20-21 April 2015, OECD, Paris France

 

About the meeting

 

Annotated Agenda

 

Co-chairs: Ms. Yuka Greiler (Switzerland) and Mr. Gottfried von Gemmingen (Germany)

 

Meeting background and objectives

Approaches to managing climate risk at the regional, national, and sub-national levels are evolving quickly. Decisions to be made on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a new climate agreement at COP21 in Paris will determine how development partners and providers of development co-operation respond to climate and development challenges in the coming decades. The push to develop National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and the elaboration of the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) also have the potential to enable multiple actors work together to reduce the vulnerability of developing countries to risks associated with extreme weather and slow-onset events. Climate risk transfer, sharing and financing tools will likely be key elements of a disaster risk management strategy in a developing country and integrated into NAP processes.

The aim of this meeting was to explore the wider context that will affect development co-operation in support of adaptation, and also to focus specifically on the work areas identified at the 2014 Task Team meeting.

 

Sessions: 

Adaptation policy developments towards COP21

Managing climate risk through ecosystem-based adaptation – linking urban and rural development planning

Dialogue on post-2015 policy and the role of adaptation

Experiences with risk transfer, sharing and financing

Strengthening risk management, transfer and sharing at the national level

 

 

Details and presentations from the sessions

 

Adaptation policy developments towards COP21

 

This session featured updates from the main adaptation-related international processes and highlighted crucial developments and decision points in the lead-up to COP21. Representatives of relevant initiatives presented their perspectives on these developments. Task Team members and other participants were invited to share their questions and views.

Questions discussed during this session: 

• What are the key milestones and decision points in the global agenda related to adaptation in 2015? How are providers of development co-operation engaging with these milestones?
• What preliminary recommendations for COP21 are emerging from the UNFCCC Adaptation Committee and LEG?
• What role is the NAP Global Network preparing to play both before and after COP21?
• How are development co-operation providers’ activities interacting with these international-level groups to support developing countries to adapt to climate change?

  

Mr. Juan Hoffmaister, Co-Chair UNFCCC Adaptation Committee, Bolivia

 

 

 

Mr. Mosuoe Letuma, Least Developed Country Expert Group, Lesotho

 

 

 

Ms. Anne Hammill, IISD

 

 

Managing climate risk through ecosystem-based adaptation – linking urban and rural development planning

 

National efforts to address climate-related risks and challenges to development will need to account for the local-level dimension of climate change adaptation, and the closely related role played by ecosystem-based adaptation. There is a growing body of work on urban adaptation, but much less on the critical issue of the linkages between urban and rural ecosystems management and climate risk. From an overarching development planning perspective, a key question is how national adaptation and disaster risk management efforts are integrated with rural and urban development plans, including through emerging national adaptation plans (NAPs), and how these value natural capital and incorporate ecosystem services.
This session considered how ecosystem-based adaptation can be integrated into individual countries’ NAP processes and more broadly into urban and rural development, opportunities for financing from international climate funds and other forms of development finance, and challenges to scaling up ecosystem-based adaptation disaster risk management efforts. The session considered case studies of urban ecosystem-based adaptation and opportunities for rural ecosystem management in developing countries, with attention to the urban-rural benefits of such action.

Questions Discussed during this session:

• How does ecosystem based adaptation fit into national and local adaptation planning in urban and rural areas? What are the key entry points and when are the conditions right to prioritise this type of adaptation planning?
• How should ecosystem-based adaptation be reflected in individual countries’ NAPs processes? What are the emerging lessons? What enabling conditions need to be in place to make ecosystem based adaptation work?
• What are the challenges or barriers in implementing ecosystem-based adaptation, and how do these differ in urban areas compared to rural areas? How can the potential benefits to urban areas of rural ecosystem-based adaptation be measured?
• What opportunities are there for innovative financing of ecosystem-based adaptation activities?

