Livia Bizikova

Review of key initiatives and approaches to adaptation planning at the national level in semi-arid areas

Abstract Semi-arid areas are found in a large number of countries and regions of Africa and South and Central Asia. They display high vulnerability to climate change with considerable adaptation needs. In this paper, we review country-level and multi-country projects supported by international agencies. We examine the priorities and goals presented in national adaptation planning documents and in sectorial planning documents. Through this analysis, we seek to compare adaptation needs with current trends in national, regional and global projects and collaborations. Our results suggest that initiatives supported by international agencies play a considerable role in achieving national adaptation priorities, especially in areas such as agriculture and water management. However, compared with specific adaptation options such as drought-resistant species and irrigation (which tend to be the scope of the projects), the analyzed documents tend to see challenges in agriculture more in the contexts of food security, livestock and rural development. They emphasize the strong connection between rural livelihoods and sustainable land and ecosystem management. Priorities listed in the national documents but not captured in current initiatives include human health, pastoralism, security and migration. Our results also show high levels of mainstreaming adaptation into sectorial planning documents, especially those on poverty reduction; however, compared with the focus on the project level, they here emphasize adaptations focused on institutional development and governance. Finally, the outcomes indicate that global, regional and national initiatives are distributed unequally and that countries in Central and West Africa and Central Asia currently exhibit low participation, especially in national projects.

Climate change adaptation planning in agriculture: processes, experiences and lessons learned from early adapters

This paper explores the lessons learned by leaders in agricultural adaptation planning in order to assist other jurisdictions to develop adaptation strategies. It seeks to identify effective institutional, participatory and collaborative processes involved in designing agricultural adaptation strategies at the national and sub-national levels in Germany, Finland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Its methodology is based on review of agricultural adaptation policy documents, research initiatives, stakeholder engagement processes, and cross-sectoral collaborations as well as interviews with key informants such as leaders and actors in adaptation planning. The gathered data show that early adapters have an improved regional and national understanding of climatic impacts, and of the risks to agriculture before the initiation of the planning process. The results indicate that the interplay between bottom-up and top-down initiatives has been crucial in the development of adaptation strategies. The former has provided rich and robust participation in designing, implementing and monitoring adaptations, while the latter was important for prioritizing and legitimizing the development of strategy. It also provided access to high-level decision makers and funding. The results of the study suggest that fostering cross-sectoral collaborations—especially by focusing on broader questions such as the role of agriculture in society—has become an important part of adaptation planning. Finally, our results also stress that adaptation planning in agriculture could be enhanced by skills development and mutual learning across stakeholder groups, research and policy-makers, and through the ongoing interactive development of institutional capabilities.

Sustaining Multifunctional Forestry Through the Developing of Social Capital and Promoting Participation: A Case of Multiethnic Mountain Communities

Communities with multicultural, ethnically diverse populations located in forest areas of the Carpathian Mountains often face serious social and economic problems, including high unemployment rates, weak social support and institutions with little stakeholder participation in decision-making. In this paper, we apply participatory scenario processes to address the development of multifunctional forestry in these mountains by taking as an example the case study of Slovensky Raj National Park and specifically focusing on the involvement of local communities, particularly the Roma minority, in sustainable forest management (SFM). The paper argues that development of local institutions and promotion of horizontal and vertical participation to increase social capital is necessary for addressing social and economic problems, managing potential conflicts and sustaining multifunctional forestry development. The results suggest that the way forward is the integration of multi-purpose forest management with community development, and that learning, repeated stakeholder interaction, trust-building and cooperation between and within multiethnic local communities are important preconditions for success. The scenario process applied turned out to be beneficial for both the majority and the minority populations, particularly allowing for discussions about future development of mountain regions, their local economies and communities, and for providing some guidance about what are the preferred actions for participation in multifunctional SFM.

