Climate Change Adaptation in Transboundary Basins by Sonja Koeppel, UNECE Water Convention
Transboundary Climate Risk and Adaptation
Transcript of Transboundary Climate Risk and Adaptation
Transboundary Climate Risk and Adaptation
World Adaptation Science ProgrammePolicy Brief Series
Adaptation Futures
29th April 2021
Magnus Benzie
& Katy Harris
Pakistan flooding 2010 –food-related riots
UK food affordability – emergency food banks
Russian Heatwave 2010 – wheat export ban
Based on Challinor et al, 2018
Transboundary climate risks
• The impacts of climate change that cross national borders
• The effects of adaptation actions that cascade across nation states
Photo credit: Michael H/Getty Images
The idea that countries, communities and companies can adapt in
isolation is hard to accept in an interconnected world, but this is
the implicit assumption behind much of mainstream adaptation
research and practice.
Responding to the global nature of the adaptation challenge will
not be easy, but it could inject new momentum and spark new
kinds of cooperation on adaptation – raising the bar to the benefit
of all.
WASP Position Paper #2: Transboundary climate risk and adaptation
WASP_Science_for_Adaptation_Policy_Brief_No._2.pdf (wasp-adaptation.org)
1. Adaptation is not (just) local or national – it
can also be regional or global, it requires
scientific knowledge and cooperation at all
scales, and should be recognized as delivering,
in some cases, global public goods.
2. Adaptation is not necessarily benign – it can
redistribute vulnerability and create or magnify
risk for others, especially across borders.
3. Adapting to transboundary climate risk falls
between the remits of government
departments and national jurisdictions and
ends up being “no-one’s job” – analysis is
needed to support solutions at various scales.
4. Adaptation science should support the policy
community to adopt a transboundary lens to
better manage the systemic nature of climate
risk.
Transboundary Climate Risk
Benzie & Harris (2020) WASP Policy Brief #2
What countries are doing
• LDC recognition; MDC reports
• Context > Impacts
• Very little adaptation
What needs to happen
• Dialogue
• Reframing adaptation
• Knowledge, guidance, solution
What we know
• Awareness
• Significance
• Self-interest
What we don’t
• Transboundary effects of adaptation
• Social distribution of TCR costs
• Risk ownership
A territorial approach to adaptation – far from serving the national
interest – is likely to heighten a country’s vulnerability to climate
risk, as well as raise the risk exposure of their closest neighbours
and allies.
WASP Position Paper #2: Transboundary climate risk and adaptation
Transboundary Climate Risks in Asia: Research & Policy Needs
S.V.R.K. Prabhakar, PhD
Research Manager, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan
The Context: Asia is Experiencing Rapid Regional Integration
• The Boon and Bane of Regional Integration:
• In Asia, Hindu Kush Himalaya Region and the Southeast Asian regions are prominent to mention in terms of regional and global integration.
• These regions have benefited immensely from the regional and global integration. The reduction in poverty, increase in standard of life, and ability to move across the region are some of the immediate benefits that people in the region have benefited from.
• On the contrary, regional integration has also brought distinct risks to these regions. Due to still under developed risk management systems, the phenomenon of globalization of local risks, and greater exposure to global risks can be observed.
• With greater dependency on transboundary natural resources, the natural resources in the region are coming under immense pressure because of the regional integration. With natural resource governance poorly developed, this could mean a significant impact for all the countries in the region.
• The Adaptation Gap Report 2020: 34% of all nature based solutions lie in the areas of rivers and forests & 21% in agriculture and allied areas.
• Asia has a predominant rural and agrarian population, and • Asia has some of the major transboundary natural resources in the world that provide a
significant opportunity to target adaptation.
1. Growing International Investments in the Vulnerable Asia
• FDI in Asia has more than doubled from 1990, and stood at 460 b USD in 2016.
• Top 20 countries of WRI and CRI have attracted an FDI of 243 and 203 billion USD resp. in 2016.
• The disaster losses in these countries were 1.8 and 51 billion USD resp. in 2016.
Prabhakar, 2019
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2. Impact of Bangkok floods (2011) on Japan
• A total estimated loss of 47 billion USD, 90% of the losses were accrued to Japanese companies and related investments.
• More than 550 Japanese affiliate firms were affected by these floods, production facilities such as buildings and machinery were severely affected.
• Supply chain impacts: As these firms provide supplies to other factories in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia and other parts of the world, the production of these factories were also affected due to the shock to the supply chains.
