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Moving the Adaptation
Agenda Forward
Saleemul Huq
saleemul.huq@iied.org
As
COP 9 approaches with the Kyoto Protocol yet to come into force—due
to the non-ratification by key Annex I countries—it is becoming
abundantly clear that efforts devoted to put in place strong and
binding efforts to reduce the future emissions of greenhouse gases
are going to fall very much short of what had been hoped. This
means that for the short to medium term, at least in the next two
decades, the world will be faced with the adverse impacts of climate
change. There is already growing evidence that the predictions of
global warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions may
already be impacting different parts of the world (e.g. unusually
hot weather in India and Europe during the summer of 2003, which
resulted in thousands of premature deaths).
All
countries of the world, including both the rich, developed countries
as well as the poorer developing countries, will have to face the
consequences of such adverse impacts of climate change in the near
future. However, while the richer, developed countries have the
financial and technical capacities to deal with the problem, both at
the level of their citizens, communities and private sector as well
as at the governmental, policy-making levels, the poorer, developing
countries have neither the financial nor the technical capacities to
deal adequately with the looming problem. Among developing
countries, two groups have already been identified in the UNFCCC as
especially vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change,
namely the small islands developing states (SIDS) and the Least
Developed Countries (LDCs). Together, these two groups comprise of
over 80 countries and have a total population of over half a billion
people.
The
signatories to the UNFCCC have already recognised that not all
countries are equally responsible for the problem of climate change
and that those countries that have accepted that they bear the major
responsibility (i.e. the developed countries listed by name in Annex
I of the Convention) also bear the responsibility to help the
countries that will be the victims of the adverse impacts of climate
change. The response measures needed for all countries to deal with
the adverse impacts of climate change are known as adaptation
to climate change—as opposed to mitigation that deals with
the reduction of the emissions of greenhouse gases—and have been
promoted primarily by the developing countries. They were only able
to get the issue of adaptation to be taken seriously from seventh
conference of parties (COP 7) in Marrakesh, Morocco, where the
“Marrakesh Funds” were set up, and in COP 8 in Delhi, India in
October 2002, where the Delhi Declaration emphasised the need to
focus more on adaptation and not only mitigation.
The Marrakesh Funds for Adaptation
At COP
7 in Marrakesh, a number of new funds were created. These are
collectively referred to as the “Marrakesh Funds” and all are
supposed to fund adaptation but in different ways. They consist of
the following:
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1. |
The least developed countries (LDC) Fund to support the
efforts of the LDCs to, initially, carry out National Adaptation
Programmes of Action (NAPAs). The fund is made up from voluntary
contributions from a few developed countries and administered
through the Global Environment Facility (GEF). To date it has
received contributions of about $20 million, which are being
used to help each of the 49 LDCs carry out their respective
NAPAs over the next two years. The NAPAs, in turn, are expected
to enable each LDC to assess the most vulnerable regions and
communities in each country and prioritise adaptation actions
that they would like to undertake. It is expected that the LDC
Fund would then be replenished and be able to support such
prioritised adaptation actions. |
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The Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) was set up to
support a number of activities including, but not exclusively,
adaptation in all developing countries and was also to be
administered through the GEF. The source of contributions to
this fund will be through voluntary contributions from the
developed countries and some countries have made a (non-binding)
promise that the total funds may be about $450 million per
year. However, the SCCF is not due to become operational until
2005 and the guidance for use of the funds is to be discussed
and decided at COP 9 in Milan, Italy in December 2003. |
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3. |
The Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund is the only one of the
Marrakesh Funds, which has the word “adaptation” in its title
and is supposed to support “concrete” adaptations. However, it
is set up under the Kyoto Protocol, while the other two funds
are set up under the UNFCCC, and will get contributions from the
proceeds of an “adaptation levy” of 2% of all transactions on
all clean development mechanism (CDM) projects under the Kyoto
Protocol. Thus, there is very little likelihood of any funds
being actually available in this fund until the end of the first
commitment period (2008 to 2012) of the Kyoto Protocol. |
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Where do we go from here? |
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The future of the UNFCCC process is highly dependent on whether
or not the Kyoto Protocol finally comes into force. Thus there
are two major paths forward: |
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1. |
If
Kyoto comes into force:
If this happens fairly soon it will undoubtedly give a major
boost to the (currently flagging) energy levels amongst the
climate change negotiators from both developed as well as
developing countries. Under this scenario there is likely to be
a significant increase in activities to reduce greenhouse gases
in the developed countries (at least in Europe, Canada and
Japan) as well in the developing countries (e.g. CDM projects).
