too much on the REDD+ initiative could see this forgotten.

With climate change the issue at the forefront on the global environment debate, there’s a worry that the biodiversity conference could become a second climate conference. Some attendees at this year’s meeting warned it had already become the climate adaptation conference.

If all ecosystems are reduced to their role in storing carbon, or holding back rising sea-waters, there is a danger all the other vital services that these natural environments have been playing in the world for thousands of years will be forgotten.

Hope for biodiversity

But there is a note of hope for biodiversity. While the latest conference was small, the COP10 meeting in Nagoya, Japan two years ago had gained more interest from around the globe.

Mulvany said these talks – which were tipped as the talks where a new deal on biodiversity would be agreed – received much more attention. As countries look towards implementation, interest has died back.

We must also be careful not to mistake a huge turn-out for productive involvement.

It is so easy to be swept up in the circus of the UN climate convention. And while civil society engagement is vital in holding governments and negotiating teams to account, the large numbers of participants does not necessarily mean they are taken any more seriously than a smaller group.

Mulvany said that while the participation in India may have been smaller than in Durban, their was a positive feeling of cooperation between governments, civil society and the CBD Secretariat.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme said he felt there was a growing interest in biodiversity.

The Rio+20 summit in June saw the concept of ecosystem services – the role natural environments play in our lives – given a lot of attention, as delegations and observers alike looked at how to better value out natural world.

“This convention is one that for quite a while was viewed as a long side climate change as being sort of a convention focusing on second priorities,” Steiner said. “I think the world is coming very close now to realising in fact how dramatic the loss of biodiversity and ecosystems is.

“I think the insertion of an economic perspective – the TEEB work but also the green economy discussions – have elevated a scientific phenomenon into a very practical set of risk and opportunities to minimise those risks.”

Balancing act 

With climate change and biodiversity so intrinsically linked, the lack of a joined up approach between conventions is worrying. Combating climate change would be impossible with tackling biodiversity loss and vice versa.

The growing presence of the climate change in the CBD discussions could be both a good and bad thing. On the one hand it could help raise the issue in people’s consciousness.

On the other hand it is important that we do not get too swept up in the climate discussions and forget biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake.

Maybe it is time for negotiators at these conferences to take a step back and remember the overarching aims of all three of the Rio Conventions. With the next climate conference now just a month away, countries should make sure those negotiators heading out to Doha, Qatar take the lessons from India with them.

Finally just because people do not attend biodiversity conferences in large numbers, it does not mean that there is a large constituency of interested parties.

Sandwith believes that while many people may feel the only way to deal with the climate change issue is to lobby their government to make the significant changes needed – by reducing the emissions of all of the major polluting sectors – with biodiversity there is so much more they could be doing on the ground.

“The energy of people involved in climate discussions is to put pressure on the people who can make these decisions,” he said. “What is so interesting in the biodiversity world is that everybody can do this, you can go in your own town and look at the stream belt or go and protect your forest…there is a much greater sense of empowerment on the real issues.”

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COP11 in Hyderabad is probably the biggest climate adaptation conference you have never heard of.

Representatives from 192+ countries have travelled to India, drawing a crowd of 14,000 delegates to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) bi-annual summit.

But aside from a solitary New York Times journalist who arrived on Monday, media coverage outside India is fairly low-key. This is a pity, as the subjects up for discussion are fascinating, and directly relevant to the climate debate.

In the past week geo-engineering, biofuels, REDD+, coastal protection strategies and increased environmental finance commitments have all been on the agenda.

For delegates here it is simple. The future of the oceans, forests and endangered species all depend on how high global temperatures will rise.

At this morning’s press conference CBD communications officer David Ainsworth told me climate science informs and influences this process, although he stressed the CBD has no mandate to directly address carbon emissions.

That’s a matter for the UN climate talks in Doha later this year, but what I am hearing in Hyderabad is the world planning for a world 2°C+ above pre-industrial levels.

There is little of the forced optimism I have witnessed in the climate arena, where a culture of diplomatic omerta obliges delegates to talk of a 1.5°C target. That’s not to say this isn’t worth aiming for or achievable, but few people I have spoken to believe it is realistic.

Instead, in the autumnal Indian heat, there is a brutal realism that what we call the environment is slowly disintegrating, and that global warming will speed up that process.