Utilizing Participatory Scenario-Based Approaches to Design Proactive Responses to Climate Change in the Face of Uncertainties

Despite the recent upsurge in research, the complex and inter-related processes driving climate change continue to be characterized by significant uncertainty. One of the major issues for policy-makers is how to deal with this considerable uncertainty in ways that enable pro-active measures rather than complicate or discourage them. A great unknown is the extent to which human actions may alter the climate system over decades and centuries to come. In this case, widely varying assumptions alter the set, rate and extent of projected impacts (Kasemir et al. 2003; Banuri and Weyant 2001; Oppenheimer et al. 2008). The assessment of changes in components of the climatic system, including the prediction of impacts of GHG concentration on changes in climatic variables, radiative forcing, climate response, and impact sensitivity, remain highly uncertain as well (Dessai and Hulme 2004; University of Washington 2007). In light of such uncertainties, current attempts to better understand the implications of changing climate are based on assessing the outlook for future emissions (and emission reductions) of GHGs and aerosols, the resulting changes in climatic variables and their impacts on ecosystems and society, and finally the extent and effectiveness of adaptation actions to ameliorate impacts (O’Neil and Melnikov 2008).

Emerging Climate Change Coastal Adaptation Strategies and Case Studies Around the World

Presently about 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 km of a coastline. Climate Change and sea level rise being a relatively new policy challenge, experience as to the choice and design of appropriate response measures is scarce and fragmented in coastal areas. Increasing the availability and transfer of pertinent knowledge across national boundaries can assist in furthering coastal safety. This chapter focuses on the management of adaptation activities encompassed by the RADOST (Regional Adaptation Strategies for the German Baltic Sea Coast) project and its international partner regions. Attention is given to the operationalization of regional adaptation measures, ways to increase resilience, as well as to regional adaptive governance and learning processes. Success factors to increase the resilience of coastal areas include cooperation of a broad range of organizations and the engagement of stakeholders; carefully planning of a sequence of policies and measures over time; designating risk areas; revising principles for natural resources management along the coasts; awareness raising about preferred development practices; and integrating climate concerns with other social, economic and environmental objectives. This requires maintaining connections to existing policy and decision-making processes and building or strengthening partnerships among the relevant sectors of the local or regional communities.

Exploring institutional changes in agriculture to inform adaptation planning to climate change in transition countries

This paper explores the challenges of institutional transformation in agriculture countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and their consequences for adaptation planning. We review key policy and planning documents and processes in CEE and CIS countries and conduct a series of interviews with key experts to analyse trends relevant for adaptation planning in the context of institutional transformation in three countries (Slovakia, Ukraine, and Tajikistan; total number of interviews 159). Our outcomes indicate that adaptation is not perceived as an important priority. Rather, two thirds of the respondents suggested their focusing on ensuring stable land use and ownership and support for infrastructure. The results also show that the importance of national level leadership in adaptation was not supported with regional and local agencies thought as potential key leaders in adaptation. Also, compared to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) -15 countries of early adaptors (analysed in our earlier paper in this series), the focus in CEE and CIS countries on adaptation is sectorial, instead of looking at the role of agriculture in supporting wider societal needs. There is also limited integration and cooperation between researchers, policy-makers and other stakeholders in adaptation planning, a characteristic that played a key role in early adaptors’ adaptation efforts. Finally, our findings imply that the CEE and CIS countries need to develop institutional capabilities at the regional and local level, as well as integrate adaptation actions with on-going efforts of improving the agricultural sector, while accounting for the dynamic nature of property rights, particularly the recent changes in land tenure.

Climate resilience and food security in Central America: a practical framework

This article introduces and tests a framework that applies a systems perspective to food security with an assessment of the food systems resilience in the context of climate change. The framework was applied in 20 communities in Honduras and Nicaragua. Our results indicate that contributions from supporting systems, institutions and processes are crucial to ensure overall food system resilience and critical food utilization and access dimensions. These systems include natural resources and their management and critical infrastructure (transport, power, communications, storage, etc.) along with key institutional policies and processes for participation in decision-making. To improve resilience in food systems, it is important to increase household and community subsistence, local markets and food storage in accessing key staple items for good nutrition. At the same time, institutions must be strengthened to build capacities and monitor trends in food security, health and disease, and emergency preparedness. The framework helped to reveal the dependence of community food security, and especially food utilization and access, on decisions at the regional and national levels, beyond the direct control of the communities. Finally, users stressed the usefulness of the framework in structuring complex interactions of resilience features across different dimensions of the food system, which later could be used to inform local and regional decision- and policy-makers.

