Friends and colleagues,
My thanks for the invitation to speak at the closing of Korea Global Adaptation Week and the 8th Asia-Pacific Climate Adaptation Network (APAN) Forum. These are important moments in efforts to adapt to climate impacts in the region.
These impacts are already ferocious. Already relentless. Already deadly. I witnessed this when I visited Khairpur District in Pakistan in February. Six months after the floods, there was no drinking water. No health facilities. No schools. For those people, it wasn’t climate change. It was climate catastrophe.
Catastrophe is becoming more common for many of the world’s most vulnerable. In Asia Pacific, sea-level rise could displace millions of people. Production of staple crops will decrease with every fraction of a degree above the targets of the Paris Agreement. The region’s Gross Domestic Product could fall by three per cent by 2050 without stronger action.
As I told policymakers in China earlier this week, climate change is THE challenge of our times. Climate action cannot be lost in competition between nations, in political aspirations, economic woes or other crises. Short-term gain at the expense of the climate will only bring long-term pain.
The world must show real leadership and action now – on adaptation as much as mitigation. It can take generations and thousand of years for species to adapt to changes in their environment. Humanity doesn’t have that luxury of time. The impacts are with us now. Vulnerable people, vulnerable communities and vulnerable nations need our help now.
This is why your discussions were important. They can help to accelerate action. And your cross-cutting focus on gender equality and social inclusion strikes at the heart of climate justice. The poor and disenfranchised suffer the most from climate change. Among these groups, women bear the biggest brunt. These are the people to protect and include as we ramp up adaptation action.
Friends, there are, as I see it, some key takeaways from this forum that will ramp up action.
One, we must harness traditional knowledge in the science-policy interface and ecosystem restoration and management.
We need to conserve and restore the ecosystems of Asia-Pacific – in so doing, delivering benefits such as flood control, water purification and climate regulation. To do this, we must bring the best practices and science, new and old, and apply them appropriately.
For centuries, indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) have managed their lands in harmony with nature. They are the best stewards of land and biodiversity. They possess a wealth of local climate solutions. Yet we have overlooked IPLCs. Left them out of negotiations. Dismissed their knowledge in the science-policy interface. This is foolish arrogance, not social inclusion.
Understanding how cascading risks work in a country is vital to identifying entry points for adaptation. Infusing science with perspectives from the ground is essential to ensure that adaptation investments support community priorities. This means listening to IPLCs and empowering them to take charge of solutions.
We saw this in Fiji, where Indigenous and traditional knowledge was used as part of an Ecosystem-based adaptation assessment to determine which native species could reduce coastal erosion and flooding. More of this, please.
Two, we must reform food systems to protect livelihoods and food security.
The Food Systems Summit Stocktaking moment, hosted earlier by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), reminded us that food systems need to transform. To reduce their emissions. To reduce land conversion and ecosystem pollution. And to build resilience to climate impacts.
There are many ways to do this. Adopting regenerative agriculture and conservation-oriented farming. Refocusing subsidies to incentivize farmers to change practices. Restoring landscapes and soils to avoid conversion of virgin ecosystems and buffer climate impacts – an example of which we see in Pakistan’s Living Indus Initiative.
Gender equality has to be front and centre in these efforts. In many countries, more women than men work the land, but these women have less access to tenure, resources and inputs. This must change to ensure the restoration of nature – including through efforts under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Early warnings are also important. With the right data, nations and communities can act ahead of extreme weather. This is an up-front investment that protects people, agriculture and infrastructure. Early action is more cost-effective than post-disaster humanitarian appeals – which we all know are increasingly difficult to fund.
UNEP is proud to be co-founder of the Systematic Observations Financing Facility and an implementer of its work, with Green Climate Fund support. UNEP is helping Timor-Leste build an early warning system. And integrating climate and ocean information services and early warning systems in Cook Islands, Niue, Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.
If we make such systems available to every vulnerable nation and community, we go a long way to softening the blows of climate change.
Three, we must climate-proof cities and infrastructure by prioritizing nature-based solutions.
The world’s cities face serious climate risks. Still humanity is drawn to these cities, like a moth to a flame. Urbanization will not stop. So, our cities need to become safe, green havens, not concrete concentrations of climate misery.
This means bringing nature back into cities to, for example, provide natural cooling, which can be lifesaving for those who can’t afford air conditioning. This means prioritizing urban and peri-urban agriculture, which can boost food security and livelihoods for the urban poor. This means looking at everything from construction materials to grey-green infrastructure.
UrbanShift, which UNEP runs with partners, is working in this space. In fact, UrbanShift will host its first Asia forum later this month in New Delhi – bringing together representatives from cities in India, China and Indonesia, international organizations and the private sector.
Four, we must deliver the right finance through the right frameworks.
As everybody here knows, adaptation finance needs to dramatically increase. This finance must come from varied sources and be directed appropriately through international and national frameworks.
This forum has highlighted how healthy nature is central to adaptation. So, rapid implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework is critical. The good news is that the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund was launched at the GEF Assembly last week, with initial funding from Canada and the UK. Now we need to fill up this fund.
But funding and frameworks on nature and climate require a stronger focus on adaptation. This means a stronger adaptation dimension in national planning and budgeting frameworks. And a stronger representation of those priorities in Nationally Determined Contributions. It means developed nations delivering on their climate finance promises. And it means pulling every lever available in the public, private and international financing sectors.
Public financing can be a critical enabler by, for example, setting policy and price signals. By directing domestic budget flows and adaptation finance through national development plans. And by redirecting subsidies from climate and nature-damaging practices towards adaptation.
The private sector must make nature an asset on the balance sheet, one that is invested in. The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures is progressing in this area. The taskforce’s recommendations on risk management and disclosure frameworks are due to be published this month. UNEP’s Finance Initiative, meanwhile, convenes the financial community to scale up investments.
And, of course, we must apply innovative financing mechanisms to loss and damage, which is imperative to climate justice. Options include carbon pricing, taxes and cap-and-trade systems. As the UN Secretary-General has said, we should tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies and divert this money to countries suffering loss and damage.
Friends,
We could talk about adaptation for days but let me stop here. What I ask now is that you, the practitioners, take forward what you have learned at this forum and the climate week. We at UNEP will do the same.
As COP 28 Director-General Ambassador Majid Al Suwaidi said during the Korea Global Adaptation Week, adaptation and resilience will be high on the agenda of the meeting – including through a framework for the Global Goal on Adaptation. The Loss and Damage mechanism needs to be agreed. And the stocktaking moment will reveal where we stand and what more we must do.
UNEP will take what it has learned from this forum to the COP. And remind negotiators that the Paris Agreement was not just a piece of paper to be signed and waved in the air. It was a promise, to billions of people facing a living climate hell, to protect them. It is time to keep that promise. And deliver climate justice for all.