Planting mangroves can sequester carbon, create new wildlife habitats and improve resilience to coastal erosion. (Source: Flickr/Apes_Abroad)

Take the Aichi Targets, which underpin the current CBD negotiation process.

These are 20 goals agreed in Nagoya two years ago, ranging from increasing biodiversity awareness to preventing extinctions. By my calculations 16 are directly related to climate change.

For example, a heavy emphasis is placed on cultivating mangrove forests and maintaining sand stocks on beaches to provide cost-effective flood defences.

Agroforestry (where farmers plant specific trees in and around their crops) is the new buzzword when it comes to building a climate resilient food supply chain.

The genetic identities of rice and other plant species that grow in dry and extremely wet conditions are being safeguarded. Talks on how these varieties could be shared are reportedly going well.

A renewed focus on the plight of the great apes in Africa, Borneo and Indonesia could also ensure forests in these regions are protected, ensuring huge carbon sinks are not lost.

And perhaps most significantly, renewed pressure to incorporate biodiversity values into national accounting and reporting systems by 2020 will provide states a better understanding of how they can cope with increased incidences of extreme weather.

No one talks about climate change. They don’t need to. It’s not the elephant in the room. It is the room.

Onwards to Qatar

This raises questions about the UN’s environmental strategy. Many participants have gently expressed their frustration that a summit with similar ambitions will convene in Doha later this year.

The UN climate talks do of course have a different personality and agenda of their own, with a clear focus on urgently cutting the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.

But I am hearing there may come a time in the not too distant future when the three Rio Conventions, all founded in 1992, merge into a larger environmental body.

For one, the pressures conferences of this size put on developing nations are immense. Uganda has three delegates covering the talks here, as opposed to an EU mission ten times that number. The USA is not even a party to the CBD, yet has a group of 20+ experts observing the talks.

And while the US and EU have different teams working on the biodiversity and climate negotiations, poorer nations do not.

Ibrahim Thiaw, Director of the Division of Environmental Policy Implementation at UNEP outlined this dilemma at a meeting on Saturday, saying duplication was an “intergovernmental issue that needs to be discussed”.

“60% of the same people will meet in Doha in just over a month to talk about climate change,” he said. “It is very difficult to take that back home for the ministers when they have 4-5 reports dealing with the same issue but coming from different angles.”

Perhaps that can wait. What seems apparent from a week at CBD COP11 is that adaptation planning for climate change cannot.

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India’s government has been urged to stop building sea walls and concentrate on developing mangrove forests when it develops future climate adaptation strategies.

Deepak Apte from the Bombay Natural History Society, one of India’s oldest environmental institutions, told RTCC sea walls were contributing to coastal erosion in India and adversely affecting the vast ecosystems along the country’s coastline.

He said natural adaptation methods like mangrove forests were more effective at absorbing storm surges and had the added benefit of soaking up large quantities of CO2.

“The easiest thing we are doing at the moment to respond to climate change along the coast is building sea walls. Unfortunately what this means is that the critical condition of the coast today is a result of these sea walls,” he said.

“A time will come, probably down the line a decade, when there will be no sandy beaches left, there will be no rocky shores left which hundreds of people depend on for their livelihoods.”

Bombay Natural History Society highlights the role that protecting biodiversity, such as Mangroves, could also play in making communities more resilient to climate change

Currently 50% of the Indian population relies on natural environments for their income. The country has the seventh largest national coastline in the world, home to over 2000 species of fish as well as a variety of coral.

These ecosystems are under threat from sand mining – which has increased dramatically as the government seeks to provide sea walls, designed to protect the country against rising sea levels and storm surges.

Mining and dredging can lead to long-term coastal erosion. It impacts adversely on plants and animals relying on sandy beaches for their survival and fisheries.

In India sand mining of riverbanks has contributed to the near extinction of the gharial crocodile. It also threatens sea turtles that rely on beaches to lay their eggs.

Shared concerns

During talks today on this issue at CBD COP11, Thailand called for more focus on the role that mangroves have in protecting coastlines, and also pointed to the continued degradation of this resource: “Mangrove forests in Thailand continue to be adversely affected by coastal development,” it said.