• The loss borne by the Japanese insurance companies stood at about 1.8 billion USD.
• The impact on the industrial production of the world was estimated to be 2.5% (Haraguchi & Lall, 2015).
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3. India’s Food Import Dependency on Fragile countries• During 2011-2020, 42% of total food imports
came from climatically vulnerable countries, and 29% from politically unstable countries.
• India imported food from 23 of top 30 climatically and 11 politically unstable/vulnerable countries during this period.
• The nexus between political stability and climate change is well recognized globally. This puts India’s food imports at risk.
Source: data from APEDA and Germanwatch, 2021
India also exports food to several of these countries in significant quantities.
How to forecast such global price fluctuations and their impact on India’s food security?
4. Food Price Volatility & weather vagaries
1. Global food crisis of 2008: 10-15% decline in food consumption (15-20% increase in food expenditure) in 50-70% of poor households from 2007 to 2008 (WFP 2009), food riots and poverty.
2. Impact on food security: poorer section of the urban population (casual and unskilled labourers)
3. Impact on livelihoods: petty traders, labourers and peri-urban agriculturists.
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rice
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FAO 2016
Guardian, 2011
2008 Global food price crisis• Global rice prices had risen 10 percent in just 2 months
• Rice prices increased when Cambodia and Egypt joined the restrictions.
• Thailand’s long-grain rice prices exceeded $1,000 per ton in late April 2008, more than double of prices in early February and triple of prices in November 2007.
• Major short-term factors for price rise:• temporary export bans and restrictions implemented by
several major and mid-level rice exporters (India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt)
• Panic buying by several large rice importers
• Weather-related problems in specific growing areas
• A sharp decline in the value of dollar in fall 2007 and winter
USDA 2009
• Major long-term factors • sharply rising incomes in developing Asian countries
• very high prices for other foods
• extremely high nominal fuel and fertilizer prices
• the elimination of excess global rice stocks
• negligible yield growth for rice over the past decade
• a massive increase in the production of biofuels in recent years
2008 Global food price crisis
USDA 2009
5. Implications of Risk insurance in risk spreading beyond borders
• Risk insurance has been advocated as an important measure for DRR and CCA.
• In most of the cases, governments are the insurers of the last resort.
• However, in significant number of cases, as in catastrophic loss events, the risk gets transferred to international financial markets.
• Portfolio management operations of insurance companies that invest in financial markets (through securatization, retrocession, investment banking, credit default swaps etc.)
• This is a concern given that significant proportion of investments are made by insurance companies in financial markets and fluctuation in stock market prices of financial institutions as a result of catastrophic events and other shocks have serious implication for the financial viability of insurance companies and wider markets in question.
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In developing Asia, governments are still the insurers of the last resort. However, this is expected to change with development of Asian re-insurance markets and their links
with the global financial system.
Significant Challenges for Mitigating Transboundary Climate Risks
• Limited recognition for adaptation as a regional/global good
• Limited cooperation and institutional structures for sharing risk information among countries and actors (exception: ASEAN and MRC)
• Highly fragmented risk assessments not recognizing links with other sectors leading to limited understanding of risks and inefficient risk communication.
• There is a need for comprehensive and integrated risk assessments.
• Geopolitical situation and the ‘sensitivity’ attached to sharing risk information hindering regional cooperation in certain parts of Asia
Hope that the panel discussion sheds some light on some of these limitations
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Need 1: Risk Assessment and Risk Communication is the Key
Prabhakar et al., 2019
• Majority of foreign investing entities do not have deeper understanding of local risks!• Transboundary climate risks are seldom considered. • There is a poor risk communication between FDI recipient countries in investment entities.
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~30%
~12%~13%
Need 2: Regional Cooperation for Adaptation Planning
• Regional cooperation (RCAP) offers a mechanism for a collective effort of countries on regional adaptation planning.
• RCAP would harness regional technical and financial resources and or those available internationally but are not easily accessible to individual countries.
• RCAP would promote ‘self-help’ among Asian countries as a form of south-south cooperation in addressing the transboundary risks.
• For South Asia, RCAP can be led by SAARC Centre for DM or ICIMOD. For the Southeast Asia, RCAP can be led by ASEAN Sec.
