Does funds-based adaptation finance reach the most vulnerable countries?

The evolving architecture of global climate change adaptation finance is shifting towards fund mechanisms with competitive application and allocation principles. At the same time, prioritization of the most vulnerable countries is a key goal within this emerging architecture. The paper analyses whether the Green Climate Fund (GCF), by far the largest climate change fund, has so far delivered on its promise to prioritize the most vulnerable countries. For our analysis, we consider the USD 2.5 billion GCF funding allocated until the end of the first mobilization phase and disaggregate it project-by-project into its mitigation and adaptation related amounts. We then analyze the adaptation flows in terms of the recipient country’s level of vulnerability and institutional capacity. We further analyze whether funds are being accessed through independent national entities or international intermediaries and whether recipient countries have developing country priority status. The results show that funds-based adaptation finance creates an ambiguous picture: On the one hand, the GCF is on track in allocating its funds largely to country groups which its statutes aim to prioritize, particularly LDCs, African countries and SIDS. At the same time, the proposal process results in the fact that many countries with the highest climate vulnerability but weak government institutions and fragile state-bureaucracies have missed out and not been able to access project funding, mostly LDCs in Africa and conflict-ridden countries. Further, most countries have not yet been able to access project funds independently through their national entities, limiting direct access and country ownership – the strengthening of which is a major goal of the fund. The findings suggest that simplified approval tracks need to be strengthened in the emerging climate finance architecture so that populations in countries with the lowest institutional capacity but highest vulnerability are not being left behind in the long-run.     

Policies for reducing agricultural sector vulnerability to climate change in Mali

Abstract

The Mali agricultural sector and the country's food security are potentially vulnerable to climate change. Policies may be able to mitigate some of the climate change vulnerability. This article investigates several policy changes that may reduce vulnerability, including climate-specific and other policies. The policy set includes migration of cropping patterns, development of high-temperature-resistant cultivars, reduction in soil productivity loss, cropland expansion, adoption of improved cultivars, and changes in trade patterns. When all policies are considered together, results under climate change show an annual gain of $252 million in economic benefits as opposed to a $161 million loss without policy adjustment. Simultaneously, undernourishment is reduced to 17% of the Malian population as compared with 64% without policy adjustment. We also find tradeoffs in cases between economic benefits and undernourishment. Policies are also studied individually and collectively. Overall, the results indicate that policy can play an important role in reducing climate change vulnerability in Mali.     

Linkages between climate change and sustainable development

Abstract

Climate change does not yet feature prominently within the environmental or economic policy agendas of developing countries. Yet evidence shows that some of the most adverse effects of climate change will be in developing countries, where populations are most vulnerable and least likely to easily adapt to climate change, and that climate change will affect the potential for development in these countries. Some synergies already exist between climate change policies and the sustainable development agenda in developing countries, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, transport and sustainable land-use policies. Despite limited attention from policy-makers to date, climate change policies could have significant ancillary benefits for the local environment. The reverse is also true as local and national policies to address congestion, air quality, access to energy services and energy diversity may also limit GHG emissions. Nevertheless there could be significant trade-offs associated with deeper levels of mitigation in some countries, for example where developing countries are dependent on indigenous coal and may be required to switch to cleaner yet more expensive fuels to limit emissions. The distributional impacts of such policies are an important determinant of their feasibility and need to be considered up-front. It follows that future agreements on mitigation and adaptation under the convention will need to recognise the diverse situations of developing countries with respect to their level of economic development, their vulnerability to climate change and their ability to adapt or mitigate. Recognition of how climate change is likely to influence other development priorities may be a first step toward building cost-effective strategies and integrated, institutional capacity in developing countries to respond to climate change. Opportunities may also exist in developing countries to use regional economic organisations to assist in the design of integrated responses and to exploit synergies between climate change and other policies such as those designed to combat desertification and preserve biodiversity.

© 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.     