The EU and Croatia also highlighted the role of ecosystem-based adaptation, but Apte says it is often only regions who have experienced the impacts of climate change who fully understand the potential of conserving beaches and forests.

He says this can be seen in the different attitudes of the West and East coasts of India: “I think that climate change has not been able to teach us what the tsunami in 2004 taught us,” he said.

“Now people on the east coast realise the importance of mangroves, for me working as a conservationist I could not convince people about mangroves for 20 years, but one natural disaster did. Do we need to have another tsunami on the West Coast to make people aware of mangroves? Our mangrove cutting continues unabated on the west coast.”

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With Rio+20 over, we’re left to pick through the bones of the final outcome and asses what impact it might have, if any, on global attempts to reduce and react to the consequences of climate change.

The Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, is a separate process from the UN’s long-running climate change talks (overseen by the UNFCCC) that were borne out of the original Earth Summit in Rio back in 1992.

World leaders at Rio applaud after finishing their portrait session. (Source: Flickr/UN_Photo_Conference)

The crossover between the objectives of the two, is obvious and the opportunities for progress enormous.

However, the outcome document has been criticized for failing to adequately address a number of development issues, particularly gender equality and the swift establishment of sustainable development goals, something the UK’s own international development department was keen on.

On climate change, there are a number of direct and indirect references that could boost efforts to cut emissions and increase resilience. Today, we’ll look at what is in the document (which can be viewed in full at the bottom of this page) and the potential impact for climate issues. Tomorrow, we’ll review what’s missing, what topics fell off the agenda and which issues championed heavily before the event, didn’t make the cut.

“We acknowledge that climate change is a cross-cutting and persistent crisis and express our concern that the scale and gravity of the negative impacts of climate change affect all countries and undermine the ability of all countries in particular, developing countries, to achieve sustainable development and the MDGs and threaten the viability and survival of nations.” Paragraph 25

This paragraph is not as bland as it looks.

The “viability and survival of nations” phrase is a victory for small island nations, many of whom have already begun migrations as a result of climate change. With increased sea level and more powerful storm surges, a devastating combination of coastal erosion and contamination of ground water supplies by seawater are making islands uninhabitable.

This acknowledgement should secure them special focus in the ongoing sustainable development talks. Four later paragraphs (178-181) build on this.

Ocean protection, particularly with relation to small island states such as Kiribati, is among the strongest components of the document. (Source: Rafael Avila Coya)

“We recognize that improving energy efficiency, increasing the share of renewable energy, cleaner and energy-efficient technologies are important for sustainable development, including in addressing climate change. We also recognize the need for energy efficiency measures in urban planning, buildings, and transportation, and in the production of goods and services and in the design of products. We also recognize the importance of promoting incentives in favour of, and removing disincentives to, energy efficiency and the diversification of the energy mix, including promoting research and development in all countries, including developing countries.” Paragraph 128

Several encouraging lines here but (and this is a running theme), the language is not strong enough.

“Recognizing that energy efficiency is important to combating climate change.” Surely that was not a point for debate?

The mention for transportation and product design is also fresh and will cut emissions and other resource depletion directly and indirectly if action on the ground results from the “recognition”.

The final line, about supporting efficiency measures in developing nations is better, but celebrations will be on pause until some money is on the table.

“We underline the importance of considering disaster risk reduction, resilience and climate risks in urban planning. We recognize the efforts of cities to balance development with rural regions.” Paragraph 135

For many, particularly those living on floodplains in the developing world, this is great to see. But again, what does recognize mean? You might recognize that your house is on fire, it’s what you do about it that’s key.

Much of the action on this sector could be carried out directly through the UNFCCC’s adaptation work, handled separately through its own talks.

“We call for support to initiatives that address ocean acidification and the impacts of climate change on marine and coastal ecosystems and resources.” Paragraph 166

Ocean-related paragraphs are among the strongest worded in the outcome document. Ocean acidification has been largely ignored in favour of sea level rise when it comes to the oceans and climate change. A specific reference to “calling for support” is effectively the rattle of a collection tin for research work looking to find solutions to this challenge.

A later paragraph (176) supports international protection specifically for coral reefs not just from acidification but also from damaging fishing practices and pollution. It also places mangrove conservation at the heart of the possible solutions.

