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.     

Pathways for climate resilient development: Human well-being within a safe and just space in the 21st century

The concept of climate resilient development pathways (CRDPs) introduced in IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report remains poorly conceptualised. We have attempted to deepen the conceptualisation of climate resilient development (CRD) or climate compatible development, while charting its pathways through fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs)-based simulations aided by knowledge based on stakeholders’ insights. We conceptualise CRD as a development embracing mitigation, adaptation and inclusive sustainable development to advance planetary health and well-being for all. The FCMs-based simulations demonstrate that appropriate enabling conditions are critical to the achievement of CRD, the most important of them being (i) the ethics, values, and worldviews shaping CRD’s directions by framing appropriate climate narratives and action; (ii) partnerships and commitment to finance and technology by the governments; (iii) interactions between the actors and arenas of engagement facilitating CRD decisions and actions; and (iv) dimensions of governance at multiple levels involving policy, institutions and practice. Citizens’ defence against climate change as a human right, along with planetary health and well-being, demands synergies while implementing mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development. Short-term decisions and actions related to mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development could have long-term effects on CRDPs. CRD could entail a societal transformation to eudaimonic living for ensuring universal well-being. The findings of this research could have profound implications for multilateral negotiations.     

Climate adaptation and development: Contradictions for human security in Gambella,Ethiopia

It is clear that we need a climate adaptation policy agenda that is sensitive to the special political, social, and ecological circumstances of highly vulnerable regions, most of which are located in the African Sahel. While the existing literature on climate variability and climate change makes important theoretical contributions on development, vulnerability, and adaptation more broadly, with few exceptions it has not acknowledged that contradictions arise in addressing insecurities via the implementation of development, vulnerability reduction, and adaptation programs. An empirical assessment of how such contradictions are both driven by and negotiated in such programs is particularly useful if we are to design a more robust and grounded adaptation agenda. In this article, we focus on the paradigmatic case of Gambella in Ethiopia, a region that lies near the bottom of many development indices, but has also been the site for recent efforts to reduce climate vulnerability through village and agricultural modernization programs. Drawing on recent research in the region and on these programs, we demonstrate how the politics of development and adaptation lead to differential and contradictory impacts on four arenas of human security (a) elements of water security, (b) temporal aspects of water security and livelihoods security, (c) personal, state and community security, and (d) differentiated geographies economic security which privilege the national and international scale. The result of this complex political economy is that responses have served to increase rather than decrease tensions in the region.     

The special climate change fund: origins and prioritisation assessment

The Special Climate Change (SCC) fund was established by the Marrakesh Accords under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This fund will finance climate change activities in the areas of: adaptation, technology transfer, certain specific sectors, and activities to assist oil-exporting countries diversify their economies. These activities are to be complementary to those funded by the Global Environment Facility and by bilateral and multilateral funding. This paper describes the origins of the SCC fund and proposes a framework for the prioritisation of its activities. The fund has a complicated history that is intrinsically linked to numerous Convention issues, which explains the range of activities included in it. The framework proposed is based on certain principles: sound scientific knowledge, the ultimate objective of the Convention, “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” and the status of the climate negotiations. This appraisal suggests that the fund should prioritise adaptation, followed by mitigation and finally economic diversification.     

冰冻圈影响区恢复力研究和实践:进展与展望

气候变化引起全球冰冻圈各要素普遍退缩,进而深刻影响着区域生态安全和社会经济发展。恢复力(resilience)以降低脆弱性为目标,维持和培育社会-生态系统应对外界胁迫和干扰的能力,为应对冰冻圈变化引起的负面影响、实现区域可持续发展提供了重要的理论和实践框架。文中辨识了全球变暖背景下冰冻圈过程和功能变化对主要社会-生态系统的影响,综述了当前冰冻圈影响区恢复力相关的主要研究和实践进展,探讨了加强冰冻圈影响区社会-生态系统恢复力的路径。我们认为未来要进一步加强区域和全球冰冻圈变化及其影响综合评估,深入研究冰冻圈影响区社会-生态系统变化的驱动机制、级联效应和稳态转换;在实践上将减缓、适应和转型有机结合,建立管控区域社会-生态系统演化的综合监测、评估、预警和决策系统,从而促进系统朝着更具恢复力和可持续的路径发展。     