Smallholder farmers’ participation in climate change adaptation programmes: understanding preferences in Nepal

Globally, adaptation policies and programmes are being formulated to address climate change issues. However, in the agricultural sector, and particularly in least developed countries (LDCs), concerns remain as to whether these policies and programmes are consistent with farmers’ preferences. This study empirically investigates Nepalese farmers’ willingness to support the implementation of adaptation programmes. To this end, we first developed suggested adaptation programmes in accordance with the adaptation measures identified by LDCs in their National Adaptation Programmes of Actions. We then employed a choice experiment framework to estimate farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for adaptation benefits. The findings indicate that the substantial benefits of the adaptation programmes for farmers result in a sizeable WTP to participate, which would appear to justify the programmes’ widespread implementation.

Key policy insights

• Farmers are willing to participate in, and contribute to, the suggested adaptation programmes in the form of increased access to climate adaptive crop species and varieties, improved soil quality and irrigation and the provision of training in climate adaptive farming.

• Key socio-economic factors influence farmers’ support of adaptation programmes. Older farmers, those households closer to government extension services, larger land holders, those involved in household labour exchange, farmers located in drought and flood-prone regions and those who perceive that the climate has changed are more likely to participate.

• The more farmers are aware of climate change impacts, the greater their preference for adaptation programmes. Increasing farmer awareness prior to implementation of such programmes is therefore an obvious means of further raising participation rates.

     

Articles 4.8 and 4.9 of the UNFCCC: adverse effects and the impacts of response measures

Abstract

Articles 4.8 and 4.9 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Article 3.14 of its Kyoto Protocol require parties to take measures to minimise the adverse effects of climate change on developing and least developed countries (LDCs). The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) argue that this should mean assistance for capacity building to help them adapt to a changing climate. Articles 4.8 and 3.14 also require parties to take measures to minimise the impacts of emission reduction measures on energy exporting countries. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries argue that this should mean assistance to compensate for lost oil revenues. This paper explores the dimensions of the adverse effects/impacts issue. It explains how, in arguing that progress on Articles 4.8, 4.9 and 3.14 be equal to progress on the issue of assistance to compensate for lost oil revenues, OPEC countries obstruct progress on assistance to developing and LDCs for adaptation to climate change. This suggests that tacit G77/China support for OPEC's position may ultimately not be in their best interests. The paper discusses the outlook for the adverse effects/impacts of response measures issue.     

Knowledge gaps and climate adaptation policy: a comparative analysis of six Latin American countries

ABSTRACT

This article identifies and analyzes some of the main knowledge gaps that affect the development of climate adaptation policies in the Latin American context. It is based on a comparative analysis of online survey results conducted among government officials working on climate adaptation in six countries of the region: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Paraguay and Uruguay. The article addresses four key issues. First, it identifies some of the critical knowledge deficits (missing or incomplete information) that affect climate adaptation policy making and implementation. Second, it addresses the obstacles and difficulties facing collaborative processes of knowledge production (co-production) between scientists and public policy actors. Third, it analyzes factors affecting knowledge uptake and use by policymakers. Finally, it identifies some of the main knowledge deficits specifically affecting the monitoring and assessment of climate adaptation policies and measures. Overall, the article provides a diagnosis of the main knowledge gaps facing climate adaptation policy in the Latin American countries studied. The results of this diagnosis can serve as input for a research and action agenda aiming to strength the interaction between science and policy on climate adaptation in Latin American countries.

Key policy insights

• The countries covered by the study suffer strong knowledge deficits related to the design, implementation and evaluation of adaptation policy.

• Collaborative modes of knowledge production in the field of climate adaptation do not tend to sustain over time. Climate change co-production processes tend to be project based, linked to specific initiatives rather than to institutionalized long-term policymaking or planning processes.

• The fragmentation and lack of integration of the knowledge available on the different aspects of climate adaptation issues deeply affect their usability in policy processes.

• Weak state capabilities to co-produce, manage and use knowledge in the policy process constitute a main barrier affecting the science-policy interface on climate adaptation issues.

