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
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
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:
Mr. Juan Hoffmaister, Co-Chair UNFCCC Adaptation Committee, Bolivia
Mr. Mosuoe Letuma, Least Developed Country Expert Group, Lesotho
Ms. Anne Hammill, IISD
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:
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]
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:
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
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
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:
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
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