IPCC 第五次评估报告关于适应气候变化与可持续发展的新认知

IPCC发布的《气候变化2014：影响、适应和脆弱性》进一步提升了国际社会对于适应气候变化和可持续发展的认识水平,主要表现在：适应气候变化的研究视角从自然生态脆弱性转向更为广泛的社会经济脆弱性及人类的响应能力;阐明了气候风险与社会发展的关系,明确了适应在气候灾害风险管理中的积极作用;提出了减少脆弱性和暴露度及增加气候恢复能力的有效适应原则;提出了适应极限的概念,指出这一概念对于适应气候变化的政策含义;提出了保障社会可持续发展的气候恢复能力路径;强调要注重适应与减缓的协同作用和综合效应,指出转型适应是应对气候变化影响的必要选择。报告认为,气候变化、影响、适应及社会经济过程不再是一个简单的单向线性关系,需要纳入统一的系统框架下予以认识和理解。     

What makes climate change adaptation effective? A systematic review of the literature

Increased understanding of global warming and documentation of its observable impacts have led to the development of adaptation responses to climate change around the world. A necessary, but often missing, component of adaptation involves the assessment of outcomes and impact. Through a systematic review of research literature, I categorize 110 adaptation initiatives that have been implemented and shown some degree of effectiveness. I analyze the ways in which these activities have been documented as effective using five indicators: reducing risk and vulnerability, developing resilient social systems, improving the environment, increasing economic resources, and enhancing governance and institutions. The act of cataloging adaptation activities produces insights for current and future climate action in two main areas: understanding common attributes of adaptation initiatives reported to be effective in current literature; and identifying gaps in adaptation research and practice that address equality, justice, and power dynamics.     

Implementing a knowledge system: Lessons from the global stewardship of climate services

Knowledge systems are mechanisms that can drive climate adaptation through the pursuits of enhancing resource sharing, collaboration, and learning, while at the same time helping to develop trust and credibility among individuals and intuitions. While these goals are widely discussed, less is known about the activities and strategies that knowledge systems undertake to achieve these goals. We analyze the Global Framework of Climate Services (GFCS) as a knowledge system organized around the translation of weather and climate information for decision-making. The GFCS brings together the World Meteorological Organization, national meteorological and hydrological services, and some of the world’s largest multilateral scientific, humanitarian, and development organizations. Our analysis draws on key informant interviews, focus groups conducted in African countries, and an online survey of GFCS participants. We describe the main activities pursued by the GFCS that shaped the vision of climate services, built capacity in national climate adaptation, and created connections among diverse actors and organizations worldwide. We show how these activities generated tensions about the purpose of the GFCS and how influence among the knowledge system was distributed. Based on our results, we illustrate new ways to conceptualize the strategies of knowledge systems, which we describe as (1) theorizing the norms of practice and mechanisms of change, (2) legitimizing actors, and (3) managing knowledge. These strategies identify pathways for, and pitfalls to, a knowledge system’s pursuit of its goals, providing guidance to managers of knowledge systems and an analytical framework to evaluate their impacts.     

Framing the application of adaptation pathways for rural livelihoods and global change in eastern Indonesian islands

In developing countries adaptation responses to climate and global change should be integrated with human development to generate no regrets, co-benefit strategies for the rural poor, but there are few examples of how to achieve this. The adaptation pathways approach provides a potentially useful decision-making framework because it aims to steer societies towards sustainable futures by accounting for complex systems, uncertainty and contested multi-stakeholder arenas, and by maintaining adaptation options. Using Nusa Tenggara Barat Province, Indonesia, as an example we consider whether generic justifications for adaptation pathways are tenable in the local context of climate and global change, rural poverty and development. Interviews and focus groups held with a cross-section of provincial leaders showed that the causes of community vulnerability are indeed highly complex and dynamic, influenced by 20 interacting drivers, of which climate variability and change are only two. Climate change interacts with population growth and ecosystem degradation to reduce land, water and food availability. Although poverty is resilient due to corruption, traditional institutions and fatalism, there is also considerable system flux due to decentralisation, modernisation and erosion of traditional culture. Together with several thresholds in drivers, potential shocks and paradoxes, these characteristics result in unpredictable system trajectories. Decision-making is also contested due to tensions around formal and informal leadership, corruption, community participation in planning and female empowerment. Based on this context we propose an adaptation pathways approach which can address the proximate and systemic causes of vulnerability and contested decision-making. Appropriate participatory processes and governance structures are suggested, including integrated livelihoods and multi-scale systems analysis, scenario planning, adaptive co-management and ‘livelihood innovation niches’. We briefly discuss how this framing of adaptation pathways would differ from one in the developed context of neighbouring Australia, including the influence of the province's island geography on the heterogeneity of livelihoods and climate change, the pre-eminence and rapid change of social drivers, and the necessity to ‘leap-frog’ the Millennium Development Goals by mid-century to build adaptive capacity for imminent climate change impacts.     

