Adaptation to climate change and sustainable development: some concepts

1
Adaptation to climate change and sustainable
developmentsome concepts

• Saleemul Huq
• Director
• Climate Change Programme
• International Institute for Environment and
  Development

2
Impacts of climate change

• Impacts will occur in most parts of the planet
  and have to faced
• Both developed and developing countries will feel
  the impacts
• The rich will be able to better cope with the
  impacts than the poor (both in developed as well
  as developing countries)

3
Vulnerable countries (and communities)

• All developing countries are particularly
  vulnerable to impacts of climate change (due to
  both their location as well poverty)
• Amongst the most vulnerable developing countries
  are the small island developing states (SIDS) and
  least developed countries (LDCs)
• Within developing countries the most vulnerable
  people are the poor communities living in the
  climate risk zones

4
Adaptation and development

• The adverse impacts of climate change can be
  reduced (but not eliminated) by planned
  adaptation
• Activities related to adaptation are most
  effective in a number of development related
  sectors
• The main sectors for adaptation are water
  management, agriculture,coastal zone
  management,mountain ecosystem management and
  climatic hazard management (e.g. floods, droughts
  and cyclones)

5
Adaptation Planning

• Within (developing) countries
• Focusing on the most vulnerable communities (and
  ecosystems)
• Mainstreaming into development planning (based on
  existing development knowledge)
• Building Adaptive Capacity
• Raising awareness
• Examples are NAPAs (in LDCs)

6
Role of UNFCCC

• All signatories have accepted responsibility to
  assist the most vulnerable countries to adapt
• New Funds have been created for this purpose
  (e.g. LDC Fund, Special Climate Change Fund)
• Promoting awareness, knowledge generation and
  capacity building

7
Concluding remarks

• In the real world some level of unavoidable
  climate change impacts are very probably going to
  happen within the next few decades and all
  countries and communities will have to cope with
  them (whether they like it or not)
• Signatories to the UNFCCC have the power to
  reduce those impacts by (first) ensuring maximum
  mitigation and (second) by assisting the
  developing countries to adapt