Rasmus Heltberg's blog

How should adaptation to climate change be designed and funded? In the run-up to the December 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations there’s an international push to create new funding mechanisms for climate adaptation in developing countries. Given the complexity of climate change and limited experience in funding adaptation, we in the World Bank’s Social Development department decided to launch a study of the lessons from the DM2009 proposals. The proposals constitute a large and interesting database of proposed adaptation interventions. By studying the proposals as a group, we hope to gain insight into the global supply of adaptation innovations and project ideas, especially at the community level.

Our study considers how adaptation is conceptualized by suppliers of global adaptation interventions, what innovations for climate adaptation are proposed, and what kind of partnerships are put forward. We hope to contribute to policy discussions on how donors in the future can provide funding for community-based adaptation to climate change.

One of the discussions circulating among practitioners is how to orient funding for adaptation: Should development funds be considered separate from adaptation or are the two intertwined?    

The deadline for DM 2009 proposals has now closed and the DM Team has been hard at work screening and gearing up for the assessment.

As expected, the Call for Proposals generated a wealth of interest from most parts of the world. Despite a more stringent application process this year, we received a total of 1,755 proposals, similar to last year where the rules were more flexible.

The strong interest demonstrates that grassroots organizations are interested and available to launch community-based climate adaptation related to rural livelihoods diversification, indigenous peoples, and disaster risk reduction. If anyone doubted the demand for bottom-up adaptation, they have been proven wrong.

Migration is the default adaptation strategy of the poor.

Rising sea levels, more frequent flooding, and droughts could displace millions of people by the middle of the century. And if the predictions of sharply declining agricultural productivity come true, farmers will to an increasing extent abandon rural areas in search of new livelihoods.  

"Spectacular achievements are always preceded by unspectacular preparation." (Roger Staubach)

Warming of the oceans is one of the best known facts about global climate change. Ocean warming is already happening and is not subject to great uncertainty of predictions as far as I understand. So, is the world prepared to deal with warmer waters?

Someone commented to me the other day that our focus on climate adaptation seems like a plot to lessen the impetus for cutting down greenhouse gas emissions.

One of the largest and hardest challenges facing us as development professionals is how to empower the poor to better manage climate risks and climate changes. This question is also at the heart of this year’s DM competition where we seek practical solutions to poor communities’ tough climate problems.

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Note: This is a two part entry. Part 2 is coming soon.

We hear that climate changes – ongoing and those to come – are hitting the poor the hardest and the soonest. So what can we do about that?