2 Vulnerability assessment
2.4 Key Development Issues
The vulnerability of communities to the effects of climate change depends not only on the magnitude of climate stress, but more so the sensitivity and capacity of affected individual to adapt or cope with such strain.
The capacity to adapt and cope depends upon many factors, including wealth, technology, education, institutions, information, skills and access to resources, which are generally scarce in poor communities.
Thus, vulnerability recognizes that socio-economic systems play a role in intensifying or moderating the impacts of climate change.
The problem of rapid climate change is inseparably entwined with the challenges of development. As an example, although high-income countries first created the problem through the uncontrolled emissions of greenhouse gas, poor people in the developing worlds are feeling the impacts first and worst. Moreover, some developing countries are now major emitters, and the developing world accounts for more than half of all current greenhouse gases. Therefore, for responses to climate change to be successful, we must address developing countries’ needs including the right to development. The greatest challenge is to explore more possibilities to improve efforts toward greenhouse gas mitigation and abatement in line with the thrusts on sustainable development, such as low carbon lifestyles.
2.4.1 Implications of greenhouse gas inventory
GHG emissions are one of the most widely accepted sustainability performance indicators developed. It is an essential link between science and policy-making for various reasons thus its absence undermine developmental efforts.
Mitigation options are evaluated paving the way for assessing the effectiveness of policies and measures.
Estimating GHG emissions enables local governments to create an emissions baseline, monitoring progress, assess the relative contributions of emission sources, communicate with stakeholders, and create and informed mitigation strategy based on such information. The scope of GHG emissions can help inform the development of a climate action plan or the implementation of climate policies.
Thru the inventory, sectors, sources and activities within the locality that are responsible for greenhouse gas emissions can be identified. Emission trends can now be understood through tracking the reduction progress while setting goals and targets for future reductions. However, due to its tedious nature and often confusing scope and limitations, most local governments begin reducing GHG emissions before or during the completion of a formal inventory.
2.4.2 Climate change adaptation mainstreaming to development plans
Based on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), mainstreaming climate change adaptation is the iterative process of integrating considerations of climate change adaptation into policy-making, budgeting implementation and monitoring processes at national, sector and subnational levels. It is a multi -year, multi-stakeholder effort grounded in the contribution of climate change adaptation to human well-being, pro-poor economic growth, and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It entails working with a range of government and non-governmental actors and other players in the development field.
The importance of climate change adaptation can be achieved into two main objectives, (i) reducing the risks posed by climate change to project activities, stakeholders, and results to sometimes referred to as climate-proofing, and (ii) ensuring that project or program activities maximize their contribution to adaptive capacity of target populations and do not inadvertently increase vulnerability to climate change, which can be achieved through interventions designed to build resilience while achieving development goals.
Climate-proofing is primarily concerned with protecting development investments and outcomes from the impacts of climate change. Projects sustainability is increased by analyzing the risks posed by climate change
68
Municipality of Carmona Local Climate Change Action Plan 2015-2024
to project activities, stakeholders, and results, then modifying and/or adjusting project designs or implementation plans to mitigate those risks.
On the other hand, mainstreaming adaptation recognizes that development activities that seek to reduce poverty can build the adaptive capacity of target populations to climate impacts or unconsciously constraint it. By analyzing vulnerability of these populations to climate change and adjusting project activities to maximize their contribution to resilience, the impact of development projects can be significantly increased.
Therefore in essence, achieving the MDGs is tantamount to climate change adaptation and vice versa.
Most impacts of climate change are foreseen to impact poverty reductions and other MDG achievements.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) denotes that the existing pattern of failure in achieving the MDGs correlates with areas where high climate vulnerabilities are observed and expected.
These impacts are based on the premise of continuous changes in climatic conditions and accompani ed climate-related extreme events. However, while MDG progress and reduction in vulnerability to climate change are closely related, they are not synonymous. Poverty reduction does not automatically reduce the vulnerability of the poor to climate stressors. Similarly, some climate-related adaptation policies do not reduce the vulnerability of the poor, in some cases they could even render some groups more susceptive. Therefore, it is required to consider the factors that affect vulnerability and identify measures targeted specifically at vulnerability of the poor in both the MDG and the climate debate. Applying a pro-poor focus in all three areas – the MDGs, the mitigation and the adaptation processes, can generate substantial synergies.
2.4.3 Identifying Institutional linkages and empowerment
Institutions have been defined by many as systems of rules, decision-making procedures, and programs that give rise to social practices, assign roles to the participants in these practices, and guide interactions among the occupants of the relevant roles. It also refers to organization as a formalized pattern of rules and decision-making.
