Emerging ideas on adaptation to climate change Anand.ppt

Emerging ideas on adaptation
to climate change
Anand Patwardhan
Executive Director
Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment
Council, Ministry of Science & Technology

May 2006 Anand Patwardhan - BASIC project India workshop 2
Outline
 State of science and evolution of understanding
 Research needs (adaptive capacity, indicators)
 Action on adaptation
 Staged approach
 Funding
 Way forward
 Principles and operationalization
 Emerging themes
 Adaptation and sustainable development
 Mainstreaming

Key concepts
 Adaptation
Adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected
climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial
opportunities. Types of adaptation include anticipatory and reactive adaptation,
private and public adaptation, and autonomous and planned adaptation
 Adaptive Capacity
The ability of a system to adjust to climate change (including climate variability
and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of
opportunities, or to cope with the consequences
 Sensitivity
Sensitivity is the degree to which a system is affected, either adversely or
beneficially, by climate-related stimuli.
 Vulnerability
The degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse
effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes.
Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate
variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity

Why is adaptation important?
 Regardless of mitigation, we are faced with a
finite, and significant degree of anthropogenic
climate change
 Managing climate risk is likely to be important
for sustainable development
 For both these reasons, adaptation should be
an important part of policy response to
climate change

Evolving ideas on adaptation
 Adaptation viewed purely as a response
mechanism
 Adaptation as an element of scenario-impact
assessments
 Vulnerability and adaptive capacity as central
themes in adaptation
 Adaptation and sustainable development:
mainstreaming adaptation

Initial thinking on adaptation –
a function of response
 Adaptation viewed as ‘adjustments’ made in ‘practices,
processes, or structures of systems to projected or actual
changes in climate’
 At the end of the sequential process identified for impact
assessments
 Seven step methodology for impact assessment in the IPCC
Second Assessment Report
 Define the problem
 Select method of assessment
 Test methods/ conduct sensitivity analysis
 Select and apply climate change scenarios
 Assess biophysical and socio-economic impacts
 Assess autonomous adjustments
 Evaluate adaptation strategies

Insights from the IPCC Third
Assessment Report
 Vulnerability and adaptation given significant importance in WG
II, shift in emphasis from “mechanistic” impact assessment
 Importance of extreme events, cross-sectoral analysis and
multiple stresses
 Regional predictions still highly uncertain, important phenomena
not well captured (monsoon)
 Focus on adaptation, recognition of the link with development
and equity issues, introduce concepts such as adaptive capacity
 Recognition that those with least resources have the least ability
to adapt

Preliminary ideas from the IPCC
Fourth Assessment Report
 Adaptation defined as adjustments made to
‘enhance resilience’ or ‘reduce vulnerability’
 Adaptation practices may be looked at from various
perspectives:
 Spatial scale
 Sectors
 Climate stress / hazard
 Baseline economic development level of the systems they
are implemented in
 Relating adaptation to adaptive capacity
 Adaptive capacity represents potential rather than actual
adaptation

Research issues in adaptation
 Indicators and measuring adaptation
 Adaptive capacity
 Structuring and formulating adaptation interventions
 Impacts – proximate, non-proximate; marginal, non-
marginal, stocks vs. flows
 Interactions across scales (spatial, temporal,
institutional) – aggregation issues
 Extremes and variability
 Scenarios

Measuring adaptation
 What should be measured?
 Hazard
 Risk
 Exposure
 Vulnerability
 Impacts
 Adaptation intervention
 Effectiveness of adaptation intervention

Adaptive capacity
 Autonomous – what responses are happening (will
happen) automatically?
 How will impacts be perceived, how will they be
evaluated and how will response take place?
 Who will respond, in what way?
 Adaptive capacity is influenced not only by factors that
promote or constrain the adoption of technologies and
management practices, but also by the economic,
social, political, environmental, institutional, and
cultural factors that create both external and internal
incentives as well as barriers to adaptation

Action on adaptation
 Types of interventions
 Financing and supporting adaptation
 International actions
 Approach for moving forward

Range of adaptation responses

Classifying adaptation measures

Time-scales of response
 Anticipatory adaptation to climate change risks may take place at three
levels:
 Adaptation to current variability
 For observed medium change/variability
 Long-term changes
 Responses across the three levels are closely intertwined, and indeed
might form a continuum.
 Visible shift of emphasis from first level to the second and third levels
 Increasing examples of measures taken to cope with the impacts of
observed trends in climate, as well as scenarios of climate change.
 Tsho Rolpa risk reduction project in Nepal
 Quinhai-Tibet Railway in China
 Konkan Railway in Western India
 Thames Barrier in UK
 Copenhagen metro in Denmark

