Photo courtesy of IISD

Summary
Hironori Hamanaka, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), called for further efforts in the field of adaptation, which he said is a pressing development issue. He underlined that the funds available under the current climate regime fall short of meeting adaptation needs.

Ancha Srinivasan, IGES, reviewed key findings from a series of IGES consultations on adaptation. He noted several challenges associated with adaptation, but focused mainly on mainstreaming and financing challenges. In terms of mainstreaming, he reported that in Asia far greater attention was placed on mitigation than adaptation, evidenced, for instance, by the fact that most countries devoted only a few pages to discuss adaptation policies and measures in their national climate change communications. Furthermore, he suggested that there was also a lack of attention at the sectoral level, where a review of water policies in four Asian countries showed some efforts to research climate change adaptation but few signs of mainstreaming adaptation concerns. He attributed the lack of attention to several barriers, including a lack of awareness, a mismatch between the spatial and temporal scales of climate change impacts, a lack of human and technical capacity, the limited leverage of environmental ministries, and an overemphasis on technological and structural options for climate proofing (rather than more flexible and less costly softer options). On financing, he underlined that many future climate impacts and their costs are still uncertain, and showed that the current funding for adaptation (200 million dollars currently and 450 million dollars by 2012) is a negligible fraction of tens of billions of dollars that will be needed for adaptation annually. He then reviewed the four principles (beneficiary pays principle, emitter pays principle, ability to pay principle, climate change winners pay principle) and showed how they related to various proposals for increasing adaptation financing. He further suggested that proposals based on the “emitter pays” principle and the “climate change winners” principle could generate enough resources to cover the adaptation financing shortfall. He concluded by highlighting several suggestions for moving forward, such as demonstrating promising options for mainstreaming, strengthening institutional frameworks and human capacity for mainstreaming, establishing norms for adaptation financing for the post-2012 regime, and setting up an Asian catastrophe risk facility (modelled along the lines of the Caribbean catastrophe risk facility).

Ian Noble, World Bank, reviewed the Bank’s activities on adaptation including its pioneering work in Kirabati, which led to integrated national planning with climate risk management as its core. He highlighted the efforts in providing technical support and tools, and the plans for piloting various projects. He noted that current models are based on an insurance approach that sequentially links together four modules: a hazard module; vulnerability module; direct loss module; and an indirect cost module. These models were transformed into an impact assessment tool that makes it easier for regional policymakers to see potential impacts of climate change. The tool showed, for instance, that the frequency of serious floods would dramatically increase in China. He then reviewed an ongoing adaptation project in China that was intended to facilitate the mainstreaming of adaptation. The project was aimed at generating analytical inputs, demonstrating the value of climate proofing interventions, and then attempting to scale up successful interventions. He concluded by announcing that IGES and the World Bank would work together in developing quantitative or semi-quantitative indicators for measuring the effectiveness of adaptation actions (adaptation metrics).

Masato Kawanishi, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), discussed how JICA has progressed in mainstreaming climate change in its operations through the establishment of climate change office and research on CDM, adaptation and co-benefits. He then highlighted JICA’s growing efforts to use official development assistance (ODA) to help developing countries cope with the adverse impacts of climate change. He introduced a co-benefits approach, which simultaneously achieves objectives of both ODA and adaptation. He suggested that some of these efforts have been visible at the project screening stage, where climate change impacts are being integrated into project reviews. He gave an overview of JICA’s efforts to promote adaptation in developing countries, including technical assistance on climate modelling (downscaling methods for developing sub-national and local climate change scenarios), impact assessment, and policy formulation and implementation. He reported JICA’s plans to launch a new training course for policy makers focusing on adaptation in June 2008.

Monirul Mirza, University of Toronto and Environment Canada, stressed the vulnerability of the Asian water sector to climate change. He focused on the linkages between adaptation and shared water basin management, arguing that international institutions can help facilitate dialogue that will help resolve trans-boundary water management issues. He called for greater involvement from industry in adaptation activities and underscored the needs for public-private partnerships in developing insurance schemes. He cited that a state government in India (Assam) and private sector introduced an insurance policy for covering general public from health related damage from floods.

Aree Wattana Tummakird, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Thailand, outlined some suggestions on possible mechanisms for mainstreaming adaptation, such as adopting climate risk as the core agenda of the current regional and multinational agreements, establishing a non-profit regional re-insurance mechanism and a think-tank on climate change impact, vulnerability and adaptation for Southeast Asia. She then provided an overview of Thailand’s climate change national action strategies aimed at increasing adaptive capacity in various sectors, reducing GHG emissions, and promoting regional cooperation in Southeast Asia. To achieve these goals, the Ministry set short-term and long-term action plans. Short-term plans included mainstreaming climate concerns in national development plans and climate proofing infrastructure planning, raising awareness, assessing financial needs of the sectors sensitive to climate change impacts, promoting corporate social responsibility in financially supporting adaptation and mitigation actions of the public, and exploring business opportunities related to climate change. Long-term plans included exploring new institutional and financial mechanisms for facilitating adaptation, assessing long-term climate impacts that may bring irreversibly serious damages to the society, promoting greater roles of the private sector in making investment into adaptation activities, and exploring modification of laws and regulations in order to expand the roles of the insurance sector.

Pamposh Bhat, GTZ India, identified the water and agricultural sectors as the most affected by climate change in the Asia Pacific region and argued that cooperation in adaptation must be addressed at national, regional, and international levels. She suggested that mitigation projects should be mandated to spend some money on adaptation activities at all levels. She also stressed the need creation of regional cooperation bodies on adaptation especially to address trans-boundary and interlinked issues such as agriculture and water resources. She noted that the principle of “climate change winners pay” should be applied rigorously to increase funds available for adaptation at the international level.

Tae Yong Jung, Asian Development Bank, called for more regionalised and localised studies on the impacts of climate change. He noted that one of the challenges for measuring the effectiveness of adaptation is that adaptation policies and measures are largely precautionary in nature and are difficult to be subject to standard cost-benefit analyses. He stressed that finance ministries in Asia should recognise the importance of climate change and that both finance and environmental ministries should work together to promote adaptation. He noted that the mandate of ADB is to reduce poverty and vulnerability, and that ADB is gradually integrating adaptation concerns in its various operations.

Participants discussed ways to upscale the World Bank project's findings; JICA's efforts to support projects with high quality developmental co-benefits; mechanisms to integrate adaptation into ODA without diverting resources from development; and efforts to involve NGOs in adaptation projects and programmes. The guidelines for GEF funding of adaptation activities and ways for effective involvement of local communities in adaptation projects were also discussed.

This event was reported by "ENB on the side", published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)