5. Achieving complementarity and continuity with national and sub-national processes
4. Identify and commit national and regional resources
3. Agree on adaptation goals for the region
2. Understand transboundary risks of climate change (TBR assessments)
1. Identify & recognize transboundary resources
SEQUENCE OF STEPS FOR REGIONAL ADAPTATION PLANNING
National Adaptation Plan Process
Identify Goals &
Objectives
Impact, vulnerability assessments
Review objectives
Identify and evaluate actions
Implement actions
Track, monitory &
evaluate
Regional Adaptation Plan Process
Institutional setup
Information dissemination
Training and Capacity Building
Characterize and agree on regional natural resources and flows
Mapping of inter-country/inter-regional dependencies
Characterization and quantification of transboundary impacts of climate change
Characterization and quantification of benefits of interventions
Regional Cooperation
Understanding
Agreement
Commitment
Complementarity
Prabhakar et al., 2018
How a Cooperation for Regional Adaptation Planning can help?
• Strengthen research for assessing climate change risks of a country accrued from climatic events from outside its border.
• Facilitate sharing risk information among all the countries on regional basis or on thematic basis (e.g. trade risks, health risks, financial market risks, food price fluctuations)
• Establish a coordination mechanism for planning and implementing a regional adaptation solutions.
Thank You!
https://pub.iges.or.jp/pub/transboundary-impacts-climate-change-asia
Email: [email protected]
https://www.iges.or.jp/en/pub/globallocal/en
Transboundary Impacts of Climate Change in Asia: Making a Case for Regional Adaptation
Planning and Cooperation
International investments and businesses as enablers of globalization of local risks: A case for
risk communication and climate fragility reduction
The implications of cascading climate risks for global food security and for adaptation programmingDrawing on the example of Tunisia
Hanne Knaepen ([email protected])
29 April 2021
Outline
1. What are cascading climate risks to livelihoods?
2. What are the implications for adaptation
programming?
3. What are the knowledge gaps and practical
challenges?
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Cascading climate risks to livelihoods
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The Transnational Climate Impacts (TCI) Index (SEI 2016) uses nine indicators of country-level exposure to cascading climate risks to rank countries. One indicator is cereal import dependency.
Continued reliance on subsidies
Less food security
Social unrest
Tunisia
Cascading climate risks to livelihoods
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Increased variability in
precipitation and reduced
precipitation
Drought
Reduced freshwater availability
Soil erosion
Reduction in agricultural
yieldsReduced export
volume/price shocks
International markets
Higher food prices
Less market opportunities
& income Rural-urban migration
Strain on provision of public services
Reduction in opportunities
Climate trigger
Initial impact
System component
Recipient risk
Transmission of risk
…….... Border
Cascading climate risks to livelihoods
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Unrest & instability
Tunisia
Europe
Increased migration
Climate trigger
Initial impact
System component
Recipient risk
Transmission of risk
…….... BorderPressure on diplomatic relations
Implications for adaptation programming
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Building a diversified, environmentally sustainable national agri-food system, less dependent on food imports, is a way to adapt.
However, technical adaptation solutions face socio-economic, governance and political barriers, including:
● Poor governance & policy incoherence
● An export-oriented agri-food system and a lack of national food self-sufficiency
● Territorial inequalities
Knowledge gaps and practical challenges
● How to bridge the science to policy to practice gap?
● How to coordinate the governance of cascading climate risks and adaptation at different scales with different actors?
● How to ensure policy coherence?
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Want to know more?
www.cascades.euContact me: [email protected]
European Centre for Development Policy Management
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The implications of compound and systemic risk for governance
Insights from IIASA/ISC Science Platform “Pathways to a post-COVID World”
Reinhard Mechler
Adaptation Futures pre-conference Webinar on
“Transboundary Climate Risk and Adaptation”
April 29, 2021
Co-hosted by: TERI and the World Adaptation Science Programme
Supported by: Adaptation Without Borders, CASCADES, Mistra Geopolitics and the Stockholm Environment Institute
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Building pathways to sustainability in a post-COVID world
• IIASA & ISC partnership combining the strengths and expertise to define and design sustainability pathways through a multi-stakeholder dialogue, that will enable a more equitable post-COVID world
• Global hub for consultation, deliberation, and collaboration
among scientists, policymakers, and representatives from civil society and private sector around four key interconnected themes:
• Governance for sustainability• Strengthening science systems• Resilient food systems• Sustainable energy
Systemic RiskCOVID-19: an awareness trigger
• Remote triggers spreading impacts in a globalized world
• Impacts come from direct effects and societalresponses
• Cascading effects across systems and border make it a systemic multi-layer risk
o Individuals
o Business networks
o Financial and governance networks
• Risk governance needing further attention
climatestorylines.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Policy-Brief-Lessons-from
Compound risk: Covid-19 and climate-related hazards
floodresilience.net/resources/item/avoiding-a-perfect-storm-covid-19-and-floods-in-nepal/
Phillips et al., 2020
Climate-attributable hazards likely to intersect with COVID-19
COVID-19 has shown that current socio-ecological trends bring
us to a world that is facing increasing systemic and
compound risks in addition to being unequal and
unsustainable. Learning how intertwined human and natural
systems are and how a local threat can quickly become a global
crisis, our consultations with leading experts, advisors and
policymakers have shown that realizing sustainable development
is an imperative to systemically reduce risk, build resilience
and secure long-term development gains.
