Climate Adaptation in a Development Context
The IRI and the United Nations Development Programme have partnered to help bring climate risk management into the development planning process of Asian countries. "Climate, now and in the future, poses high risks as well as opportunities for the advancement of households, communities and societies," says Shiv Someshwar, director of IRI's Asia and Pacific Program. "Realizing the benefits requires more collaboration and cooperation between the adaptation and the development communities. Furthermore, their efforts need to be guided by the demands of those stakeholders who stand to gain or lose the most from the impacts of climate change." In April, the two organizations held a workshop in Nepal, Managing Risks of a Changing Climate to Support Development, that convened delegates from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. They released a report about the workshop proceedings last week. Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University offered opening remarks via tele-conference. "We have both short- and long-term climate-related problems and those long-term problems are forcing us to think of time dimensions that policy-makers usually do not have to grapple with," he said. "But here we are going to have long-term effects that gradually will creep up on societies in very powerful ways and where we need a long-term response, for example, in population location and major investment in infrastructure." With this in mind, one key aim of the workshop was to come up with practical approaches for planners to utilize climate information and incorporate it in their development strategies. This meant bringing together representatives from fields, such as agriculture, food security, health, biodiversity, water resources, who typically have not had the opportunity to engage in discussions on like this one. In addition, the workshop brought together resource persons with expertise in these sectors, as well as in disaster management and climate science. By having all these communities represented in Nepal, the countries could begin to address climate-change adaptation in the context of development. "Those in government who are responsible for development have to make decisions now to try to achieve the Millennium Development Goals." says Esther Ebrahimian, IRI's Asia Program Coordinator. Typically, development planners look 20 years ahead at a maximum, she says. "They are concerned about climate change, but because the issue isn't discussed on time scales they deal with, they don't see how can they use the information to achieve their development goals." The climate-risk-management approach requires focus on spatial and temporal scales that matter to decision makers.
The UNDP and IRI also set up a web site, managingclimaterisk.org, as a one-stop resource on climate risk management information and initiatives. The site contains all of the resources and presentations from the workshop, as well as an annotated bibliography of literature on climate-change adaptation prepared by Shiv Someshwar, Ben Chou and Esther Ebrahimian from the IRI. |
Following opening ceremonies led by Nepal's Environment Minister, the UNDP, IRI and other provided an introduction to climate risk management. Each country team then presented overviews of current climate problems and disaster risks in their countries as well as ongoing efforts to address these risks. Country teams then engaged in a process designed to help them frame how climate affects development in their countries, and to identify risk-management priorities and solutions. Each country team produced a project concept to address these priorities, and identified critical partners and next steps. The concepts for each country are listed in table 1.