Restoring mangroves has proven to be a successful way to reduce coastal erosion and to create jobs that rely on that particular ecosystem.

When you reach paragraphs 190 onwards, you find the designated climate change section. So will nations state their intention to cut greenhouse gas emissions (via the UNFCCC process of course)? No, but they do “express profound alarm that emissions…continue to rise globally”.

There is more grave concern over the so-called emissions gap and Parties to the UNFCCC urged to fulfill their commitments.

Most tellingly, the concept of Common But Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR), missing from the last climate change text, has re-appeared.

The Indian delegation pushed hard for the inclusion of CBDR. (Source: Flickr/UN_photo_conference)

In summary, the Rio+20 outcome moves climate action no further forward but it does still have a net positive benefit.

The relatively strong words on ocean protection will boost carbon sequestration in the seas and vulnerable nations can point to the document should they not receive enhanced protections and assistance.

The true effects of the document are impossible to predict as the wording places practically no pressure on politicians to do anything.

It does however, prove that they are aware not only of the problems, but of many of the solutions. They can’t use ignorance as a reason for inaction any longer.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at what’s missing from the document, and the resulting implications for climate change.

The full document:

The Future We Want – Final Document

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With the world set to experience more extreme weather, rising seas, land degradation and environmental destruction, a new report warns compensation and rehabilitation needs more focus (© UN Photo/Mark Garten)

By Tierney Smith

Much more focus will have to be placed on rehabilitation and compensation for those hit by climate change, as mitigation and adaptation methods fall short, according to an NGO report.

What the world will look like with worsening climate change is still largely unknown. But the report says the warning signs of this imagined world are already before us.

It warns that predictions suggest climate change could inflict devastating damage to ecosystems, human life, land and property. These predictions include the destruction of the world’s forests and corals, extreme land degradation and desertification, polar ice melt, storms, floods and drought.

In a joint report by CARE, ActionAid, German Watch and WWF they call for the resultant loss and irreversible impacts of climate change to be addressed quickly – with the world set to overshoot the 2°C threshold, moving instead towards a 4-6°C world.

A world where those in the poorest nations will suffer worst from climate change impacts, which will leave much of Sub-Saharan Africa struggling for food and many Pacific Island completely submerged by water.

Loss and damage can not be avoided, says the report, and the conversations going on amongst politicians and negotiators must reflect this.

When the UNFCCC was agreed 20 years ago at Rio de Janeiro it was agreed that: “States shall co-operate in an expeditious and more determined manner to develop further international law regarding liability and compensation for adverse effects of environmental damage caused by activities within their jurisdiction or control to areas beyond their jurisdiction.”

Recommendations

The report sets out a clear set of recommendations in order for the process to fulfil this aim:

1. Firstly, it calls for a ramping-up of the mitigation and adaptation ambition by the countries involved in the climate negotiations – after all prevention is better than cure.

2. Governments must be ahead of the curve and more focus needs to be placed on the longer-term impacts of climate change under Disaster Risk Reduction (DDR) frameworks. The report also calls for the financial resources to help scale up DDR.

3. Decision makers need to focus on addressing vulnerability and building resilience – especially for the most vulnerable people, communities and ecosystems.

4. Loss and damage must be addressed beyond adaptation and compensation and rehabilitation need to be considered.

5. Countries need to scale-up their risk assessment and building capacity should be addressed. The NGOs believe the UNFCCC process could play an important role in co-ordinating such activities.

6. New international approaches to loss and damage are needed – including facilities for risk management and insurance for poor countries.

7. Climate finance should be used to help scale-up capacity building – and mechanisms to raise finance including aviation, maritime and financial transaction taxes should be pursued.

8. Loss and damage should be a key component of the Durban Platform and the 2015 agreement under the UNFCCC.

9. Other global bodies will also have a role to play including the UN Security Council and the UN High Commissions on Human Rights Council in addressing issues created by climate change.

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The 2010 floods in Pakistan displaced 14 million people, 60% were children. (Source: UN/UNICEF/ZAK)

Children have a key role to play in climate change adaptation and disaster relief work, according to a new study.

As one of the groups of society most severely affected by disasters and the consequences of climate change, the report calls for children to be placed front and centre in both policy making and in community projects on the ground.

