Climate Change and Development

[my latest piece for IRI]

United Nations representatives from 53 countries met at Columbia University recently to discuss the effect of climate change on development goals. The Danish Mission to the United Nations, the IRI and the Earth Institute organized the event. The IRI presented some of its experiences of helping countries become more resilient to climate variability and change.

By convening meetings such as the one held at Columbia, the Danish government is hoping to find ways to harmonize the development and adaptation agendas. In 2009, Denmark will host the Conference of the Parties (COP)–the annual meeting held by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to assess progress in dealing with the issue. A key focus of this COP, according to the Danish government, will be to build agreement on what to do about climate change when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The Danes believe, as others do, that left unabated, climate change threatens years of development and could destabilize societies. “We need to climate-proof development investments,” said Carsten Staur, Denmark’s Ambassador to the U.N. “We haven’t yet found the right approaches and sufficient resources to do so. To be effective, adaptation efforts have to be coordinated and aligned,” Staur said.

Poor countries, which have contributed least to global warming, will be the hardest hit by climate change, because of their overall greater vulnerability and lower adaptive capacity.

“In much of the developing world, adaptation to climate change should be a development priority,” wrote IRI’s Molly Hellmuth and Haresh Bhojwani in a paper they prepared for the meeting. Climate change “exacerbates inequalities, threatens poverty alleviation and the sustainable achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” they wrote.

Read the whole piece here.

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