7th APAN Forum Theme
The 7th Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum is organised under the overall theme “Enabling Resilience for All: The Critical Decade to Scale-up Action”. The Forum is built around four thematic streams: Inclusive Resilience, Nature-based Resilience, Economic Sector Resilience, and Community and Local Resilience. Furthermore, discussions for each stream were structured on five enabling conditions through which resilience may be built, maintained, and strengthened, identified as Policy and Climate Governance, Planning and Processes, Science and Assessment, Technologies and Practices, and Finance and Investments.
| Definition of Resilience: “The capacity of social, economic and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure, while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation” (IPCC, 2014) [1]. |
Notwithstanding the progress made in the development of policies, institutional coordination mechanisms, and processes to build climate resilience, gaps remain within how to integrate science into policy and practice. Resilience is interpreted in multiple ways, bringing together otherwise disparate groups, institutions, disciplines, and scales. Improving transparency of information on climate change adaptation measures provides a driving force for integrating policy measures and implementation, and for committing to greater ambitions and shared actions with encouraging narratives.
Guiding Questions:
- Are the current governance structures and policies effective in delivering the desired resilience outcomes and responses?
- If so, what further enhancements are needed to allow for scale and greater impact?
- If not, why?
- Do these policies address the needs and match the current capacities of the intended target audiences?
- How can equity and inclusivity be ensured when developing policies?
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In planning and approval processes, science has a critical role in tackling the impacts of extreme events and the slow onset of climate phenomena. Adapting successfully also requires collaborative effort in targeting capacity constraints in planning, policy, and processes, along with a more humane and just approach in formulating and implementing policies.
Guiding Questions:
- Are the current planning and approval processes effective in delivering the desired resilience outcomes and responses?
- If so, what further enhancements are needed to allow for scale and greater impact?
- If not, why?
- Do these planning and processes address the needs and match the current capacities of the intended target audiences?
- How can equity and inclusivity be ensured when developing adaptation and recovery plans?
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There will always be an element of uncertainty in adaptation planning and decision making. The intrinsic variability in the climate and in the human, social, economic, and environmental systems impose this to a certain degree, as does the fact that the knowledge may be imperfect.
Guiding Questions:
- How does scientific knowledge feed and inform planning? How to plan with imperfect information or issues of uncertainty?
- Is the currently available knowledge (from resolutions and assessments) the right kind of knowledge needed on the ground?
- How can national data be extrapolated to guide the work in communities and cities, where adaptation interventions need to happen?
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New and innovative climate-smart technologies, big data applications, and social and integrated media for awareness and outreach, can create effective cross-learning and knowledge-sharing opportunities, and practical opportunities for cooperation.
Guiding Questions:
- What made these practices successful? What was the time frame? (pilot to actual implementation)
- What are the barriers to implementing and scaling-up these practices?
- What is needed to promote replicability of successful practices?
- How can success stories be communicated so that new practitioners can leapfrog early start-up issues?
- How to determine cross-cutting challenges when moving to scale?
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The means to connect finance and investments to projects that build national, local, and community climate resilience and support socio-economic national development, are real but implementation gaps exist. Actions to improve adaptive capacities can generate mutual benefits, as well as help achieve the other sustainable development co-benefits, such as improved health, reduced hunger, and better food security, women’s empowerment, and access to clean water and air, among others.
Guiding Questions:
- Why is it difficult to access available finance?
- How do you successfully apply for green climate funding (GCF)?
- How can blended finance/green/impact investing help de-risk climate projects?
- What would a new, realistic metric for investments with a social return for investments (ROIs) look like?
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