The sixth edition of the conference, Adaptation Futures 2020, will be co-hosted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the World Adaptation Science Program (WASP) in New Delhi from 4-8 October, 2021. It will be hosted under the broad rubric of 'accelerating adaptation action and knowledge to support action'. This will be an ideal opportunity to generate a significant dialogue around actionable solutions and move the international cooperation further to realising the goals of the Paris Agreement. This will be the first Adaptation Futures conference to be held in Asia and therefore will be an ideal opportunity to flag adaptation challenges in the developing countries of Asia, marked by diverse political, social, economic and cultural characteristics, and accelerating climate-related vulnerabilities. With 2020 declared as the year of action on adaptation by the global climate change community, AF2020 is uniquely placed to build on this momentum and feed into the COP26 to be held in November 2021.
Research Group Leader of the Systemic Risk and Resilience Group (SYRR), Reinhard Mechler will co-chair the Session on Emerging Perspectives on Risk Management Approaches to Assess, Minimize and Address Climate-related Loss and Damage.
October 6, 2021 from 14:30-16:00 IST
Chair: Reinhard Mechler, IIASA, Austria and NIDM Dr Anil Kumar Gupta, Project Director, CECR
Partners:
Globally, weather and climate-related risks, which potentially cause loss and damage and lead to existential residual risks (L&D), have increased dramatically over the past few decades. The most recent climate projections indicate a significant increase in the frequency, duration and intensity of extreme weather events as well as severe slow-onset climate related changes. This means a growing risk to sustainable development of communities and countries. Dealing with L&D gained increasing importance under the UNFCCC. The Paris Agreement further underlined its importance with a stand-alone provision on L&D. While a number of approaches already exist in the field of short-term risk assessment and management, mainly in the field of extreme events, existing approaches do often not sufficiently address long-term, slow-onset changes due to climate change. To avert L&D, mitigating climate change globally remains paramount. To minimise L&D, it is important to combine a smart mix of instruments that are already applied in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Even though states and communities around the world are increasingly suffering losses and damages related to the impacts of climate change, the amount of experience gained in operationalising L&D concepts remains limited. Against this backdrop, research, development institutions and NGOs have been advocating a comprehensive climate risk management (CRM) approach to managing losses and damages in order to support decision makers from the public and private sectors in forward-looking risk management planning. As a recent highlight, GIZ with research partners IIASA, the University of Geneva, IIT-Delhi and policy partner NIDM developed evidence and guidance around CRM in order to support (i) the management of risks along the entire risk continuum, from short-term extreme weather events such as storms and floods to long-term gradual changes such as sea level rise and desertification; ii) conducting climate risk assessments that inform both climate adaptation and disaster risk management and respond to the interests and capacities of countries and communities; (iii) adopting context-specific packages of climate risk management measures; and (iv) actions for monitoring and evaluation and continuous learning around implemented options. This session contributes to widening the existing knowledge base on climate-related L&D assessment and management approaches in different sectors like agriculture, infrastructure and water through key presentations followed by group work in World Café Format. Expected Outcome: • Increased understanding for the need of having a comprehensive framework for climate risk assessment with a focus on L&D, • Overview of relevant methods and tools to be used at appropriate risk management scales (local to national), • Participants receive insights into different approaches for assessing and managing loss and damage at local, state and level, • Discussion of policy implications and institutional imperatives for national (India and South Asia) to international climate risk policy, • Stimulating a community of practice.
IIASA Researcher from the Systemic Risk and Resilience Group (SYRR), Teresa Deubelli will co-chair the session on Transformation & Resilience: Enabling effective adaptation through transformational approaches.
October 7, 2021 from 19:00-20:30 IST
Chair: Teresa M. Deubelli, IIASA & Kanmani Venkateswaran, ISET
Discussant: Reinhard Mechler, IIASA, Colin McQuistan, Practical Action
Partner: ISET-International and Practical Action (in the framework of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance)
Business-as-usual approaches are no longer enough to counter the pervasive and intensifying climate-related risks paired with vulnerabilities that limit adaptation. To fundamentally tackle the underlying drivers of risk and vulnerabilities and build resilience in the face of a changing climate transformational approaches are needed. This includes both a need for a critical re-evaluation of existing structures, institutions, habits and priorities that perpetuate risks and a shift towards innovative, comprehensive climate risk management and adaptation that builds on strong bottom-up engagement. Transformational approaches can open novel pathways for building resilience and adaptive capacity and for creating opportunities for sustainable development in the face of a spiraling climate crisis. Yet, so far only limited evidence on the bottlenecks and success factors for transformational approaches in resilience building is available. There is a need for open exchange on what works for enabling effective adaptation through transformational approaches. This campfire session offers a casual, open and interactive space for reflections on opportunities and enabling factors for transformational approaches to reduce and manage increasingly intolerable risks. The session also welcomes snapshots from across the globe, where transformational approaches to adaptation are being put into practice. In addition, participants are also invited to share their experience and thoughts on what transformational approaches are required across different contexts and on how business-as-usual approaches can be transformed and scaled up to enable effective adaptation. Expected outcomes from this session include: 1. Convene a lively discussion on enabling factors and bottlenecks for a gear change from business-as-usual to transformational approaches; 2. Collect the insights in a book on transformation and resilience, which IIASA and ISET-International are taking forward with support from the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance and for which contributions are warmly welcome.