Bonn, Germany - The UN’s latest round of climate negotiations took place last month, and the international adaptation community has been watching closely. 193 governments came together in Bonn, Germany, to reinforce their ambitions to fight climate change. In preparation, the Global Adaptation Network (GAN) hosted a critical expert meeting on adaptation. Convened in Abu Dhabi, the regional Technical Expert Meeting (TEM-A) analysed best practices for reaching those most threatened by climate change, and the results were used to inform the global Bonn Conference last month.
The TEM-A took place on the last day of GAN’s major Forum in March, held in collaboration with Zayed University and the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment. In keeping with the theme of reaching the most vulnerable, the TEM-A addressed a number of themes, such as climate-induced migration, resilience among small island developing states, and bringing adaptation solutions to people with disabilities.
The TEM-A will be guiding climate policy on an international scale. At Bonn last month, the results of the TEM-A were integrated into the UNFCCC’s larger climate process, known as the global Technical Examination Process on Adaptation (TEP-A).
Rebecca Nadin from the Overseas Development Institute gave a presentation on the relationship between adaptation and mass migration. Nadin urged the audience to think of migration as not solely a repercussion of climate change, but a strategy for ameliorating its effects. In 2016, ten of the largest disaster events were linked to climate change, and approximately 24 million people were displaced, explained Nadin. The role of migration in adaptation planning should be fed into the UNFCCC, and must be developed as part of a national socio-economic planning policy.
“Migration has existed for millennia. It’s multi-causal and complex… Climate change is complicating this already complex picture.”
- Rebecca Nadin, Overseas Development Institute
The TEM-A was privileged to host, as a keynote speaker, Fiji’s High-Level Climate Champion, The Honorable Minister Inia Seruiratu. The Minister took the opportunity to emphasize that adaptation is fundamental for island states. “It’s about survival’, he said. The Minister also encouraged the audience to see themselves as part of one ecosystem. “We are all in the same canoe.”
Representing the Red Cross, Mawanda Shaban detailed the work of the Red Crescent Climate Centre (RCCC), an initiative created to support the efforts of around 190 societies across the world in their quest for climate resilience. The ethos of the RCCC builds on the spirit of ‘leaving no one behind,’ an axiom underlying the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Shaban explained that since 2009, RCCC has quadrupled its adaptation-based activities, encompassing work in Kenya, Nepal, Malawi and the South Caucasus. “We’ve tried to link local realities to global policies,” Shaban concluded.
The Head of the Global Adaptation Network, Barney Dickson, shed light on a rarely discussed theme of adaptation - reaching those with disabilities. Dickson told a story about Rommel Lo, a leading member of the Dumaguete Effata Association of the Deaf in the Philippines. This organization won a climate-forecasting contest. The prize involved an offer to attend a leadership meeting with the UN Climate Resilience Initiative (A2R) in Bonn COP23. Lo observed that, of the 10,000-12,000 attendees at Bonn, he was one of the few people with disabilities. If the international climate change community is serious about ‘leaving no one behind’, then this issue of reaching the disabled must be addressed.
Mercy Dube, a representative of the Malawi Ministry of Land, Housing and Development, outlined the complications when different national ministries have competing objectives that appear to be zero-sum. In Malawi, human activity along the riverbeds is weakening vast ecological systems, compounding with climate change to increase droughts and flooding. Whilst environmental ministries might enforce no-build zones along the riverbeds, agricultural ministries can still incentivize human expansion in these areas to increase the arable land for crops. Dube insisted that finance is paramount to detangle these conflicting priorities.
In the spirit of participatory discourse, the audience of this expert meeting provided thought-provoking contributions. Questions were raised about the occasionally troublesome linguistic dichotomy of ‘us’-versus-‘them’, sometimes a corollary of phrases such as ‘reaching the vulnerable’ and ‘leaving no one behind.’ It implies, some said, that the most vulnerable are simply the recipients of assistance from others, rather than agents who can build their own resilience.
The session closed with a warm thank you from both GAN and the UNFCCC for this insightful chapter on adaptation, helping the international community navigate through future adaptation challenges and providing essential guidance to last month’s Bonn Conference.