     

Distributive justice in global climate finance – Recipients’ climate vulnerability and the allocation of climate funds

The ‘climate justice’ lens is increasingly being used in framing discussions and debates on global climate finance. A variant of such justice – distributive justice – emphasises recipient countries’ vulnerability to be an important consideration in funding allocation. The extent to which this principle is pursued in practice has been of widespread and ongoing concerns. Empirical evidence in this regard however remains inadequate and methodologically weak. This research examined the effect of recipients’ climate vulnerability on the allocation of climate funds by controlling for other commonly-identified determinants. A dynamic panel regression method based on Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) was used on a longitudinal dataset, containing approved funds for more than 100,000 projects covering three areas of climate action (mitigation, adaptation, and overlap) in 133 countries over two decades (2000–2018). Findings indicated a non-significant effect of recipients’ vulnerability on mitigation funding, but significant positive effects on adaptation and overlap fundings. ‘Most vulnerable’ countries were likely to receive higher amounts of these two types of funding than the ‘least vulnerable’ countries. All these provided evidence of distributive justice. However, the relationship between vulnerability and funding was parabolic, suggesting ‘moderately vulnerable’ countries likely to receive more funding than the ‘most vulnerable’ countries. Whilst, for mitigation funding, this observation was not a reason for concern, for adaptation and overlap fundings this was not in complete harmony with distributive justice. Paradoxically, countries with better investment readiness were likely to receive more adaptation and overlap funds. In discordance with distributive justice, countries within the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions, despite their higher climatic vulnerabilities, were likely to receive significantly less adaptation and overlap fundings. Effects of vulnerability were persistent, and past funding had significant effects on current funding. These, coupled with the impact of readiness, suggested a probable Low Funding Trap for the world’s most vulnerable countries. The overarching conclusion is that, although positive changes have occurred since the 2015 Paris Agreement, considerable challenges to distributive justice remain. Significant data and methodological challenges encountered in the research and their implications are also discussed.     

Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

     

国际适应气候变化政策保障体系建设

适应气候变化政策体系由适应气候变化行动方案、保障体制、保障机制和保障法制4个部分组成,是为了提高国家或地区的适应能力以及达成适应目标而形成的政策体系。在对国家气候变化适应政策进行调研的基础上,系统梳理了欧盟、美国、日本、俄罗斯及印度等主要国家和组织所采取的适应气候变化政策保障体系,总结了国际适应气候变化政策保障体系对中国的经验启示。     

Policy without politics: technocratic control of climate change adaptation policy making in Nepal

As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This article critiques the ways in which the politics of representation and climate science are framed and pursued in the process of climate policy development, and contributes to an understanding of the relative effectiveness of globally framed, generic policy mechanisms in vulnerable and politically volatile contexts. Based on this analysis, it also outlines opportunities for the possibility of improving climate policy processes to contest technocratic framing and generic international adaptation solutions.

Policy relevance

Nepal's position as one of the countries most at risk from climate change in the Himalayas has spurred significant international support to craft climate policy responses over the past few years. Focusing on the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and the Climate Change Policy, this article examines the extent to which internationally and scientifically framed climate policy in Nepal recognizes the unfolding political mobilizations around the demand for a representative state and equitable adaptation to climate risks. This is particularly important in Nepal, where political unrest in the post-conflict transition after the end of the civil war in 2006 has focused around struggles over representation for those historically on the political margins. Arguing that vulnerability to climate risk is produced in conjunction with social and political conditions, and that not everyone in the same locality is equally vulnerable, we demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the politics of representation for climate policy making in Nepal. However, so far, this policy making has primarily been shaped through a technocratic framing that avoids political contestations and downplays the demand for inclusive and deliberative processes. Based on this analysis, we identify the need for a flexible, contextually grounded, and multi-scalar approach to political representation while also emphasizing the need for downscaling climate science that can inform policy development and implementation to achieve fair and effective adaptation to climate change.     

Climate change and extreme weather events: can developing countries adapt?

Abstract

Developing countries are vulnerable to extremes of normal climatic variability, and climate change is likely to increase the frequency and magnitude of some extreme weather events and disasters. Adaptation to climate change is dependent on current adaptive capacity and the development models that are being pursued by developing countries. Various frameworks are available for vulnerability and adaptation (V&A) assessments, and they have both advantages and limitations. Investments in developing countries are more focused on recovery from a disaster than on the creation of adaptive capacity. Extreme climatic events create a spiral of debt burden on developing countries. Increased capacity to manage extreme weather events can reduce the magnitude of economic, social and human damage and eventually, investments, in terms of borrowing money from the lending agencies. Vulnerability to extreme weather events, disaster management and adaptation must be part of long-term sustainable development planning in developing countries. Lending agencies and donors need to reform their investment policies in developing countries to focus more on capacity building instead of just investing in recovery operations and infrastructure development.     

