Climate News Desk
The UNFCCC’s Adaptation Committee has kicked off a series of region-specific events aimed at taking forward longer-term work to protect populations from the inevitable impacts of climate change.
The Adaptation Committee launched the series of regional engagement events at Korea Global Adaptation Week, which took place in Songdo from 28 August to 1 September.
The focus on regional events is happening as the international community prepares to shift gear in terms of building resilience, with many inputs to the global stocktake indicating that there is a need to prioritize adaptation.
The first global stocktake will conclude at COP28 in Dubai at the end of the year and is expected to be accompanied by decisions designed to accelerate adaptation action.
First of regional adaptation meetings examines Asia-Pacific context
The first event in the new series, dubbed ‘Boosting region-wide coherence on adaptation’, examined the Asia-Pacific context in terms of the shift from project-level thinking on adaptation to the overarching, programmatic systems-thinking that is needed to bring about the transformational change needed to design a resilient future.
The event in Songdo focused on enhancing a common understanding of current region-wide and transboundary adaptation efforts; exploring solutions, areas for collaboration, pathways towards stronger synergies, and opportunities to address gaps and align needs with the global adaptation agenda, as well as ways in which the Adaptation Committee can support these efforts; facilitating the dissemination and exchange of information between relevant stakeholders; and feeding this work into the Adaptation Committee’s global longer-term work under the Adaptation Forum.
Diverse stakeholders participated, with the objective of contributing to post-COP28 implementation strategies and priorities for enhancing adaptation initiatives.
The event explored the current science on adaptation, resilience and adaptive capacity, and regional projects that tackle transboundary issues, including migration, shared watercourses and other adaptation developments.
Examples of regional adaptation action
Displaced persons and migrants are often among the most vulnerable to climate risks. Adaptation can help to avert, minimize and address climate-induced displacement that erodes adaptive capacity and increases vulnerability. Other forms of mobility, such as evacuation, labour migration, planned relocation, can also contribute to increase adaptive capacity.
The International Organization for Migration, for example, is developing a regional framework on climate-related mobility with a range of anticipated outcomes.
One planned outcome is for Pacific civil society actors, worker and employer organizations, and communities to actively engage in national, regional and global processes to manage climate mobility.
This would involve community leaders having more access to information and knowledge on voluntary and involuntary migration; civil society actors and affected migrant populations having increased capacity to address climate mobility and to advocate for human rights-based governmental responses; and worker and employer organizations in the Pacific being better equipped to promote safe and fair labour mobility.
Scientific insights, as shared during the meeting’s scene-setting presentation by the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Secretariat, were identified as crucial decision-making tools for adaptable projects spanning a longer timeframe, with the Adaptation Committee playing a pivotal role in promoting awareness and capacity-building.
National projects, despite their significance, were noted as posing potential risks to neighbouring countries due to lack of coordination – shared watercourses, for example – underscoring the importance of regional collaboration, dissemination and transformative ecosystem management that is aligned with the latest scientific research and data.