Recurring droughts or social shifts? Exploring drivers of large-scale transformations in a transformed country

As climate change intensifies, the need for large-scale transformations that reform vulnerable systems’ prevailing values and development pathways is increasingly recognized. However, there is limited understanding of the factors that underlie such changes. This study sheds light on these factors by examining the case of Israel – a largely arid to semi-arid country with highly scarce natural water resources and a historical rural-agricultural ideology. Adopting an historically-informed systems perspective, I analyze two transformations that diminished Israel’s vulnerability to recurring droughts: the 1960s’ economic transformation from agriculture to industry, and the shift to seawater desalination in the mid-2000s. These changes are examined using causal-loop diagrams based on multiple data sources, including archival records, statistical reports and a systematic review of grey and academic literature.The findings show that both transformations, instigated by state institutions during exceptionally severe droughts, were driven by shifts away from development paradigms embedded in the nation-building ideology, as well as by social stresses that exceeded the natural limits of the agricultural system and water supply system. Repeated drought shocks activated and later reactivated the shift to desalination, intended to a certain degree to reduce drought vulnerability. However, drought did not significantly affect the economic transformation, initiated mainly due to saturation in agricultural development. Thus, I argue that alongside concerted adaptation efforts state institutions should dedicate greater attention to the management of broader social challenges and crises in a manner that fosters greater resilience against future climate changes. Ideological shifts and consequent restructuring of development paths, as well as the interaction between population growth and limited natural resources, may constitute important entry points. These entry points are particularly pertinent to emerging economies in other dry areas, many of which face similar social and economic trends to those experienced in Israel over the last decades.     

气候变化对城市和农村地区的影响、适应和脆弱性研究的认知

自IPCC第四次评估报告以来,对城市和农村地区气候变化影响、脆弱性、适应和风险管理文献都在增加。第五次评估报告取得了进展。主要包括：气候变化风险、脆弱性与所受的影响在全球范围不同规模、不同经济水平和地理位置的城市中心均在增加。改善基本服务不足的状况以及建设有恢复力的基础设施系统,可以显著降低城市地区的脆弱性和暴露度,特别是对于风险和脆弱性最高的人群来说。气候变化对农村地区的主要影响将体现在对淡水供应、粮食安全和农业收入的影响等方面。发展中国家农村人口更容易遭受多种非气候压力,包括农业投入不足、土地与自然资源政策问题和环境退化。包括增加可再生能源的供给、鼓励生物燃料种植或发展中国家减少砍伐森林和森林退化而造成的碳排放（REDD+）项目等在内的气候政策,将对有些农村地区有重要的间接影响,既有正面的影响（增加就业机会）,也有负面的影响（景观变化和稀有资源冲突增多）。     

Complex resource supply chains display higher resilience to simulated climate shocks

Global resource supply chains deliver products such as fish, rice and minerals from producers to consumers around the world, linking disparate regions and economies. These supply chains are increasingly exposed to the impacts of a changing climate, yet receive little attention relative to the study of the production phase. Too often, business learns from experience if and how their supply chains can withstand and recover from climate shocks with little insight on proactively developing climate resilient supply chains. We use a network-based simulation approach to estimate the resilience of supply chains, particularly to disruption experienced during climate-related extreme events. We consider supply chain examples from three Australian resource industries – fisheries, agriculture and mining – that have experienced climate shocks in recent years. We derive four supply chain indices – evenness, resilience, continuity of supply and climate resilience – to estimate the performance of simple and complex supply chains in each industry. As with ecological systems, we show that complex supply chains with a large number of nodes and links are more resilient to disruption. Critically, all chains, regardless of their complexity, will have diminished resilience as climate disruptions become more frequent. This highlights the importance of considering the broader economic benefits of diversified chains, leading to risk reduction and improved design post-disruption. It also reinforces the importance of a systems approach to risk management in supply chains, particularly in considering adaptation options for addressing direct and indirect impacts on the chain as well as the global challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.     