How inequitable is the global distribution of responsibility, capability, and vulnerability to climate change: A comprehensive indicator-based assessment

While it is generally asserted that those countries who have contributed least to anthropogenic climate change are most vulnerable to its adverse impacts some recently developed indices of vulnerability to climate change come to a different conclusion. Confirmation or rejection of this assertion is complicated by the lack of an agreed metric for measuring countries’ vulnerability to climate change and by conflicting interpretations of vulnerability. This paper presents a comprehensive semi-quantitative analysis of the disparity between countries’ responsibility for climate change, their capability to act and assist, and their vulnerability to climate change for four climate-sensitive sectors based on a broad range of disaggregated vulnerability indicators. This analysis finds a double inequity between responsibility and capability on the one hand and the vulnerability of food security, human health, and coastal populations on the other. This double inequity is robust across alternative indicator choices and interpretations of vulnerability. The main cause for the higher vulnerability of poor nations who have generally contributed little to climate change is their lower adaptive capacity. In addition, the biophysical sensitivity and socio-economic exposure of poor nations to climate impacts on food security and human health generally exceeds that of wealthier nations. No definite statement can be made on the inequity associated with climate impacts on water supply due to large uncertainties about future changes in regional water availability and to conflicting indicators of current water scarcity. The robust double inequity between responsibility and vulnerability for most climate-sensitive sectors strengthens the moral case for financial and technical assistance from those countries most responsible for climate change to those countries most vulnerable to its adverse impacts. However, the complex and geographically heterogeneous patterns of vulnerability factors for different climate-sensitive sectors suggest that the allocation of international adaptation funds to developing countries should be guided by sector-specific or hazard-specific criteria despite repeated requests from participants in international climate negotiations to develop a generic index of countries’ vulnerability to climate change.     

A quantitative analysis of the causes of the global climate change research distribution

During the last decades of growing scientific, political and public attention to global climate change, it has become increasingly clear that the present and projected impacts from climate change, and the ability adapt to the these changes, are not evenly distributed across the globe. This paper investigates whether the need for knowledge on climate changes in the most vulnerable regions of the world is met by the supply of knowledge measured by scientific research publications from the last decade. A quantitative analysis of more than 15,000 scientific publications from 197 countries investigates the distribution of climate change research and the potential causes of this distribution. More than 13 explanatory variables representing vulnerability, geographical, demographical, economical and institutional indicators are included in the analysis. The results show that the supply of climate change knowledge is biased toward richer countries, which are more stable and less corrupt, have higher school enrolment and expenditures on research and development, emit more carbon and are less vulnerable to climate change. Similarly, the production of knowledge, analyzed by author affiliations, is skewed away from the poorer, fragile and more vulnerable regions of the world. A quantitative keywords analysis of all publications shows that different knowledge domains and research themes dominate across regions, reflecting the divergent global concerns in relation to climate change. In general, research on climate change in more developed countries tend to focus on mitigation aspects, while in developing countries issues of adaptation and human or social impacts (droughts and diseases) dominate. Based on these findings, this paper discusses the gap between the supply of and need for climate change knowledge, the potential causes and constraints behind the imbalanced distribution of knowledge, and its implications for adaptation and policymaking.     

Adaptation and poverty reduction in Mozambique: an opportunity for developing countries to lead§

Climate change disproportionately impacts the world’s poorest countries. A recent World Bank report highlighted that over 100 million people are at risk of falling into extreme poverty as a result of climate change. There is currently a lack of information about how to simultaneously address climate change and poverty. Climate change challenges provide an opportunity for those impacted most to come up with new and innovative technologies and solutions. This article uses an example from Mozambique where local and international partners are working side-by-side, to show how developing countries can simultaneously address climate change and poverty reduction using an ecosystem-based adaptation approach. Using ecosystem-based adaptation, a technique that uses the natural environment to help societies adapt to climate change, developing countries can lead the way to improve climate adaptation globally. This paradigm shift would help developing countries become leaders in ecosystem-based adaptation and green infrastructure techniques and has implications for climate policy worldwide.