Narrative: learning from Covid-19 for Sustainability Transformations
Pathways exercise
• Consider feasibility, enablers and entry points for shortlisted policy options in global consultations with policy, practice and research
• Time dimension: next 10 years (SDG ambition period)
• Prioritize and enable options from the consultations shortlist:
o Global governance enhanced at global and regional scales to shift development towards sustainable and resilient pathways in view of increasing compound and systemic risk
o Multi-level governance: Boosting awareness and understanding of compound and systemic risks across governance arrangements at all scales
o National governance involving to upgrade compound and systemic resilience governance
Present concerns and Covid-19 findings Pathways elements
TWI, 2018
Global Governance: Reform and repurpose global institutions to enhance global governance in an ever-riskier world
Options:
● Shift towards more integrated processes (e.g. regular
coordination platforms, incl. crisis provisions)
● Strengthen science-policy-society interfaces for evidence-
based, participatory decision-making (e.g. advisory bodies
with regular/on-demand consultation arrangements,
participatory platforms)
● Build accountability and transparency provisions into more
integrated governance arrangements (e.g. through safe-
guarded mechanisms for sharing data, monitoring &
evaluating of objectives)
● Cooperate in mission-oriented ways to drive action in multi-
stakeholder coalitions incl. new institutional arrangement
Learning: Today’s global challenges (COVID-19, climate change, …) characterized by interconnectedness → international
system based on “specialized agencies” increasingly unfit to respond to today’s interconnected problems
FOGGS, 2021foggs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FOGGS_GRC-Brainstorming-Note-Final31-March-2021.pdf
Proposal for ‘Global Resilience Council’
Multi-level Governance: Boost awareness and understanding of compound and systemic risks across governance arrangements at all scales
Learning: COVID crisis shows a need for understanding, accounting and managing social and environmental externalities and
risks. Shared understanding and experience of risk from the individual and community level is needed to drive collective action at
all scales.
Options:
● Launch a multi-level global risk and resilience dialogue generating bottom-up and top-down
awareness-raising and mapping of risks (and underlying drivers) for strategic embedding of resilience in
strategies and plans.
● Alignment of investments with the SDGs and managing long-term risks.
● Extend on-going process related to the Taskforce on climate-related financial disclosures into an all-risk
SDG disclosure mechanism addressing other global commons and social goals
● Science-based targets and metrics, business and societally-relevant scenarios
Governance in National Systems: Make systemic resilience & sustainability a core government priority
Learning: Addressing vulnerability and building resilience create multiple dividends; failure to investment in that reduce our
collective capacity, across countries and across generations, to thrive and cope with crises
Options:● Make systemic resilience a core government priority by moving it to the center of government
(CoG): from risk managers to resilience offices through the following actions
● Ensure shorter-term Covid recovery packages integrate sustained investments into SDGs and
SDG wide resilience and lead to longer-term transformations to build forward rather than
back
● Devise science-based tracking mechanism assessing the alignment of the green fiscal
recovery packages with the SDGs and systemic resilience
Resilience to systemic risks?Triple dividend decision-making framework
• Gradual evolution of the definition of ‘resilience’ in relation to human societies in recent years: Resilience as a movement to a new, more desirable state after being disturbed
• Focus on systemic investments - Resilience as creating opportunities across relevant systems and borders and leading to broader societal progress.
• Reforms in areas such as taxation, development assistance, subsidy reform and environmental regulation will need to accompany such investment.
• Recent interest and work with ADB, World Bank and DG ECHO
ODI, LSE, World Bank 2016
3 Resilience Dividend example: Flood resilience in transboundary river basins (Nepal, India)
Rozer et al., 2021 /www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/working-paper-385-Roezer-et-al-1.pdfWork with the Flood Resilience Alliance
IIASA-ISC Consultative Science PlatformBouncing Forward Sustainably: Pathways to
a post-COVID World
https://covid19.iiasa.ac.at/isc/