Erratum to: Normative scenario approach: a vehicle to connect adaptation planning and development needs in developing countries

Climate change adaptation is one of the many development challenges impacting livelihoods in developing countries. Scenario approaches are useful in adaptation planning by putting together projected climate change and socioeconomic trends with broader development needs when identifying associated priorities—and using them to develop appropriate strategies, plans and initiatives. To date, explorative scenario approaches have been largely adopted in adaptation planning. In this paper, we determine the benefits of using normative scenario approaches. They include a process known as “backcasting,” which is particularly useful for areas where adaptation planning and actions are strongly intertwined with development planning, and considerable efforts are needed to improve the well-being of the people living in those areas. We show the relevance of backcasting by presenting three case study applications in the following developing countries: Ghana, Honduras and Tajikistan. The results of these case studies indicate that backcasting has specific relevance for adaptation planning, including capacity building and awareness raising to contextualize information on climate impacts with stakeholders’ development needs. Our results also indicate that the developed scenarios provided benefits in promoting horizontal and vertical integration, thus bringing together diverse sectorial and sub-national priorities—adaptation options can thereby be aligned with these needs. Finally, use of the scenarios advances countries’ participation in national and multi-country adaptation projects by targeting actions that provide multiple benefits.

Environmental mainstreaming and policy coherence: essential policy tools to link international agreements with national development—a case study of the Caribbean region

The 2030 agenda for sustainable development adopted in September 2015 advocates for a balanced integration of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Existing multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) can provide guidance for policy-makers to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, within safe ecological limits. This paper presents a practical approach to mainstream international obligations of MEAs with national development priorities and strategies. It identifies pathways of policy coherence from national strategies to specific instruments and indicators to advance implementation of MEAs and help counties to fulfill agreed obligations. The approach is grounded in the driving forces–pressure–state–impact–response (DPSIR) framework, and it was applied in two national and two regional case studies in the Caribbean. The outcomes from the case studies show that mainstreaming rate of MEAs is low, and linkages across multiple MEAs are rarely considered. The DPSIR framework was useful for addressing national development priorities and those of MEAs in tandem, through adopting a cross-sectoral, multistakeholder perspective. The research shows that addressing environmental degradation and improving MEAs’ implementation requires that international and regional agencies identify linkages among MEAs to assist in creating policy coherence to ensure their integration into national strategies by connecting with policies and strategies in tandem implementation of MEAs for national policy-makers to work with.

Policy adaptability in practice: Lessons learned in the application of the Adaptive Design and Assessment Policy Tool (ADAPTool) to examine public policies in Canada in the context of climate change

Abstract Designing public policies to effectively address comingled economic, social and environmental issues is a fundamental challenge facing sustainable development policy-makers in the twenty-first century. Raising the stakes is the added challenge of doing so in today’s complex, dynamic and uncertain conditions. Policies that cannot perform under such conditions run the risk of not achieving their intended purpose and hindering the ability of individuals, communities and businesses to cope with and adapt to change. To explore the principles of adaptive policies, a four-year empirical investigation was launched in Canada and India to extract practical insights from complex adaptive systems literature and to study the characteristics of policies that have been effective under changing socio-economic and environmental conditions. Seven core principles for creating adaptive policies were identified and a practical policy analysis tool was developed to help policy-makers translate the principles into tangible recommendations. This paper presents the results of applications of the ADAPTool (Adaptive Design and Assessment Policy Tool) by four provincial governments in Canada on policies aimed at supporting climate change adaptation efforts. Lessons learned from the applications are discussed.