Environment

'I Explained It to My Daughter, and She Understood'

If Sergio Margulis didn't grow up to be an environmental economist, he could have, no doubt, become an equally successful stand-up comic. Who else could get some laughs when trying to explain the econometrics of climate-change adaptation?

The occasion was the recent World Bank-sponsored panel discussion on the draft report "The Costs to Developing Countries of Adapting to Climate Change," of which Margulis was co-author. Of course, Margulis' primary intention wasn't to get his audience to laugh, but to understand a complex but increasingly important issue that's going to occupy global attention for perhaps the rest of the century as developing and developed countries try to put a ceiling on more global warming.

Margulis, Lead Environmental Economist with the World Bank's Environment Department, was joined at the panel by report co-author Urvashi Narain, Senior Environmental Economist at the World Bank; Otaviano Canuto, Vice President and Head of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network at the World Bank, and Warren Evans, Director of the World Bank's Environment Department, who moderated the standing-room-only event.

Here's the video of the discussion. (Sorry we couldn't embed it.)

In my country of Peru, climate adaptation planning at a national level isn't effective. In fact, there aren’t any plans to speak of.

It would be great if all civil society groups could help to build an effective national plan that would produce results benefiting people and resources. But this will require a process, and there is a lot to be done.

This not only a problem for government. Even among NGOs there are factors that limit the participation of all organizations and people.

In our experience as a small organization, we were able to bring change in a concrete way at the regional level after a long and big effort. Our achievements were ignored during a long time by the main public institutions and big NGO. Only after 10 years of hard work with scarce resources are we beginning to see results in terms of a change in the attitude of politicians that govern the region.

We are supporting in a very important way the regional political environment. But it is necessary to show how a small project like ours, which is being co-financed by DM2009, will contribute to this objective.

(Vecco [photo above] was team leader on the winning DM2009 finalist project in Peru that will use its US$200,000 grant to help1,500 indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon better manage their agricultural production systems, protect their forest, and increase their income.)

As the table shows, many low-income countries face the most climate threats, as identified by the World Bank. A number of the most-threatened countries are also in the Least Developed Countries category, and six of them are in "fragile situations," also as identified by the World Bank.

Among the hundred finalists in the recent DM2009 competition, 26 of them came from most-threatened countries. Bangladesh, which ranked first among most threatened, had five entries, but no competition winners.

Many developing countries are busy planning to adapt to climate change that is already heavily impacting their people, natural resources, and economies, especially agriculture. But what actually works in particular countries, and at what cost, are often questions that National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs) and other strategies don't adequately answer.

To find answers that can be tailored to the conditions of individual developing countries -- there are 130 -- the World Bank is leading a pilot study of climate adaptation in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Samoa, and Vietnam.

The concept note says "overall oversight of study progress" will include, besides the six national governments, "civil society representation." But some DM2009 finalists say they see little evidence, based on their own experiences, that governments in their countries are serious about collaboration with the private sector.

Successful climate adaptation depends on public-private collaboration, especially on the community level, where so much adaptation integrated with economic development has to take place. NGOs with strong community roots -- like many of the DM finalists -- can also help close the capacity gap that hampers public programming in developing countries.

With global warming heating up, will non-governmental organizations be major players in forging and implementing climate adaptation as developing countries struggle to cope with the adverse effects of climate change on their people, resources, and economies?

The answer should be a no-brainer yes. Many NGOs -- pre-eminently those that populate the DM2009 finalist roster -- have strong local roots. Community connections are an essential ingredient of effective climate adaptation action. But many DM2009 finalists express frustrations in their attempts to collaborate with governments in their countries. Those frustrations have been detailed in this blog -- here, here, here, and here, among other places.

The Maldivian Government has received a US$6.3 million grant for climate change adaptation from the European Commssion. The grant will be administered by the World Bank. I hope the Bank will inform the Maldivian Finance MInistry, which is handling the funds, about the adaptation work that Live & Learn/Maldives is doing to help protect this especially vulnerable island nation from the adverse affects of climate change -- principally rising sea levels.

As Country Manager of Live & Learn's environmental education operations in the Maldives, one of the 43 Least Developed Countries that have submitted National Adaptation Programs of Action to cope with climate change. I know first hand what our non-profit, non-government organization is doing. With our expertise and community connections, we can help the Government achieve its adaptation objectives. Live & Learn/Maldives was a DM finalist with its project to "increase the quality and quantity of local food production, using new techniques resilient to increasing groundwater salinity" caused by rising sea waters. Innovative Gardening and Education would promote women as leaders in building a sustainable community network spreading the message of "no-till" resilient food production that combats encroaching salinity.

Effective climate adaptation in the Maldives depends on collaboration between the Government and NGOs like Live & Learn. That isn't happening yet. DM NGO finalists in other countries are reporting similar problems, as this blog has reported.