The paper by the Institute of Development Studies stresses however that this work must be done under the right conditions.

“We have to start putting children at the heart of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation work,” Tom Tanner, IDS Research Fellow and co-author of the report.

“Programmes need to recognise that children are especially vulnerable to disasters and need protection. But more than that, children themselves have a critical role to play in tackling extreme events and climate change. They have the right to participate in decision-making, as citizens and active agents of change,” said Tanner.

The paper reviews two case studies in the Philippines and El Salvador.

In the Philippines a youth group took part in a mangrove re-planting exercise in conjunction with an NGO. The children combined knowledge gained at school with additional skills learned from the project. The mangroves improved biodiversity, provided storm protection, boosted fishing and sequestered carbon dioxide.

“Our research has shown the variety of ways that children can be involved – whether through designing and implementing projects, analysing risk, or mobilising others to take action,” said Tanner.

“At a local level, these include facilitating youth groups, identifying community champions and creating safe spaces to build trust.”

Projects such as those detailed in the IDS paper are in sharp contrast to climate change attitudes in parts of the developed world.

Recent legislation in the US seeks to protect teachers that choose to teach climate change denial and creationism in schools.

RTCC Climate Change Children’s Musical: All the materials required to put on your own performance are available to download here free of charge.

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Pakistan has launched its first climate change adaptation project aimed at tackling the threats communities face from bursting glacier lakes in the country’s northern mountains.

With Northern Pakistan being home to 5,218 glaciers and 2420 glacial lakes – 52 of which have been classified as potentially dangerous – the two year pilot project is the first of its kind in the country to help the vulnerable better understand and respond to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

Speaking at the event launch, Jawed Ali Khan, Director General of Environment and Climate Change at Pakistan’s Ministry of Environment said GLOF is like a “mountain tsunami in the making”.

Northern Pakistan is home to 5,218 glaciers and 2420 glacial lakes (© bongo vongo/Creative Commons)

GLOFs take place when dams containing a glacial lake – a lake which has formed as a glacier has receded – fails.

Failure of such a lake can happen for several reasons including erosion, a build up of water pressure, an avalanche of rock or snow, an earthquake, volcanic eruptions under the ice or if large portions of a glacier break off and displaces the lake.

Studies of glacier lakes, in both Pakistan and other countries – particularly Nepal – have found many of the glacier lakes growing at an alarming rate and often unstable.

The $4.1 million project in Pakistan, managed by Ministry of National Disaster Management in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme, will focus on two sites: Bagrot Valley in Gilgit-Baltistan and Drongagh Valley Chitral in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of the country.

The adaptation project aims to help vulnerable communities protect against the threat of glacier lake outburst floods (© bongo vongo/Creative Commons)

The sites are part of the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region – which is the largest area in the world covered by glaciers and has around 15,000 glaciers across eight countries from Afghanistan to Myanmar and includes both Pakistan and Nepal.

A recent study examining 3D satellite images of glaciers in the Karakoram range – on the border of India, China and Pakistan – found they have actually gained mass.

The project members, however, said glaciers in Pakistan are receding at a rate on average of almost 40 to 60 metres per decade and post a threat to the region and the 1.3 billion people who live in the basins of the nine river systems covered by the HKH glaciers.

Dr. Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, Advisor on Climate Affairs stressed that global warming trends and challenges including avalanches, landslides and GLOF threats are greater in Pakistan than the global average.

“Climate change poses risks as well as opportunities to a region like Pakistan, rich in biodiversity,” he said. “Pakistan is the lowest emitter of greenhouse gases but the worst sufferer, which justifies the urgent need to implement the GLOF project.”

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Heavily impacted by climate change, Nepal must make the most out of the natural, renewable resources at its disposal, says a professor from the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology.

Speaking to RTCC at the Low Carbon Energy for Development Network’s first conference, Dinesh Bhuju explained that work is already well underway in Nepal to register climate change vulnerabilities and develop adaptation policies.

And when it comes to low carbon development, says Bhuju, there is huge potential from the country’s 6000+ rivers and streams for hydropower generation – as well as potential for other sources such as wind and solar – that must be harnessed.

He believes that to ensure this every member of society has a role, from government, to the private sector to individuals and communities.

