Mitigation of What and by What? Adaptation by Whom

and for Whom? Balancing the Scales in Global Climate

Change Policy

by Leisa Perch IPC-IG/UNDP

DevNet Conference: Nature, Poverty and PowerNovember 26th, 2010

Focus of the Paper

• Current efforts to address climate change seem more focused on “big” actions and “large-scale” than on micro level impact.

• 3 key questions:– What do efforts to-date to integrate the

social dimensions in the global policy agenda tell us about equity and sustainability in the global response to climate change?

– Does the current structure of climate finance represent more than an economic transfer between polluters and non-polluters?

– Is the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), REDD+ and REDD++ frameworks a proxy for inclusion?

Methodology

• Review of literature (research, assessments and critiques)

• Policy Guidance Documents:–National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPA) guidelines

–UNFCCC negotiated text–Nairobi Work programme

• Governance : –Operational frameworks for Climate finance –Funds and Instruments: Adaptation Fund, SCCF, LDCF, CDM, REDD standards

• Application:–NAPAs, Adaptation Fund Projects, CDM, REDD+–Implementation records of World Bank and GEF

Equity Issues in Climate Change

Largely politically driven:

–Unequal access to the global commons (Tragedy of the Commons)

–Balance of Private actions and public policy (consumption and production)

–Unequal burden of impact (SIDS, LDCs, coastal areas)

–Inequities of capacity to cope–Unequal power relations in the political process(poorer countries and poor individuals

–Equity of burden to take action

© AFP: Thiago Sampaio

Heavy rains and resulting flood waters from the Jacuipe River impacting on the Brazilian town of Jacuipe in mid-2010

Policy and Politics

Key Issues for Policy

• Equity itself as a development goal (Ul Haq, 1990)

• Is sustainability enough in the face of risk and uncertainty? (Cascio, 2009)

• What kinds of actions? Adapt or mitigate? Both?

• Long-term or short-term? • Achieving collective and

simultaneous action – cumulative impact (Harrison and Sundstrom, 2007)

• Other environmental issues can be worsened by climate change

Politics of Taking Action

• Varying perceptions of risk (O’Brien and Wolf, 2010; Aldy, 2003)

• Multilateralism challenged to cope with transnational issues (Held and Hervey, 2010; Newman et al, 2006)

• Consensus or leadership: Copenhagen?

• Prefer to wait and see (Gidden’s paradox)

• Low-carbon? Resilient? • What is the right mix? • Whose science: UNFCCC says

2 degrees, SIDS say 1.5?

Searching for Reason and Equity

• Inclusivity at a grand-scale (small and large nations, poor and rich, between genders, present and the future generations, private and public)

• Climate-compatible development (CDKN)– Adaptation and mitigation +–Finding ways of minimising harm from the impacts of climate change and harnessing opportunities presented by a low carbon future whilst promoting poverty reduction and human development (CDKN, 2010).

What do efforts to-date to integrate the social dimensions in the global policy agenda tell us about equity and sustainability in the global response to climate change?

The Politics of the Social:

We still do not yet have a policy framework or language that is inclusive:

• environmental issue economic [social issues?]

• Economic focus (engage private sector); (fails to capture socio-ecological nature of change.

• Inclusion of the social still hotly debated:–Lind (2010) - social change is not needed; economics will save the day:

–Soley (2010:2) – negative polices impinging on individual choice and quality of life counter-productive and politically problematic

–Hale (2010): the role of political economy on the initial discussions on climate change including fossil fuel substitution

–O’Brien and Wolf (2010): a values-based approach to vulnerability and adaptation recognizes that economic assessments of impacts and responses, cannot capture the full significance of climate change”.

Can we or should we?

• Rain-fed subsistence farming will be significantly affected and dependent HH much more vulnerable

• Lack of title and supportive legislation lead to exclusion of many small farmers from the carbon credit markets

• Community-based customary rights also a limitation.

• “Education will affect a person’s ability to anticipate climate events, make proactive adaptation decisions and reduce losses related to disasters” World Bank (2010b: 34)

• 60 % of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people are women (UN, 2008).

• Losses from the impact of climate change on key crops in African agriculture could be in the range of US$16-36 billion (Kurukulasuriya and Mendelsohn, 2008).

Whose vulnerability and whose opportunity?

• Two main concepts in climate change:

–(i) change as inevitable and unpreventable (adaptation) – socially defined if limited–(ii)the worst can be avoided and hence the fallout lessened (mitigation) – instrumentally defined with little social analysis or framing

Whose vulnerability and whose opportunity (2)

Making sense of vulnerability and resilience:

•Scope:–Levels: Exposure,

Susceptibility, Sensitivity, and Resilience.

–Capacity to resile: resource availability, entitlement to call on these resources

•Scale:–Location: classifications

within sensitive biophysical systems ignore varying levels of vulnerability

–Countries/People or both: Vulnerabilities of poor countries are not necessarily those of poor people (Kates, 2000 – poor countries/poor people)

Why only so far?

• Limited focus on social and behavioural research in the science and politics of climate change

• Aggregated analysis: (limited micro-analysis/differentiated impacts)

• The politics of science - hierarchy and separations between disciplines

• Normatively: No automatic co-benefits between poverty reduction and conservation: “………development usually goes hand in hand with greater consumption of natural resources." (Bill Adams in Gilbert, 2010).

Does the current structure of climate finance represent more than an economic transfer between polluters and non-polluters?

The Politics of Public Financing of Climate Change Response

• Structural inequalities (pace, scope, scale of development)

• Structure of climate finance: UNFCCC, IPCC and National authorities (Ministries of Environment. All are politically defined.

