Integrated Development and Climate Policies: How to realise benefits at national and international level?

From 20 to 22 September 2006, the international workshop "Integrated Development and Climate policies: how to realise benefits at national and international level?" was held in Paris, France. IGES is the one of the co-organizers.

Over one hundred policy makers, researchers and representatives of the private sector and NGOs came together to discuss new ways of linking climate change to sustainable development. The integration between development and climate objectives starting from development priorities, has received increasing attention in research and policy making over the last 2-3 years. The challenge is to find a broadly applicable range of effective policies and actions for realizing development objectives and at the same time result in real climate benefits (either reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts or development with lower emissions).
The goal of this workshop was to see what lessons for policy at the national and international level can be drawn from experiences so far. The workshop was successful in bringing together stakeholders working in different areas, ranging from rural development and land use, disaster management, poverty reduction and energy to transportation.

Four key messages emerge from the presentations and discussions at the workshop:
I: Benefits of integrating development and climate policies have been demonstrated.
II: The national policy level is crucial for implementing integrated development and climate policies. A more structural approach is possible.
III: There is a need to enhance the impact of national experiences by replicating promising approaches in other countries, with assistance from international organisations, and by aiming at development activities that have a large influence on global greenhouse gas emissions.
IV: Mainstreaming climate change in international policy frameworks and agreements is not done widely enough. There are good opportunities to design and better use these international instruments to facilitate national integrated development and climate policies.

Remarks:

All presentations from the workshop and this policy brief can be downloaded from www.developmentfirst.org and the websites of the organising institutes.