  

Ms. Alexis Robert & Ms. Anna Drutschinin, OECD Secretariat

 

 

 

Ms. Mandy Barnett, South African National Biodiversity Institute

 

 

Mr. Jon Duncan, Old Mutual Investment Group, South Africa

 

 

Ms. Nguyen Trung Thang, Institute of Strategy and Policy on Natural Resources and Environment (ISPONRE), Viet Nam

 

 

Roland White, World Bank [no presentation]

 

  

Dialogue on post-2015 policy and the role of adaptation

 

Decisions made in 2015 on climate change and development will help determine global responses to these challenges for the coming decades. For example, four of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the Open Working Group explicitly refer to adapting or reducing vulnerability to climate change: Proposed goal 1 - End poverty in all its forms everywhere; Proposed goal 2 - End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture; Proposed goal 11 - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable; and Proposed goal 13 - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. This session featured an informal dialogue among Task Team participants and those who have been following the Open Working Group’s discussions and/or the Hyogo Framework and the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (Sendai City) related to resilience and adaptation. The session considered expected outcomes on adaptation from COP21 and the goal to build on these different initiatives to strengthen country-led adaptation activities in the post-2015 period as part of the broader effort to achieve sustainable development goals.

Questions discussed during this session: 

• Given the broad recognition of the need to adapt to climate change as part of a broader resilience agenda in the Post-2015 SDGs, and the recent outcomes from the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, what are the implications for national, sector and local adaptation policy?
• What are the major implementation challenges and entry points for integrating climate adaptation into national and sub-national development plans, policies and processes?
• How can development co-operation position to assist partner countries to translate universal SDGs and action on disaster risk reduction into robust, locally owned NAP processes?

  

Experiences with risk transfer, sharing and financing

The aim of this session was to identify lessons that have been learned to date from the use of risk transfer, sharing and financing tools. Relevant initiatives include: the African Risk Capacity (ARC), Ethiopia's HARITA project and the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), and the World Bank's Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (CatDDO) in Colombia.
Issues that were discussed in this session include the challenges and successes to date in achieving coverage, supporting livelihoods and building resilience. Given that the nature of the tools can vary by context or by type of stakeholder group, the discussion also focused on how they have been tailored to reflect these different needs, but also the lessons that can be generalised from these experiences. 

Discussion questions

• What do the enabling conditions for successful implementation of risk sharing, transfer and financing tools look like? How do these vary by context?
• How can improvements in risk-sharing, transfer and financing be achieved in developing countries when these enabling conditions are not fully in place?
• What lessons can be learned from countries with risk sharing, transfer and financing tools in place?

 

Mr. Michael Mullan & Mr. Takayoshi Kato, OECD Secretariat

 

 

Mr. Papa Zoumana Diarra, The African Risk Capacity Insurance Company Limited

 

 

Mr. Karsten Loeffler, Allianz Climate Solutions

 

Mr. Jozias Blok, EC International Cooperation and Development

 

 

Strengthening risk management, transfer and sharing at the national level

 

There is a new context for the financing of climate risk at the national level, with the emergence of National Adaptation Plans, loss and damage discussions under the UNFCCC, and the establishment of the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action. Building on the discussion in the previous session, this session focused on how countries, the private sector and development agencies can collaborate to enhance the coverage and efficacy of risk-sharing and transfer arrangements to help address the impacts of climate change.

The discussion covered key entry points and enabling conditions for successfully implementing risk management tools. It focused on outlining the legislative, operative and institutional pre-requisites in place and on how the appropriate risk management approach may vary for different types of developing countries and types of stakeholders, depending on their access to financial resources and their level of engagement. A particular emphasis was on reaching poor and vulnerable populations who may not be served by traditional insurance mechanisms.

Questions discussed during this session: 

• What are the key entry points for selecting and implementing risk-transfer and risk-sharing tools at the national and sub-national level?
• How can risk transfer and sharing tools be incorporated into the NAP process?
• How can development co-operation providers support climate risk financing strategies at the national level in developing countries?

 

Mr. John Harding, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction [no presentation]

 

 

Mr. Tomonori Sudo, Japan Intetnational Cooperation Agency

 

 

Mr. David Sheppard, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), Samoa