• Science is largely driven by the North with inputs from emerging countries (Membership of IPCC; GEO 5 Experts list)

• Focus on mitigation could make it easier to avoid political difficulties of transformation

Structural Inequalities

- Who hold the purse-strings

- Who needs the funds and knowledge? LDCs and SIDS.

- Dependency exposes poorer countries to good and bads of current politics

- Overall response in the balance: economic opportunism vs structural transformation?

Figure 1. A Gaunt View by Lawrence Moore (Tiempo, July 2010).

Scope of Response

• Bias towards mitigation• Funds channelled: mitigation

(86%); 8% (adaptation); 63% of EU Fast Track funds for mitigation

• Economies of scale make a lot of mitigation opportunities inapplicable for many (Lesotho - 1% forest).

• Developed countries are largely focusing their actions at home on mitigation.

• CDM favours large scale projects;

• Agriculture largely absent from the CDM due to “scientific uncertainties”.

• Global carbon market contributing little to protection of tropical rainforests

Figure 2. Analysis of focus of funding directly sourced from ClimateFundsUpdate.Org)

Disconnect in application: Adaptation

Table 1. Analysis of inclusion by group or by vulnerability in NAPAs to-date

* 10 NAPAs did not make it clear if they were participatory

Inclusivity factor

YES % of all available NAPAS

NO % of all available NAPAs

Mentions Gender

25 78 7 22

Prioritizes Gender

12 37.5 20 62.5

Mentions poverty

31 97 1 3

Prioritizes poverty

26 81 6 19

Mentions ethnicity

7 22 25 78

Prioritizes ethnicity

31 97 1 3

Lists vulnerable groups

21 65.5 11 34.5

Identifies Participatory actions

18 56 2 6

A few – Laos, Maldives, Cape Verde, and Vanuatu - have not prioritized the poor. And Mozambique: has low female literacy rates (40.1 for 2008 based on the last WDI figures (World Bank, 2010b) and over 20% female-headed households (FHH)

Extent of poverty/inequality integration

• GEF “has not prioritized the adaptation needs of the most vulnerable”. Disproportionately (accordingly to Mitchell, Anderson and Huq, 2008) have funded projects in countries with low rates of poverty

• 5% of disbursed resources so far targeted multi-focused actions

• Approaches to adaptation inconsistent• Approaches to mitigation, social is mostly absent;

particularly on complex interdependencies• AFB unable to resolve “appropriate adaptation” or

“define vulnerability normatively for allocating resources

……with the implication that:

•Social risks will mount and multiply:–Likelihood that the poor will have less access to land due to their inability to compete on a financial basis; –Resource conflicts likely to increase–Mitigation actions may reduce emissions but not necessarily stimulate a transformation of industrial policy; and–Fossil-fuel demand reduction and new forms of energy may contribute little to the reduction of energy poverty.

Is the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries (REDD), REDD+ and REDD++ frameworks a proxy for inclusion?

+ REDD?

Beyond challenges in terms of the structure of REDD, there are also a number of concerns •about process including the transfer of funds to communities. •initial focus has been on IPs as well as forest dependent communities, less on other users or other dynamics• who benefits? And how?•Ethical issues: rewarding exploitation and undervaluing stewardship?

Risks of neutral approach

• Ignore gender-differentiated roles, uses and derived values for women and men from forests, forest resources and access to both;

• Under-value differentiated impacts of loss of access to resources on men and women and implications for accessing alternative sources of food and livelihood (mobility);

• Assume a lack of gender inequality in indigenous communities; and

• Fail to appreciate the implications of women’s unequal rights and tenure to forests and associated lands ( i.e. capacity to translate these assets into opportunity are structurally constrained).

*(derived from critiques by Gurung and Quesada (2009)

Policy Implications

Re-Framing

• Effective Management of climate as a global good seems still far off: • the political structure has not led to consensus.

•Balance tends to lie between national sovereignty, collective responsibility, individual rights with those of the global “public” interest.

•global narrative influences the national and vice-versa

•Tends to inflate macro vs micro interests

• Struggle (globally and nationally) in managing risk and uncertainty:•consensus position on the nature of the risk (either nationally and or globally) and the level of urgency it represents.

•marketing of “risk avoidance” as a concrete and necessary policy action

•Proving that a problem has been avoided.

Expanding the Conceptual Framework

• Building blocks approach to transformation

• People-centred development

• AVM become linked and defined within a broader frameworks of Climate-Resilient Development (Adaptation); Low-Carbon Development (Mitigation) and Climate-Compatible Development (Transformation)

Figure 3. Proposed conceptual framework for linking adaptation, mitigation and climate-compatible development

Process shifts – Enhance the micro

• Addressing the social must be done normatively

• Resolve structural distinctions between the policy guidance on A and M

• Integrate Social Risk Management

• Incentivizing action on transnational public goods

• Resilience of both people and systems;

• Co-benefits between LCD and sustainable development’

• “Convergence between including “no-regrets” and the right to development; and

• Risk sharing through “insurance”

Weighing the balance:

By what Of What

Mitigation o Substitution efforts through energy reform and new technology

o Carbon sequestration and REDD

o carbon markets and emissions trading

o Fossil fuels

o GHG emissions

o Deforestation

By Whom/What For Whom

Adaptation o Countries/states

o Government entities

o Sectoral actors in climate-sensitive areas (water, food production, fisheries)

o LDCs, LLDCs, SIDS

o The poor and the vulnerable

o Indigenous Peoples

o Actors in climate-sensitive areas (water, food production, fisheries)

• Beneficiaries: countries, large scale projects, large developing countries and large conglomerates,

• Adaptation is more an act of mollification and appeasement of the concerns of those likely to be most negatively affected

• Unsustainable

Table 3. Summary findings based on type of response

NOT YET>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Achieving a balance and reasonable equity?

Thank You!!!!!