POLICY RELEVANCE

The Paris Agreement resulting from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) in December 2015 was rightly lauded for its global commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. However, COP 21 was also historic because of its call for non-party stakeholders to address climate change, inclusion of a global goal of ‘enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability’, and the United States’ commitment of $800 million to adaptation funding. The combination of recognizing the need for new stakeholders to commit to climate change adaptation, the large impact climate change will have on the developing world, and providing access to funds for climate change adaptation creates a unique opportunity for developing countries to pave the way in adaptation policies in practices. Currently, developing countries are creating National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) for the UNFCCC. Through including a strong component of ecosystem-based adaptation in NAPs, developing countries can shape their countries’ policies, improve local institutions and governments, and facilitate a new generation of innovative leaders. Lessons learned in places like Mozambique can help lead the way in other regions facing similar climatic risks.     

适应气候变化政策机制的国际经验与启示

中国高度重视适应气候变化工作,实行减缓与适应并重的应对气候变化原则,已出台适应气候变化相关的战略、规划等一系列政策文件。但总体来看,中国适应气候变化政策与行动尚处于起步阶段,面临着法规制度缺位、监测评估不足、组织协调机制不完善等挑战,适应气候变化政策的类型、数量和力度都明显弱于减缓。为完善中国适应气候变化政策与机制的框架设计,文中梳理了相关研究、《联合国气候变化框架公约》下的适应气候变化国际机制及主要国家经验,提出了一套完整闭环的适应气候变化核心决策流程及关键支撑机制,并重点从开展法制建设、制定适应战略（计划）、建立监测评估机制、构建协调机制和完善资金机制等五方面,归纳了主要国家的经验与启示,最终研究提出完善我国适应气候变化政策与机制框架设计的建议,包括加快建立和完善适应气候变化法制建设、加快构建国家适应气候变化的政策体系、加快完善国家适应气候变化的机制设计、加强适应气候变化支撑能力建设、推动适应气候变化的国际合作等。     

中国气候变化南南合作对《巴黎协定》后适应谈判的影响

适应气候变化是发展中国家的重要谈判议题。《联合国气候变化框架公约》2015年达成《巴黎协定》后如何落实适应议题实施细则成为关注焦点。发达国家以温室气体排放总量大为理由,施压中国等发展中大国出资全球适应气候变化行动;发展中国家内部对适应气候变化受害方和出资方的划分存在较大分歧,造成适应议题下发展中国家集团难以形成合力,《巴黎协定》实施细则谈判进展缓慢。中国气候变化南南合作作为中国与其他发展中国家之间重要的气候变化领域合作形式,能否通过寻找发展中国家契合点,依据合理机制,对适应谈判发挥一定作用,须及早进行利弊分析及顶层设计。文章通过分析美欧日对外援助的机制、梳理非洲小岛国等主要发展中国家集团在应对气候变化不利影响方面的需求、总结以往中国适应项目对外援助情况的基础上,提出了今后中国气候变化南南合作与适应谈判中需要注意的问题,包括区分适应援助和减缓援助、避免中国气候变化南南合作的属性被误读等问题,为争取广阔外交利益、合理构建南南合作机制提供政策建议。     

Advising national climate policy makers: A longitudinal analysis of the UK Climate Change Committee

Despite the recent proliferation of national climate change advisory bodies, very little is known about what advice they provide, to whom, and when. To address these gaps in the literature, this article systematically analyses all 700 of the recommendations made by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) in the period 2009–20. The CCC is one of the oldest climate change advisory bodies of its kind in the world and its design has been widely emulated by other countries. For the first time, this article documents how the CCC’s mitigation and adaptation recommendations have changed over time with respect to their addressee, sectoral focus and policy targets. It reveals that they became: more numerous per year; more cross-sectoral in their nature; clearer in targeting a specific addressee; and more focused in referring to specific policy targets. By drawing on Fischer’s synthesis of policy evaluation to derive a measure of policy ambition, it also reveals that despite many of its recommendations being repeated year after year, the CCC has become more willing to challenge the policy status quo. It concludes by identifying future research needs in this important and fast-moving area of climate governance, notably understanding the conditions in which the recommendations of advisory bodies (do not) impact national policy.     

