How can climate change adaptation be mainstreamed in development cooperation agencies and in partner countries’ development plans? What are the priorities for governments and donors? This report recommends moving the co-ordination of adaptation implementation into powerful central bodies, and integrating consideration of long-term climate risks in national planning processes as well as in budgets. It also highlights the need to boost the capacity to assess climate change implications, and to examine the resilience of existing policies and frameworks.
Climate change threatens to affect development objectives as it will affect poor countries disproportionately. However, many development policies, plans and projects currently fail to take into account climate variability, let alone climate change.
‘Development as usual’ may inadvertently increase vulnerability to climate change. For instance, new roads might be weatherproofed from an engineering standpoint, but might trigger settlement in areas highly exposed to climate change impacts. The risk of such ‘maladaptation’ means that partner countries need to systematically assess climate risks and vulnerabilities and include adaptation measures in development policies, plans and projects.
Such a systematic approach could identify adaptation entry points in the policy cycle and the appropriate intervention. A ‘climate lens’ can help in considering the extent to which a policy or programme pays attention to climate change impacts and can improve its general direction and priorities.
At the national, sectoral, project and local levels, there are many examples of how to integrate climate adaptation into development policies.
- At the national level, a climate lens can be applied during the formulation of national visions, strategies and policies. This can help to identify particularly vulnerable zones or sectors.
- At the sectoral level, during the resource allocation and programming stage, for example, climate change risks could be included in the screening criteria used to assess project proposals before their inclusion into the investment programme.
- At the project level, the project cycle can be used as a framework to integrate the assessment of climate risks and the identification, analysis and prioritisation of adaptation options.
- At the local level, the impact of climate change could be considered in the development planning processes of local governments (village action plans, rural/district development plans, and city development plans).
International donors have a key role to play in supporting partner countries to facilitate the integration of climate change adaptation. Donors can:
- Support capacity building efforts to better monitor climate change, as well as to assess future climate change impacts and adaptation priorities at national and sectoral levels.
- Use high-level policy dialogue as a vehicle to raise the profile of adaptation with senior officials in partner countries in key ministries like Finance and Planning.
- Provide financial support by, for example, contributing to a horizontal fund for adaptation managed by a central body such as a Planning or Finance Ministry. Sectoral ministries could then draw on this fund to meet the additional costs of integration.
- Better co-ordinate and harmonise their adaptation efforts at the country level.
- Support the development of urban/rural authorities’ adaptation capacity by encouraging infrastructure projects and local autonomy.