Using climate finance to advance climate justice: the politics and practice of channelling resources to the local level

Adaptation finance is primarily allocated to multilateral entities and national governments, rather than local organizations. This means that the social, political and economic processes that create and sustain inequalities within a country will be the same processes that determine how adaptation finance is used. Using an urban lens, we consider the obstacles currently faced by local governments and local civil society groups in accessing adaptation finance, and show that these are a function of systemic power imbalances between levels of government, and between government and vulnerable communities. We argue that even relatively small amounts of adaptation finance could have a catalytic effect on the capacities and impacts of local organizations, contributing to greater levels of both distributive and procedural justice. We analyse different financial intermediaries and planning systems that could be used to make disbursements from multilateral climate funds fairer and more effective. This could potentially create political opportunities both to respond to direct climate threats and to address underlying drivers of vulnerability, such as marginalization and exclusion. In this way, channelling adaptation finance to the local level could deliver more just processes and outcomes.

Key policy insights

1. More multilateral climate funds should establish direct access modalities, and introduce ‘fit-for-purpose’ accreditation procedures and approval processes. Those that have already established such enabling frameworks should prioritize providing readiness support to local organizations, and incentivize state and citizen collaboration in adaptation projects.

2. National governments should consider clearly enshrining the rights and responsibilities of local authorities in National Adaptation Plans, and help them to collect the information, build the capacities and acquire the resources needed to plan and implement adaptation measures. National governments should further encourage local authorities to adopt participatory planning, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation procedures to encourage citizen participation.

3. Local civil society groups should identify or establish collective entities that can seek accreditation with multilateral funds and then disburse money to their members. Collaboration between groups can facilitate up-scaling through replication (particularly where peer-to-peer learning is embedded in the network) and reduce the transaction costs associated with myriad small projects.

     

适应与绿色复苏：应对新冠疫情和气候复合风险的协同

作为全球性危机,新冠疫情和气候危机在影响范围、效果、原因等方面的相似之处可能使两种危机的效果叠加,而二者的不同之处又可能导致应对政策的相互干扰,带来更加严峻的复合风险。文中全面分析了全球面临的新冠疫情和气候危机的复合风险,识别了新冠疫情对全球气候变化适应进程的影响,以及适应在各国疫后绿色复苏计划中的地位。研究表明,目前全球的绿色复苏中较少考虑适应,而绿色复苏为同时恢复经济和增强气候恢复力提供了机会,如果能在绿色复苏中考虑变革性适应,将显著提升社会经济系统对气候变化等冲击的抵御能力与恢复力,实现疫情后更持续和更有韧性的经济发展。     

IPCC AR6报告关于气候变化适应措施的解读

适应举措对降低人类和生态系统的气候变化风险有着积极的影响。IPCC第六次评估报告（AR6）第二工作组（WGII）报告全面评估了适应的可行性和有效性,深入评估了适应局限性和不良适应。报告认为,个人、地方、区域和国家各级的适应行动都在增加,但是在做决策时需考虑不良适应的风险。报告从经济、技术、制度、社会、环境和地球物理这6个维度,对23个适应措施的可行性进行了评估;这些适应措施分布在陆地、海洋与生态系统,城乡与基础设施系统,能源系统以及跨部门等四大系统,其中,基于森林的适应、具有恢复力的电力系统、能源可靠性等适应措施具有高信度的高可行性。适应措施的可行性和有效性会随着气候变暖的增加而降低,需要采用多种措施来降低未来气候变化风险。     

Variations in approaches to urban climate adaptation: Experiences and experimentation from the global South

In recent years, an increasing number of local governments are recognizing the impact of climate change on different urban sectors. This has led many to pursue climate adaptation planning, seeking to achieve preparedness through reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience of populations, assets, and municipal operations. Although cities typically share these common goals, many are electing to pursue different planning approaches. In this paper, we examine three climate adaptation planning approaches in the cities of Quito (Ecuador), Surat (India), and Durban (South Africa) and analyze the trade-offs associated with different planning pathways and different forms of stakeholder involvement. We assess the potentials and limitations of these different approaches, including their implications for enhancing government integration and coordination, promoting participation and adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups, and facilitating overall urban resilience. We find that, in order to gain widespread commitment on adaptation, sustained political leadership from the top, departmental engagement, and continued involvement from a variety of stakeholders are integral to effective decision-making and institutionalization of programs in the long run. When climate adaptation is advanced with a focus on learning, awareness, and capacity building, the process will likely lead to more sustained, legitimate, and comprehensive adaptation plans and policies that enhance the resilience of the most affected urban areas and residents.     