Power interplay between actors: using material and ideational resources to shape local adaptation plans of action (LAPAs) in Nepal

Deliberation over how to adapt to short or long-term impacts of climate change takes place in a complex political setting, where actors’ interests and priorities shape the temporal dimension of adaptation plans, policies and actions. As actors interact to pursue their individual or collective interests, these struggles turn into dynamic power interplay. In this article, we aim to show how power interplay shapes local adaptation plans of action (LAPAs) in Nepal to be short-term and reactive. We use an interactional framing approach through interaction analyses and observations to analyse how actors use material and ideational resources to pursue their interests. Material and ideational resources that an actor deploys include political authority, knowledge of adaptation science and national/local policy-making processes, financial resources and strong relations with international non-governmental organizations and donor agencies. We find that facilitators and local politicians have a very prominent role in meetings relating to LAPAs, resulting in short-termism of LAPAs. Findings suggest that there is also a lack of female participation contributing to short-term orientated plans. We conclude that such power interplay analysis can help to investigate how decision making on the temporal aspects of climate adaptation policy takes place at the local level.

Key policy insights

• Short-termism of LAPAs is attributed to the power interplay between actors during the policy design process.

• Improved participation of the most vulnerable, especially women, can lead to the preparation of adaptation plans and strategies focusing on both the short and long-term.

• It is pertinent to consider power interplay in the design and planning of adaptation policy in order to create a level-playing field between actors for inclusive decision-making.

• Analysis of dynamic power interplay can help in investigating climate change adaptation controversies that are marked by uncertainties and ambiguities.

     

Bridging the gap: empowering decision-making for adaptation through the UK Climate Impacts Programme

Abstract

The methods, tools and outputs of the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) show how building adaptive capacity to climate change can be embedded within a wide range of organizations. UKCIP has been operating since 1997 to support decision-makers' assessments of their vulnerability to climate change so that they can plan how to adapt. Whilst stakeholder engagement is now generally regarded as vital to ensure that research meets the needs of decision-makers for information, this usually means that stakeholders are positioned in a ‘consultative’ role in research. In contrast, the UKCIP aims to bridge the gap between research and policy so that decision-makers take control to produce research in ways that are useful to them. The Programme has been flexible and was developed incrementally, with increased scientific understanding, taking advantage of collaborative funding and facilitating long-standing partnerships. Whilst the core framework of scenarios and tools has been developed centrally, most studies have been stakeholder-funded and led. The Programme's results suggest that if decision-makers are supported, capacity is built for assessments, and crucially, research outputs are directly applicable to their ongoing work and strategic planning. This capacity-building has worked across scales and sectors and is an effective route to mainstreaming climate change adaptation. The implication, therefore, is that more support should be given by funding agencies to develop institutional capacity to support adaptation to climate change in both the private and public sectors.     

The changing geopolitics of climate change finance

Funding for climate change efforts in developing countries is firmly established in the Articles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Since the early days of the climate change negotiations, finance has been a key focus of attention and, often, a principal source of tension between developed and developing countries. Understandably, these tensions have led to numerous efforts to reform the financial mechanism of the UNFCCC. The history of reforms of the Global Environment Facility – for some time the only operating entity of the financial mechanism – and the recent establishment of the Green Climate Fund are good examples of such efforts. It is asked here whether these efforts have been sufficient to keep pace with a rapidly changing, more complex and radically different world from that of 1992 when the UNFCCC was signed by most countries in Rio de Janeiro. On the 21st anniversary of the signing of the UNFCCC, the effects that global transformations have had on climate change finance are here explored, and some of the new challenges, as well as emerging opportunities, resulting from the new landscape of climate finance that has emerged as a result are described.

Policy relevance

The climate change negotiations are entering a critical period. The issue of finance is one of the key pillars on which the success of a new deal on a binding agreement depends. A better understanding of the increasing complexity of the climate finance landscape is essential. The world of climate finance and the geopolitics in which it operates have been significantly transformed since the signing of the UNFCCC. A better understanding of this transformation would help policy makers and negotiators find more effective and realistic ways to help unleash the immense amount of financial resources that could potentially be made available for the great challenge that many countries face to address climate change. The need for up-front and significantly scaled-up investments requires effective mechanisms that can leverage and encourage investments into areas where they are most needed to face the challenge of climate change. The role of the Green Climate Fund will be critical in this regard.