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Development projects must be a melding of new technology and indigenous skills to ensure the best chances of adapting to climate change, says Guatemalan group Rijatzul Q’ij.

Iván Azurdia Bravo, a senior advisor for Rijatzul Q’ij, Semilla de Sol – a non-profit group aimed at developing climate resilience in Central and Southern America – believes that Western technological advances are a key part of climate adaptation.

However, Bravo says these must be combined with traditional, local skills that are specifically suited to particular regions or countries to have the best chances at building climate resilience.

Rijatzul Q’ij aims to promote the synchronisation of these methods to build capacity and resilience in rural communities hit by climate change.

Speaking at the first conference of the Low Carbon Energy for Development Network, Bravo talked to RTCC about getting the most out of the capacity for renewable energies in Central and Southern America, and how successful combining these different methods has been for Mayan communities in Guatemala.

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Fallen trees on the line near Markinch, Scotland. The storm caused major disruption to transport networks. (Source: Network Rail Scotland)

The resilience of UK infrastructure was severely tested on Tuesday as storms battered the north and west of the country.

Winds reached more than 90 mph in some areas with transport and electricity supplies affected.

The UK is expected to experience an increase in the number of extreme weather events including an increased level of storminess as a result of climate change.

The rail network was severely disrupted with fallen trees and other debris blocking routes. Some of the blockages were to large to be cleared by maintenance crews who were forced to wait for specialist cranes to be brought in.

Several road bridges were closed due to the danger of crosswinds. Airports were also affected with severe disruption reported at Glasgow airport and widespread delays affecting most flights across the country.

More than 70,000 homes were reported to be without power in Scotland as a result of the storm. The BBC reported that a further 8500  were powerless in England and a further 10,000 in Northern Ireland.

The UK Climate Change Act 2008 requires major utility and transport firms to report on their adaptation plans for the increase in extreme weather events experienced in the country and longer term effects of climate change such as coastal erosion.

Network Rail, one of the companies required to report, owns and operates UK railways and major stations, has already begun work on adaptation. Diane Booth, the firm’s head of environment policy recently told RTCC about some of the areas it is concentrating on.

“The environment effects our operations already and we sort of know where we have hotspots. We tend to build our response to them around the fact we know they’re hotspots,” said Booth.

“We have areas of the network that flood in high rainfall and others where the operations are right on the seawall itself.”

The UK is not alone in experiencing an increase in potentially climate related disasters.

The US suffered 12 individuals disasters in 2011 that caused more than $1billion each.

RTCC VIDEO EXCLUSIVE

While severe storms can seriously disrupt a developed nation, many developing countries are dealing with far greater problems. Dr Saleemul Huq of the IIED told RTCC about adaptation strategies in Bangladesh, which is faced with major flood events and rising sea levels.

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Flooding in Haiti (Source: UN)

Nineteen of the world’s most climate vulnerable countries signed the ‘Dhaka Declaration of the Climate Vulnerable Forum’, calling for a climate deal to follow the Kyoto Protocol.

Supported by the Development Assistance Research Associates (DARA) the Climate Vulnerable Forum – a two day ministerial meeting held in Bangladesh – brought together countries such as Afghanistan, the Maldives and Nepal who are already feeling the effects of climate change – through rising sea levels, flooding and more frequent droughts.

The declaration called on states attending Durban to ensure a second Kyoto commitment is ready when the first deal period ends in 2012. In particular it requests a legally binding treaty which fully attains the “the objective of the UNFCCC.”

The signatories also urged developed countries to accept their “historical responsibility” for climate change and their pledge to help communities to reduce their vulnerability.

The declaration highlighted the vulnerable countries commitment to adaptation and their “resolve to demonstrate moral leadership” through low carbon development, calling for a new global Climate Vulnerability Monitor on low-carbon development.

The current Climate Vulnerability Monitor, put together by DARA, aims to assess how defenceless different regions across the world are to effects of climate change.

Sheik Hasina, Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Bangladesh addressed the delegates saying: “Climate change caused over 300,000 additional deaths last year. We the vulnerable countries suffer the most for our limited coping capacities. Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries could not wait for international response to climate causes. We are implementing 134 climate change adaptation and mitigation action plans.”