There are three (3) types of institutions relevant to local adaptation that can be defined: civic, public and private in their formal and informal forms: (i) local public institutions (e.g. LGUs, local agencies or other arms of higher levels of government operating at local levels), (ii) civil society institutions (e.g. rural producer organizations, cooperatives, savings and loan groups), and (iii) private institutions (e.g. service organizations such as NGOs, private businesses). They shape the livelihood impacts of climate hazards through a range of indispensable functions they perform in rural contexts such as information gathering and dissemination, resource mobilization and allocation, skills development and capacity building, providing leadership, and networking with other decision makers and institutions. In broad explanation, they shape the ability of households to respond to climate impacts and pursue different adaptation practices and they mediate the flow of external interventions in the context of adaptation.
The capacity of a particular institution is important in how they affect climate change adaptation. But equally important are linkages and interconnections they have with each other and households; these affect flow of resources and decision-making power among social groups, and thus their capacity to adapt. There are two (2) types of linkages relevant to adaptation capacity and outcomes that can be identified: (i) linkages to institutions, which is the degree to which different households are linked to various institutions in their locality impacts their access to resources and decision-making, and thereby their capacity to adapt. Institutional connections provide households and communities greater flexibility in their choice of diversification and adaptation strategies. And, (ii) linkages between institutions, the effectiveness of a particular institution in coordinating and responding to climate change is shaped by its connections with other local and external institutions. Connections between local and higher level institutions allow residents of a given locality to leverage their membership of local institutions for gains from outside the locality.
Henceforth, to be able to maximize the potential of identifying and empowering institutions and their linkages, greater capacity to adapt locally and nationally should focus on the following:
69
Municipality of Carmona Local Climate Change Action Plan 2015-2024
1. A greater role for institutional partnerships in facilitating adaptation is needed. Institutional partnerships are crucial to local adaptation practices. Support for such partnerships can greatly enhance informal institutional processes through which adaptation occurs.
2. Enhancing the capacity of local institutions. A critical step, is ensuring that capacity of these institutions are enhanced. The intensity of adverse future climate impacts is likely to increase thereby also increasing current climate vulnerability and reducing existing adaptive capacity.
3. Understanding the roles of local institutions and their linkages.
4. Improve institutional coordination across scales for better planning and implementation.
5. Focus on territorial development strategies taking both vulnerabilities and capacities into account. Interventions for improving adaptive capacity in the context of development projects need to attend better to adaptation practices facilitated by different forms of external support.
6. Adopt an adaptive perspective on institutional development. The development of greater adaptive capacity will require willingness to experiment, tolerate mistakes, and promote social learning and behavioral change in terms of increasing risk management.
2.4.4 Costs and Financing
Estimating the costs of climate change impacts and adaptation is fundamentally problematic as evidenced by the lack of quantified data and the variety in the scale estimates that have been undertaken. Further, such estimates have tended to be based on strong assumptions, such as perfect foresight, and there are very few cross-sector studies that look at cumulative effects within counties or the wider macro-economic consequences of impacts or adaptation.
A number of organizations such as the World Bank have attempted to calculate the costs of adaptation in developing countries. The estimates shows that climate proofing development investments, including Official Development Assistance (ODA) and concessional finance, foreign direct investment and gross domestic investment in developing countries alone will cost between 10 to 40 billion US dollars annually. This does not even account the costs of climate proofing existing supplies of natural and physical capital where no new investment is planned, the cost of financing new investments specifically to deal with climate change, or the costs to households and communities to fund their own adaptation needs.
The main source of international funding for adaptation is the UNFCCC divided into four (4): the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the Adaptation Fund (AF), which sits under the Kyoto Protocol. These funds however are not adequate to meet adaptation needs in developing countries alone. Moreover, many developing countries have expressed concern over the unclear guidance and high transaction costs attached to the GEF funding mechanisms. In addition, although funding through the GEF is not formally conditional, requirements attached to funding include burdensome reporting and co-financing criteria.
At the local scene, adaptation finance has grown significantly and represents a growing section of the country’s total international funding flows. With such, several issues and concerns have emerged particularly on the issue of disbursement, to which, sectors, and methodologies. Furthermore, a World Bank study in 2013 showed that the country’s budget on climate change adaptation and mitigation fell below international standards despite dramatic increase in recent years. Sources of financing for climate change activities stem primarily from domestic sources through the GAA, Special Purpose Funds (SPFs) and Special Accounts in General Funds (SAGF). Several large climate activities that should have contributed to resilient communities are underfunded or not funded at all. Provinces and Municipalities that are at greatest risk of being affected by climate hazards have lower total income per capita with about 70 percent if their income derived from the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA). Funds sources that should have abated the current dilemma at the local level are observed to have different sets of rules and processes, eligibility criteria, and cost-sharing requirements that all the more make it difficult for LGUs to plan, mobilize resources, and monitor and report on results.