Outlook on Climate Change Adaptation in the Western Balkan Mountains

Institutional arrangements on adaptation under the UNFCCC

Workstreams

Groups and Committees

Approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change

Nairobi Work Programme on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change

Adaptation Committee

Least Developed Countries Expert Group

Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage

National Adaptation Plans

National Adaptation Programmes of Action

Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), FAO and WHO, support the most vulnerable developing countries in adaptation-related activities. Other multilateral processes, such as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the post-2015 process on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005–2015 and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 are also to be considered relevant fora where adaptation-related policies are discussed at the global level. A new legally binding agreement on climate involving both developed and developing countries for the period from 2020 onwards is mandated to be adopted by the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (30 November-11 Dec 2015). Acknowledging that the primary focus of the future agreement is reducing global GHG emissions and thus succeeding the Kyoto Protocol, Parties have made several proposals to also address adaptation and the issue of loss and damage, among other key elements, under the future climate regime.

These proposals are intended to raise the profile, enhance action and improve coordination of existing initiatives under the Convention, often mirroring the options being put forward on mitigation (e.g. a global adaptation goal, universal individual commitments on adaptation and an adaptation registry) (Helgeson and Ellis, 2015). Several countries, especially developing country Parties, have conveyed their eagerness to cover adaptation-related matters in the 2015 agreement by including an adaptation component in the so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) that were requested to inform the negotiations towards COP21 (UNFCCC, 2015b). The characteristics of adaptation as opposed to mitigation (e.g. levels of implementation, stakeholders, timescale of assessment and link with Sustainable Development Goals), have raised great controversy among Parties as to the possibility of including binding provisions on adaptation in an international agreement. While UNFCCC is global in scope, science tells us that adaptation must be tailored to the context and the subjects involved, as it

is a function of the specific impacts of climate change of a country, region, or territory. In addition, whether addressing loss and damage should be considered as a component of adaptation, or a distinct and separate category of measures and commitments to adaptation and mitigation, is one of the most critical issues under discussion. With respect to the evolving scientific information on climate change, the latest IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5) dedicated to impacts, adaptation and vulnerability has shifted the focus of the analysis towards risks related to a changing climate. Such an approach highlights that risks are generated by three main components: vulnerability (lack of preparedness) and exposure (people or assets in peril) resulting from socioeconomic pathways and societal conditions which depend on changes in both the climate system and socioeconomic processes, coupled with hazards (triggering climate events or trends). Actions to reduce future risk should target each of these factors either separately or jointly. In this light,

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