Evaluating Climate Change: Pro-Poor Perspectives (original) (raw)
Related papers
FINANCING CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Climate change is the key issue confronting humanity today. In addition to raising the specter of looming ecological disaster, it is also the fundamental human development issue of our time. The impacts of climate change will be transferred to human communities in lopsided proportions with the maximum costs transferred to the poorest and the most vulnerable. Evidently then, fighting poverty and fighting the impacts of climate change have a strategic linkage which needs to be explored for effective policy making. Climate change and human development are locked in dialectic, with changes in one affecting the other. Thus many adverse effects of climate change can be forestalled by focusing on development, and this focus can reciprocally help fighting the causes of climate change. The global climate change regime overseen by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a complex governance mechanism, with responsibility to coordinate climate change action among states. The global solution to the perils of climate change has crystallized in the form of two competing strategies, mitigation and adaptation, with the former aimed at the causes and the latter at addressing the effects of climate change. Since the developed countries have a disproportionately large carbon footprint, mitigation would not succeed without a cooperative framework involving commitments from all advanced industrialized countries. Meanwhile, the socioeconomic costs will continue to be borne by the less developed countries who must adapt to alleviate the impacts. Closer analysis suggests that current global efforts are biased in favour of mitigation at the cost of adaptation which is more germane to human development. Understanding the reasons for this bias is the key to understanding the mystery surrounding global inaction on adaptation and thus development. This article critically explores the history and functioning of the international climate regime to discover these reasons. The second component of a critical analysis is of course the exploration of alternatives towards positive action. Therefore, an evaluation of the potential of 'microfinance' as a strategy for financing adaptation is also a part of this study. Finally, the employment of microfinance as a strategic approach for adaptation efforts at the societal level is conceptualized with the dual aim of creating employment opportunities and thus poverty alleviation, as well as mobilizing the vast human resource currently neglected in the global discourse on climate change. 2
Beyond Aid: Ensuring adaptation to climate change works for the poor
2009
Climate-related shocks are affecting the lives of millions of poor people with increasing frequency and severity. Without urgent action, recent development progress will stall – then go into reverse. The international community must make a new commitment to fund adaptation to climate change. Funds must be additional to the promise to deliver 0.7 per cent of rich country income as aid and raised and managed in new ways. A global adaptation finance mechanism is needed, able to deliver the scale of funding required and governed according to the principles of equity, subsidiarity, transparency, and accountability. This will insure against future development losses and help to resuscitate the international climate negotiations, laying the foundations for a fair and safe deal at Copenhagen at the end of this year.
Evaluating Climate Change Adaptation: Learning From Methods in International Development
New Directions for Evaluation, 2015
This article reviews evaluation methods used in the field of international development to draw lessons for the specific challenges of evaluating climate change adaptation. The three specific challenges identified in climate change and resilience monitoring and evaluation are: assessing attribution, creating baselines, and monitoring over long time horizons. This article highlights a range of methods that can be used in climate change adaptation and concludes that, although the methods are available, it is how they are applied that can help address these particular challenges. Methods used within an overarching conceptual framework that emphasizes mixed methods, participatory methodologies, and an iterative, learning focus can start to address the inherent challenges in evaluating responses to an uncertain future climate. This type of approach and application of a set of methods can also be useful in other areas of evaluation, where the outcomes are very long term and socioeconomic trends are extremely uncertain.
2016
Climate change might be seen as a remote issue compared with more urgent problems, as poverty, disease and economic stagnation. However, it can directly affect the efficiency of resource investments and eventually hinder the achievement of many development objectives. There is therefore a need to link climate change considerations with development priorities. Considerable research has already been done on climate change mitigation but much less attention has been paid to make development strategies more resilient to climate change impacts. Lack of awareness of climate change within the development community and limitations on resources to implement response measures are the most frequently cited explanations. Mainstreaming climate policies could also prove difficult to carry out because of direct trade-offs between development priorities and the actions required to deal with climate change. Governments and donors confronting pressing challenges, such as poverty and inadequate infras...
Climatic Change, 2011
The topics of climate change and of what to do about it have been the subject of discussion for over two decades. Much of the focus has been on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the rate and magnitude of changes. Adapting to the impacts of those changes has received much less attention. In recent years, the development assistance community has recognized that climate change poses a stress on economic and social development in poor countries and has turned its attention to addressing climate stress. The US Agency for International Development developed a methodology of working with stakeholders to identify sources of climate related vulnerability and approaches to reducing that vulnerability. The methodology was developed iteratively with several pilot studies looking at vulnerability and adaptation in different sectors and settings.
A Can of Worms-Challenges to Climate Change Adaptation in Developing Countries
2017
By 2020, up to 250 million people will be exposed to water stress due to Climate Change (CC), and rain-fed agriculture will be reduced by half (IPCC, 2014). By the end of 21 st century, sea-level rise will largely affect populations living on coastal areas and adaptions measures will cost 5-10% of GDP (ibid). And while consequences of CC are global, developing countries are more vulnerable to them (Cambwera and Stage, 2010). For example, Africa's low GPD and having most of its big cities on coastal areas, make it more challenging for them to adapt to CC (OECD, 2003). Moreover, until The Paris Agreement in 2015, developed countries took the lead responsibility in mitigating CC while adaption was more urgent to developing countries (Nunan, 217; IPCC, 2014). This has heightened intensity of the challenges that developing countries face. In this assignment, we will Identify and critically review the challenges developing countries face in adapting to CC by first defining climate change and adaption to frame the discussion, then briefly mention overarching challenges. Then we critically explore two compounded challenges, namely: Weak adaptive capacities and complex hierarchy of adaptation (Prioritization). However, we will conclude that, while developed countries face similar challenges, adaption is harder to attain by developing countries as their challenges intersection with other developmental aspects. And some challenges have resulted from adaptation methodologies themselves. Climate Change, Adaptation and Overarching Challenges To put adaptation measures to CC in context, we have to look at the definitions it has been given to it. In the independent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CC was defined as changes happening in climate due to human activity or natural variability (IPCC, 2014). Nevertheless, in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) definition, it reflected the role of natural variability as a secondary factor in changes to climate (UNFCCC, 2006a). This suggests that UNFCC wants to prioritize human-led changes in their adaption efforts. When reflecting about CC in the context of developing countries, human-led activities from developed countries are the hegemonic factor (UNFCC, 2006b). Thus leaving CC agenda, which developing countries have little say in, under question. The definition for adaption is still contested too. It has been defined as ""Adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities" (IPCC, 2001), while the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) defined it as a "Process" , UKCIP as an "outcome" and UNFCCC as "Steps". These definitions lead to different expectations from different stakeholders thus adding to the overarching challenges of adaption on developing countries where stakeholders in development and CC discourse are far more diverse (OECD, 2006). Furthermore, after The Paris Agreement, developing countries