U.N. Delegates meet at Earth Institute
Haresh Bhojwani speaks to U.N. delegates. Photo: F. Fiondella
United Nations representatives from 53 countries met at Columbia University recently to discuss the effect of climate change on development goals. The Danish Mission to the United Nations, the IRI and the Earth Institute organized the event. The IRI presented some of its experiences of helping countries become more resilient to climate variability and change. By convening meetings such as the one held at Columbia, the Danish government is hoping to find ways to harmonize the development and adaptation agendas. In 2009, Denmark will host the Conference of the Parties (COP)--the annual meeting held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to assess progress in dealing with the issue. A key focus of this COP, according to the Danish government, will be to build agreement on what to do about climate change when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The Danes believe, as others do, that left unabated, climate change threatens years of development and could destabilize societies. "We need to climate-proof development investments," said Carsten Staur, Denmark's Ambassador to the U.N. "We haven't yet found the right approaches and sufficient resources to do so. To be effective, adaptation efforts have to be coordinated and aligned," Staur said. Poor countries, which have contributed least to global warming, will be the hardest hit by climate change, because of their overall greater vulnerability and lower adaptive capacity. "In much of the developing world, adaptation to climate change should be a development priority," wrote IRI's Molly Hellmuth and Haresh Bhojwani in a paper they prepared for the meeting. Climate change "exacerbates inequalities, threatens poverty alleviation and the sustainable achievement of the Millennium Development Goals," they wrote.
"The risk reduction component has to be strong in the post-Kyoto agreement," said Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Co-ordinator. "There needs to be a rapid acceleration of practical knowledge," she said. To achieve this, Wahlstrom said scientists and practitioners must meet much more frequently than they currently are. "We also need to get the knowledge generators to be more proactive. Some of the scientists' caution to be absolutely foolproof in their findings needs to be left aside," she said. Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute, said any adaptation efforts must be incorporated into the existing development framework. "The developing world will not agree to anything if it senses that the development agenda is being replaced by the climate change agenda," he said. "Either they are both achieved or neither will be achieved." The success of these goals will depend largely on our understanding of the ways in which climate risks act as obstacles to a country's development, and how to minimize those risks. "When we talk about developing countries being most vulnerable to climate risks, we're really talking about a tight relationship between socioeconomic sectors and climate," said Bhojwani, who is the IRI's International Development Officer. (see Figure 1- chart of ethiopia's gdp vs rainfall). Many of the most effective measures to adapt to climate change also reduce vulnerability to current climate risks and can promote development. This principle lies behind IRI's climate risk management approach. Examples include:
Relevant Links Relationship between the Millennium Development Goals and climate variability.[pdf] |
Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions will constrain the long-term effects of climate change, but in the short to medium terms, countries must find ways to adapt and reduce their climate-related risks.