IRI at COP-13

Scientists from the IRI are speaking at various events during this year's Conference of the Parties in Bali, Indonesia. Most recently, the IRI and some of its Indonesian partners hosted a side event on December 5, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The event concluded with the signing of a "memorandum of understanding" between the IRI and Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture. Going forward, the two institutions will collaborate on climate risk management for agriculture and food security in Indonesia.

More than 100 people attended the side event, called Managing Climate Risks for Adaptation and Mitigation:New Initiatives in Southeast Asia. It analyzed the broader opportunities and obstacles for tackling climate impacts in the region, and featured a high-level panel that shared insights and expertise:

• Hasanuddin Ibrahim, Under Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Indonesia
• Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Director-General of The Energy and Resources Institute (by audio conference)
• Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University (by audio conference)
• Stephen E. Zebiak, IRI's Director-General

Dr. Pachauri spoke of the need to get local communities involved in adaptation solutions. "I believe what would be particularly important is to create a few models of success, and understand their insitutuional aspects," he said.

Climate risk management is being proposed as a means to deal with the challenges of climate change and adaptation, said Dr. Zebiak. "Why? Fundamentally it's because all climate forecasts, anything longer than a few days ahead, are probabilistic. The nature of the information we have is that the risk of a drought in a particular region might be twice as high as last year, but it may be only a 20% chance to begin with. How can we effectively hedge our responses?" he said. "The focus should be to develop win-win strategies to address risks in the present climate, and thereby improve resilience for the long-term. This approach allows us to test and ground-truth our efforts. Second, this will benefit societies now, and instead far into the future."

The side event highlighted efforts of this kind. Representatives from Indonesia and the Philippines gave presentations on new approaches to managing climate change risks by integrating cutting-edge climate information with agriculture, water and land management policies:

• Hasanuddin Ibrahim, Under Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Indonesia, on strategies for addressing risks from climate variability and change for agriculture and food security in Indonesia
• Pacita Barba, National Water Resources Board, Philippines, on the integration of climate forecasts in decision making for usage of the Angat Reservoir for urban and agricultural needs
• Johan Kieft, CARE Indonesia, on the potential use of climate forecasts to better plan for the mitigation of destructive peatland fires in Central Kalimantan.

For more information about IRI and Columbia University's participation at COP13, please visit the Columbia News site. Coverage can also be found on the International Institute for Sustainable Development's blog.

Press Contacts:
In Bali: Haresh Bhojwani, haresh@iri.columbia.edu
In New York: Clare Oh, clare.oh@columbia.edu and +1.212.854.5479