In order to apply their adaptation and mitigation measures, the declaration called for early establishment of the Green Climate Fund – to be operational by 2013 at the latest – with priority given to the most vulnerable communities. Developed countries should make firm commitments, reaching $100 billion per year, according to the declaration.

The declaration also said vulnerable countries will need support from the international community with technology transfer and called for resources for the Climate Technology Centre and Networks included in the Cancun Agreements to be prioritised and for the Clean Development Mechanism to be scaled up.

This call comes amid increasingly bleak outlooks for the Climate Summit taking place in less than two weeks time.

Both in the UK and the EU doubts have been raised over whether a deal can be made, while countries such as Russia, Japan and Canada have spoke out against a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol.

All of the countries present at the Climate Vulnerable Forum have been affected by climate change whether from sea-level rise, flooding to droughts.

And while these countries met in Dhaka, in Kampala the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are meeting to finalise their latest report on the links between climate change and extreme weather.

A draft summary of the report, leaked to Associated Press earlier this month, found a 2 in 3 chance that weather events have and will continue to be affected by climate change – the result more floods, heat waves, droughts and greater costs as a result.

By the end of the century, the intense, single-day rainstorms which typically occur every 20 years could happen twice a decade, according to the report.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, droughts will happen more often too, according to the report, and heat waves could peak as much as 5 degrees hotter by mid-century and even 9 degrees hotter by the end of the century.

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Toronto Skyline

By RTCC Staff

Climate change catastrophes could cost Canada anything from 5% to 25% of GDP according to a new study by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE).

The report examines the costs of climate change on the country, both that of climate impacts that may occur and the costs of climate change adaptation.

In the report forward, David McLaughlin, President and CEO of the NRTEE said: “To date, focus has mostly been on what it would cost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by industry and consumers. Little attention has been paid to the cost of inaction, to what economic damages could accrue to Canada and Canadians as global emissions rise and climate change plays out.”

Canada currently contributes about 1.5% of global emissions, but the report highlights that impacts brought about by increased world-wide emissions could have a “real and growing” economic impact.

By 2020 climate change costs for Canada are estimated at C$5 billion per year, while by 2050, they could have increased to between $21 and $43 billion per year – with a chance they could be even higher.

The report examines the costs of climate change across two possible futures: one where the world keeps global warming to 2°C by 2050 and the one where it doesn’t. At the lower future end – with temperatures just under the target – climate change would cost Canada up to $43 billion without any adaptive measures, but in the higher climate change scenario, the costs could reach as high as $91 billion.

In less than two weeks, countries from around the world will be meeting in Durban, for the UNFCCC Climate Summit, where they will continue to work towards a global deal limiting temperatures below this two degree target.

Last week the International Energy Agency, warned that urgent action was needed to prevent the world from reaching the point of no return for staying within the targets.

Broken down, by 2050, timber supply impacts could range between $2 billion and $17 billion per year – particularly hitting British Columbia – while flood damage from sea level rise and storm surges could cost between $1 billion to $8 billion per year.

The report also estimated that poor air quality from higher temperatures will lead to more hospital visits, resulting in millions of dollars in healthcare costs for Canada’s major cities – Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver and Calgary.

The NRTEE warned that while adaptation required some up front costs, in the long run it would be the more economical choice.

They recommended that Canadians use economic information to decide how to best prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change, saying the Canadian government should invest in growing the country’s expertise in the economics of climate change – producing relevant, Canadian-focused data – model climate impacts to inform discussions and invest in generating research to enlighten decision making.

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(Source: UN)

The UN Secretary General has urged world leaders to commit to the multi-billion dollar Green Climate Fund, ahead of the COP17 Climate Conference, in Durban.

Speaking at the “Climate Vulnerable Forum” held in Bangladesh (14-15 Nov) – a country he believes is becoming a world leader in disaster preparedness – he said the “measure of any society is how well it looks after its most vulnerable [citizens].

“Governments must lead the way to catalyse the $100 billion per annum from public and private sources that was pledged to 2020,” he said. “One way for governments to do so will be to launch the Green Climate Fund agreed last year in Cancun.

“The fund needs to be launched in Durban. An empty shell is not sufficient. Governments must find ways – now – to mobilise resources up to $100 billion per annum pledged. This is the message I am taking to Durban.”