Since the DM2009 competition where our clean-water project was a finalist, we have received Serbian government funds for introducing new detection methods for the rapidly growing public health problem of cyanotoxins in water and plant and animal tissue.

Cyanobacteria has been on the Earth for 3.5 billion years, but global warming and climate change have significantly increased the occurrence of toxic cyanobacterial blooms, causing sickness and death for wildlife, livestock, and domesticated pets who drink freshwater contaminated with toxic algae blooms. The toxins pose a significant health threat to humans and other mammals that consume fish.

Thanks to the new funding from the Provincial Secretary for Science and Tehnological Development, our recent results, produced at the very beginning of 2010, show elevated content of toxins in fish meat, macrophyta tissue, and sediment of some commercial fish ponds. We also registered toxic blooms during December in one local lake.

We now know the price of climate adaptation in developing countries –- US$75-100 billion per year between 2010 and 2050. The recently published costs were explained by their World Bank estimators in a panel discussion at the Bank on Tuesday. But who, exactly, will do the adapting?

Most of the developing countries that will be hardest hit by climate change are poor (20) and some of them are classified as fragile (six). Poor –- and especially fragile – countries are already hard pressed to effectively implement current economic growth strategies because their governments don’t have adequate capacity in launching projects (e.g., local ownership, rigorous monitoring and evaluation, focus on results, feedback mechanism). Multilateral development banks, like the World Bank, are increasingly turning to non-governmental organizations to close the capacity gap.

Climate-adaptation spending – if it’s fully funded – would equal what’s now spent on “official development assistance” (ODA). Besides, climate adaptation, because it's unexplored terrain in many respects, will require a lot of learning, knowledge, and innovation. So how would the doubling of development funding be matched by capacity? The new cost-of-adaptation study says, very confidently: “For all sectors, adaptation costs include the costs of planned, public policy adaptation measures and exclude the costs of private adaptation.”

Does that mean that NGOs wouldn’t get a share of the billions of dollars in annual climate-adaptation funds that are expected to flow from developed to developing countries in coming years as part of the recent Copenhagen “accord”? Not necessarily. After Tuesday’s panel, I asked the chief author of the World Bank cost study, Sergio Margulis, if his numbers covered only climate adaptation carried out by national and regional governments, or might they be a “hybrid” that included NGOs. “A hybrid,” he said.

If you're a social entrepreneur, the Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) program wants to consider you for its 2010 all-expenses-paid course on how to create a business plan for a sustainable, scalable project that will connect with donors and other investors. The deadline for applying for the mostly distance-learning program is Friday, Jan. 15.

Development Marketplace finalists especially will want to consider applying to GSBI. Leonardo Rosario of the Philippines, a DM2009 finalist winner, received this invitation from GSBI:

“Dear Leonardo, Because of your recognition by World Bank’s Development Marketplace, it is my pleasure to invite your application for the 2010 Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI™).

Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu of Nigeria, who was also a winner at DM2009, says: "As an alumni of this program I highly recommend it for social entrepreneurs and other interested development professionals."

The first step in the application is a "value proposition" exercise where potential participants describe their organization and "articulate why the target customer/beneficiary will 'choose to buy' or 'consume' your product or service offering(s) over other alternatives. (Note: the alternative may be 'non-consumption')."

The "zero-emission fridge" seed storage silo to help subsistence farmers in northern Mozambique get through the "hunger period" was a non-winning finalist at DM2009. But I have good news since the competition. Our project, sponsored by Helvetas (Swiss Association for International Cooperation), will receive approximately US$2 million from the European Commission Food Facility to establish 90 seed banks benefitting 38,000 families in 300 communities.

The success of the clay silo is a story of adaptation on two levels. First, the silo can help subsistence farmers and their families adapt to climate change that is extending the drought-caused October-to-January "hunger period." Second, the ingenious design -- woven bamboo covered by clay -- produced a silo that had all the features of the original (and more expensive) metal storage facility, but was affordable to poor farmers. A native farmer, Gilberto Tethere in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado Province, produced the "Zero Emission Fridge for Rural Africa" (ZEFRA) by developing a low-cost silo using only locally available low-cost materials and applying traditional construction techniques.

The Technical Secretariat for Food Security of the Mozambican Ministry of Agriculture has promised that this innovative silo will be built across all Mozambique.

Environment

'I Explained It to My Daughter, and She Understood'

DM2009 Winner Sees Public-Private Gap on Climate Adaptation

Climate Threats Hit Low-Income Countries Hardest

Pledges of Adaptation Collaboration Need a Close Watch

DM2009 Finalists and Other NGOs Must Tell Their Story

Maldives DM2009 Finalist Seeks World Bank Help

DM2009 Finalist From Serbia Finds Funding

Will There Be a Battle Over Climate Change Funds in Developing World?

For Social Entrepreneurs, All Expenses Paid

Non-Winner at DM2009 Scores Big

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