Initial thinking on action
 Adaptation within the financial mechanism of the Convention
 Identification of need for programming adaptation interventions within the
climate change response framework
 Designing a framework for funding adaptation
 Initial thoughts on adaptation viewed it as an independent process
rather than an action taken in integration with ongoing programmes
 Thus, the staged approach to adaptation surfaced in the UNFCCC
(decision 11/CP.1)
 Views adaptation in three stages of interventions
 Identifies adaptation interventions as sequential, one leading to another
 Has been the programming guideline for financing adaptation in the
international arena

Staged approach to adaptation
 Stage I: planning through studies to identify
vulnerabilities (vulnerable countries and regions),
policy options (for adaptation response measures),
and appropriate capacity building
 Stage II: identifying measures to prepare for
adaptation and further capacity building
 Stage III: promoting measures to facilitate
adaptation, including insurance and other adaptation
interventions

Taking the dialogue further
 What needs to be funded – guiding principles for
funding adaptation
 Identification of ‘concrete’ – what will define the
concrete adaptation measures
 Mainstreaming – what and how
 Exploring new mechanisms and tools
 What should be measured and how – identifying
indicators

What should be funded?
 What kinds of projects?
 Pilot vs. full
 Climate variability vs. anthropogenic climate
change
 Climate and non-climate benefits
 Are there a set of projects that have
unambiguous climate change linkages

Principles for funding adaptation
 Automaticity in contributions
 Adequacy and predictability of resources
 Move from enabling activities to real projects
 Guiding the institutional process
 Ensuring flexibility
 Expediting the process
 Enabling wider access
 Re-programming the approach to funding
adaptation

Identifying ‘concrete’ interventions
 Moving away from the ‘staged approach’
 New knowledge acquired on the theme of adaptation suggests
that adaptation interventions are NOT sequential
 Adaptation interventions are now viewed in integration with each
other and the development programmes
 Need for identifying a new approach that identifies major types of
interventions that can be taken up across sectors relevant in
sustainable development

Towards a portfolio approach
 A portfolio of broad interventions for
adaptation
 Interventions may be identified through the
views and priorities expressed in the
Convention and the various decisions
 Mainstreaming activities
 Technology development and transfer
 Insurance

Technology development and transfer
as a tool for adaptation
 Technology transfer is very relevant
 Role of traditional knowledge and capturing the
value
 The dialogue needs to be extended to include
 Technology development
 Adoption of technology
 Barrier removal
 Favorable market mechanisms
 Creating enabling environment

Insurance
 Insurance as an instrument for providing ‘risk-cover’ against the
impacts of climate change and variability, specifically for extreme
weather events.
 Exploring the tool
 Creation of viable insurance markets requires risk pooling and
reinsurance mechanisms
 The former might require pooling across sectors and even
countries
 The latter might require access to a source of funds that is
generated through automatic contributions
 Possibilities
 Public-private partnerships
 Disaster risk insurance

Linking adaptation and sustainable
development
 Emerging realization of the links between climate change and
sustainable development
 IPCC (2001) identified that ‘activities required for enhancement
of adaptive capacity are essentially equivalent to those promoting
sustainable development’.
 It has further been understood that climate change adaptation
and equity goals can be achieved through the route taken for
achieving development goals such as improving food security,
provision of safe drinking water, shelter and health care and
access to other resources.

Mainstreaming adaptation
 Mainstreaming adaptation into development activities – leverage
concessional developmental funds?
 Increasingly, many developmental activities (for example in
infrastructure) are being implemented by the private sector
 How can we evaluate the portfolio of development projects to:
 Assess implications of climate change for project benefits?
 Assess implications of project for reducing vulnerability to
climate change?
 Related question:
 How can we incrementally adjust project design or
implementation to enhance climate change related benefits?
 Mainstreaming in practice
 Building ownership among stakeholders
 Engaging private sector as active partners in sustainable
development programmes

Barriers to adaptation
 Financial
 Increased realisation that available funding may not
always be sufficient to cover the financial requirements of
rehabilitation, mitigation and adaptation, specifically in
case of extreme events
 Therefore, Insurance may be an instrument worth
exploring
 Institutional
 Social and Cultural
 Technological
 Informational

Future directions
 Research issues in adaptation science
 Focused research on methodologies for
mainstreaming adaptation
 Development and diffusion of technologies for
adaptation in developing countries
 Fostering public-private partnerships for
mainstreaming as well as technology development
and transfer
 Exploring innovative funding mechanisms that
provide automaticity for resource generation
 Exploring insurance as the tool for providing risk cover
against climate change and variability

Emerging ideas on adaptation to climate change Anand.ppt

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