The “Climate Vulnerable Forum” will see representatives from 30 countries meet for two days to design a united stand ahead of the UN Climate Summit in Durban, where the Green Climate Fund will be negotiated.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the forum was in response to the fact that the international climate negotiations were very “slow and inadequate”.

Ban believes adaptation will be a necessity for many of these countries at the forum in the future.

He said: “As the IPCC has pointed out, it is imperative that global greenhouse gas emission peak within this decade. Yet Carbon emissions in 2010 were the highest in history. Just last week the International Energy Agency released a report saying we are close to point of no return for staying under two degrees temperature rises.

“If we keep adding fossil fuel-based infrastructure, we will forever lose the chance to avoid dangerous climate change. Climate impacts will be with us for decades to come as a result of emissions released today.”

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Source: Wikimedia/Minesweeper

By John Parnell

Not many people can find cause for optimism in rising temperatures, depleted water resources and increased flooding risk. UCLA economics professor, Matthew Kahn manages to do just that.

He tells RTCC how profit, opportunity and innovation will make us happier in a warmer world and defends his focus on adaptation versus mitigation.

Kahn has worked and written extensively on a range of subjects from energy efficiency, urban environmental economics and even the notion of an organic Egg McMuffin.

His latest book, Climatopolis, focuses on the relationship between capitalism and climate change and how the two will combine in our cities. In short, he believes that market forces will drive innovation and competition in adaptive solutions. Secondly, he is confident that prices will respond to the changing climate to an extent that alters our behaviour.

“Some of my critics have said that my focus on adaptation is dangerous,” says Kahn. “Environmental policy activists have attacked me and said that for me to even talk about the economics of adaptation is evil. Their argument is that even to begin to talk about adaptation will make moderates less in the mood for mitigation.”

That particular stance seems more than a little unfair, particularly when faced with the clarity of Kahn’s argument.

“We haven’t stepped up and done enough mitigation. So I have been looking at adaptation, how to make the best of a bad situation. It would of course be easier to adapt, if we mitigated now, but so far we haven’t.”

It is hard to argue with that. Kahn reels off examples of innovations that have sprouted from the anticipation of climate change and its effects. These range from engineering tools to maximise water supply and floating houses for flood areas and numerous clean energy projects.

He points out that the motivation for these might well be profit rather than altruism, but the end result is the same. In the book he uses the example of the pharmaceutical industry, which identifies and anticipates a new health threat and channels its research and development resources into it. Kahn says companies can do that now to exploit numerous opportunities such as finding cheaper air conditioning solutions and developing hydrogen fuel cells.

Away from business, he also looks at how cities might change physically, denser populations, more public transport and shifts in populations towards cooler coastal areas among anticipated changes. The current popularity of various cities could also rise and fall dramatically. A hotter, sprawling metropolis will not look be as attractive as a cooler, temperate city, compact enough for you to ditch your increasingly expensive car.

Kahn also looks at the role of the government, identifying the good and the bad effect it can have on response.

Governments have been shown to be a continued trusted source of information. Warnings issued by them tend t be heeded. However, Kahn believes that interference in insurance pricing, is preventing the industry from protecting citizens from parcels of land at risk from fire and flooding.

“When the US suffered natural disasters in the past, a lot of federal money went into disaster relief aid. How much of this aid encouraged people to live in that area? Perhaps you could protect the people of New Orleans better by not building a seawall around the city and ‘saying you’re your own’?. That would be a tough love approach but I think there’s interesting work to be done in looking at self protection and government protection,” says Kahn.

Away from insurance, pricing could also play a role in dealing with the Californian water shortage. According to Kahn, the price of the water in Los Angeles is less than half a cent per gallon. Allowing this figure to rise would signal the scarcity of the resource and encourage changes in people’s water usage. After all, as Kahn points out, there certainly are a lot of green spaces in California considering it’s a desert.

Ultimately, the argument boils down to assessing how people will balance the new costs of living, with their quality of life. This brings back the mitigation versus adaptation argument.

“The better we are able to adapt, the less we will be willing to pay to mitigate for climate change,” says Kahn. “The big question is how much are we each willing to pay in order for there not to be climate change.”

Climatopols: How are cities will thrive in the hotter future is available from Perseus Books.

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