Admittedly the absence of the United States, and to a lesser
extent Australia, will mean that such activities would not be as
significant as they might otherwise have been, nevertheless they
will undoubtedly be significant. This will also trigger
negotiations on the next stage of Kyoto, which will have to
include such questions as: |
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(i) |
What should be the levels of greenhouse reductions for the
second commitment period? |
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(II) |
How should developing countries come on board?
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(III) |
How can the US and Australia be brought back on board?
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These will remain very difficult questions to answer, but with
Kyoto in force they may be amenable to solution, assuming
goodwill on the part of all major parties. |
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2. |
If
Kyoto does not come into force:
If Kyoto does not come into force, then it will indeed be very
difficult to regain the lost momentum of the climate change
negotiations, as the energy and political capital that was used
in getting Kyoto agreed will be seen to have achieved nothing in
the end. This will be particularly galling for the Europeans who
have been the main supporters of Kyoto from the beginning and
who have invested much political capital in getting it signed in
the first place. Although the European Union is still likely to
go ahead with its own targets and emissions trading schemes,
they will no longer be doing it within a globally agreed treaty
and thus will have much less significance. Under this scenario,
it would really mean a tragic reassessment of the whole UNFCCC
regime and perhaps a new beginning on how to shape the global
agreement in future. |
In spite of the uncertainty with regard to Kyoto as described above,
it is very likely that the developing countries, which have not
really played a significant part so far, will become more active in
the future climate change regime, regardless which scenario actually
unfolds. This will undoubtedly mean a greater emphasis on the issue
of adaptation together with mitigation. Thus, the future beyond
Kyoto can no longer be addressed purely in terms of mitigation,
which Kyoto did, but it must include the issue of adaptation as well
as mitigation.
Exactly how this will be achieved in the context of the climate
change negotiations is difficult to predict but some outlines of the
kinds of issues that will have to be addressed can be suggested
below:
Future negotiations including adaptation
So far
in the negotiations, the issue of adaptation has not had a single
major role, unlike mitigation which had the Kyoto Protocol
negotiated for it and appears in a number of different areas. One
suggestion has been to consolidate all the different parts of the
negotiations where adaptation appears into a single negotiating text
or even a separate “Adaptation Protocol”- similar to Kyoto.
Regardless of whether the texts are consolidated or negotiated
separately the following are issues that will have to be dealt with:
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1. |
Science of adaptation:
As adaptation is both a relatively new subject and it requires a
great deal of location-specific information, it will be
necessary to enhance the scientific understanding of adaptation
and what makes sense as actions. This will require action by the
Subsidiary Body on Science and Technology Assessment (SBSTA). |
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2. |
Adaptation and development:
Adaptation is integrally linked to issues of mainstream
development and hence cannot, indeed it should not, be looked at
in isolation from mainstream development. Thus, the role of
adaptation to climate change and development will need to be
better understood before effective adaptation actions can be
pursued. |
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3. |
Capacity building and adaptation:
A major part of adaptation is the notion of Adaptive Capacity,
namely the ability of a country or community to effectively
adapt to climate change. Enhancing adaptive capacity will be one
of the key means by which developing countries will be able to
deal with future climate change impacts. |
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4. |
Funding adaptation:
Although, relatively small so far, the Marrakesh Funds will need
to be replenished considerably in the near future to asset
developing countries to undertake the necessary adaptations to
climate change. However, the climate change funds need not be
the only source for such financial support. New ways of making
funding available (e.g. through insurance) may need to be found. |
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5. |
Mainstreaming adaptation:
Dealing effectively with climate change cannot be done solely on
stand-alone adaptation measures alone, but need to be done by
the mainstream sectoral and national actors and policy-makers.
This will require those actors to understand the potential
impacts of climate change and then to be able to incorporate or
“mainstream” the adaptations to climate change into their normal
development actions and plans. |
Conclusion
For
the first ten years of the climate change negotiations, the issue of
adaptation has taken a back seat to that of mitigation. That will no
longer be possible in the future rounds of negotiations. Ways will
have to be found to enable international, national and local
responses, including policies, to address both the issue of adapting
to climate change as well as mitigating the emissions of greenhouse
gases. It is very likely that by looking at adaptation and
mitigation together as two sides of the same climate change response
coin (rather than separate issues as they have been treated in the
past) will yield advantages, synergies and win-win strategies. q
The author is the Director, Climate Change Programme,
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED),
London, United Kingdom.
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