Adaptation Futures 2018, the fifth in the Adaptation Futures international conference series on global adaptation.
LTS Director Irene Karani travelled to Cape Town last week to attend this conference, here’s what she found…
The conference aimed to facilitate dialogues for solutions between key actors from diverse perspectives and regions and attracted over 1,300 scientists, practitioners, business leaders and policymakers from around the world. Delegates were able to view the responses of local artists to the realities of climate change, as well as join in the Community Kraal, which focused on the lived experiences of climate change. The Adaptation Expo showcased the work of 24 organisations actively involved in responding to climate change.
This is the first time the conference was held in Africa and it presented an opportunity for discussions on adaptation in developing countries and increased the participation of participants from the developing world.
Six themes were discussed in the conference namely:
The Adaptation Futures Conference was organised by the UN Environment (Programme for Research on Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (PROVIA Programme). It had representation from climate change global actors, such as the UNFCCC, GCF, Adaptation Fund, EU, World Bank, AfDB, scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, researchers, academic institutions from all continents, non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, consulting companies and policy makers.
In Africa, adaptation planning is a priority of most governments as their citizens are bearing the brunt of climate change. This has been manifested with the increased frequency of extreme events such as droughts and floods, leading to governments having to address the impacts almost on an annual basis. This has meant that development processes have not taken place at the required pace due to a continuous emergency crisis.
In recognition of this, Kenya, has strategically mainstreamed adaptation planning in its climate change policies and plans. The costed National Adaptation Plan (NAP, 2016) is linked to the Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC, 2015) and the National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP, 2013).
The objectives of this work were to:
This involved stakeholder engagement at all levels in developing Kenya’s ATAR in 2012, and in developing Kenya’s INDC and NAP concurrently in 2015. In the ATAR, a sectoral risk assessment, adaptation costing, private sector assessment, climate information assessment, and prioritisation of adaptation actions were done. Policy briefs on the agriculture, infrastructure, environment, water and sanitation, tourism, trade and industry and planning sectors were also developed. The INDC and NAP processes thereafter, refined the sectoral adaptation actions in the ATAR and adaptation actions in both documents were harmonized, refined and costed in the NAP with tentative timelines.
As the process of developing the three documents took over four years, the process of linking adaptation actions in the INDC and NAP processes became easier, especially because Kenya’s Climate Change Directorate was at the forefront of ensuring that the work done in the ATAR was not duplicated but enhanced in the subsequent processes. The NCCAP and NDC are strategic climate change policy documents anchored in Kenya’s Vision 2030. The NAP is an actionable document which provides detailed adaptation actions and budgets across all Kenya’s development sectors with the inclusion of gender and other vulnerable groups. In implementing the NAP, the development aspirations in the NCCAP, the NDC and ultimately Vision 2030 will be realised.