Governmentality and the climate-development nexus: The case of the EU Global Climate Change Alliance

This article uses a governmentality perspective to uncover the power effects of the external climate change adaptation assistance provided by the European Union (EU) through its flagship initiative in this regard: the Global Climate Change Alliance. By drawing upon a body of literature that conceptualizes the established international architecture in this regard as rooted in power relations, this article opens up our current perspective of the EU as an international climate actor. An analysis of policy documents and targeted semi-structured interviews reveals that the EU discursively emphasizes the responsibility of partner countries to manage risk and become ‘resilient’ to climate impacts, while downplaying the transformative potential of adaptation for development. We see this dynamic further reflected in GCCA policy techniques, which promote the production of quantified and depoliticized knowledge on adaptation. This in its turn further guides the allocation of GCCA support and is instrumentalized in order to establish a stable identity for the organization and reproduce the EU as a climate leader in this regard.     

China’s rising influence on climate governance: Forging a path for the global South

China’s influence on climate governance has been steadily increasing since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. Much of this influence, this article argues, has come from China forging a path for climate adaptation and mitigation for the global South. This is having far-reaching consequences, the article further argues, for the politics of global climate governance. China’s discursive and diplomatic power in climate politics is growing as China builds alliances across the global South. China is leveraging this enhanced soft power to elevate the importance of adaptation in multilateral climate negotiations, advance a technocentric approach to climate mitigation, export its development model, and promote industrial-scale afforestation as a nature-based climate solution. China’s strategy is enhancing climate financing, technology transfers, renewable power, and adaptation infrastructure across the global South. To some extent, this is helping with a transition to a low-carbon world economy. Yet China’s leadership is also reinforcing incremental, technocratic, and growth-oriented solutions in global climate governance. These findings advance the understanding of China’s role in global environmental politics, especially its growing influence on climate governance in the global South.     

Local level climate justice? Adaptation finance and vulnerability reduction

Climate change creates a double inequality through the inverse distribution of risk and responsibility. Developed states are responsible, but are forecast to confront only moderate adverse effects; least developed states are not culpable and yet experience significant threats to livelihoods, assets and security. Adaptation finance addresses inequity by developed states facilitating/funding behaviour adjustments necessary for exposed communities to lessen climate risk. This article investigates the ground-level effectiveness of adaptation finance in climate vulnerable villages across Malawi, while controlling for disparities in vulnerability. Malawi and selected districts are both climate vulnerable and significant recipients of adaptation finance. This concludes a larger top–down multi-scalar analysis of climate justice, which applies the distribution and effectiveness of adaptation finance as a proxy. The study avails of participatory assessments to compare actions of villages receiving adaptation finance with those engaging in autonomous and informal adaptations. Adaptation finance villages: (a) address more climate related risks; and (b) enhance agency, security and sustainably lessen climate vulnerability. Conversely, informal practice villages attend to a lower proportion of climate risks and often develop short-term strategies with less enduring vulnerability reduction. Vulnerable communities receiving adaptation finance do change behaviours to reduce climate risk and thus secure local level climate justice.     

Extending the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for sub-national impacts,adaptation, and vulnerability studies

The exploration of alternative socioeconomic futures is an important aspect of understanding the potential consequences of climate change. While socioeconomic scenarios are common and, at times essential, tools for the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and integrated assessment modeling research communities, their approaches to scenario development have historically been quite distinct. However, increasing convergence of impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and integrated assessment modeling research in terms of scales of analysis suggests there may be value in the development of a common framework for socioeconomic scenarios. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways represents an opportunity for the development of such a common framework. However, the scales at which these global storylines have been developed are largely incommensurate with the sub-national scales at which impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and, increasingly, integrated assessment modeling studies are conducted. The objective of this study was to develop sub-national and sectoral extensions of the global SSP storylines in order to identify future socioeconomic challenges for adaptation for the U.S. Southeast. A set of nested qualitative socioeconomic storyline elements, integrated storylines, and accompanying quantitative indicators were developed through an application of the Factor–Actor–Sector framework. In addition to revealing challenges and opportunities associated with the use of the SSPs as a basis for more refined scenario development, this study generated sub-national storyline elements and storylines that can subsequently be used to explore the implications of alternative sub-national socioeconomic futures for the assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation.