The concept of climate compatible development (CCD) is increasingly employed by donors and policy makers seeking 'triple-wins' for development, adaptation and mitigation. While CCD rhetoric is becoming more widespread, analyses drawing on empirical cases that present triple-wins are sorely lacking. We address this knowledge gap. Drawing on examples in rural sub-Saharan Africa, we provide the first glimpse into how projects that demonstrate triple-win potential are framed and presented within the scientific literature. We identify that development projects are still commonly evaluated in terms of adaptation or mitigation benefits. Few are framed according to their benefits across all three dimensions. Consequently, where triple-wins are occurring, they are likely to be under-reported. This has important implications, which underestimates the co-benefits that projects can deliver. A more robust academic evidence base for the delivery of triple-wins is necessary to encourage continued donor investment in activities offering the potential to deliver CCD.
To better anticipate potential impacts of climate change, diverse information about the future is required, including climate, society and economy, and adaptation and mitigation. To address this need, a global RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways), SSP (Shared Socio-economic Pathways), and SPA (Shared climate Policy Assumptions) (RCP-SSP-SPA) scenario framework has been developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC-AR5). Application of this full global framework at sub-national scales introduces two key challenges: added complexity in capturing the multiple dimensions of change, and issues of scale. Perhaps for this reason, there are few such applications of this new framework. Here, we present an integrated multi-scale hybrid scenario approach that combines both expert-based and participatory methods. The framework has been developed and applied within the DECCMA project with the purpose of exploring migration and adaptation in three deltas across West Africa and South Asia: (i) the Volta delta (Ghana), (ii) the Mahanadi delta (India), and (iii) the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta (Bangladesh/India). Using a climate scenario that encompasses a wide range of impacts (RCP8.5) combined with three SSP-based socio-economic scenarios (SSP2, SSP3, SSP5), we generate highly divergent and challenging scenario contexts across multiple scales against which robustness of the human and natural systems within the deltas are tested. In addition, we consider four distinct adaptation policy trajectories: Minimum intervention, Economic capacity expansion, System efficiency enhancement, and System restructuring, which describe alternative future bundles of adaptation actions/measures under different socio-economic trajectories. The paper highlights the importance of multi-scale (combined top-down and bottom-up) and participatory (joint expert-stakeholder) scenario methods for addressing uncertainty in adaptation decision-making. The framework facilitates improved integrated assessments of the potential impacts and plausible adaptation policy choices (including migration) under uncertain future changing conditions. The concept, methods, and processes presented are transferable to other sub-national socio-ecological settings with multi-scale challenges.
Article 7, paragraph 14 of the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change commits Parties to create a five yearly assessment of observed adaptation to track progress and enable appropriate future commitments through the Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans. No large‐scale study exists that shows the types of adaptation, the spatial distribution of types of adaptation, and the numbers of people engaging in that adaptation. To address this gap, and to feed into debates about the modalities for the global stocktake, in this paper we propose a new “stocktaking” approach to document the spectrum and prevalence of observed adaptation over large scales. The four‐step stocktaking approach focuses on: (a) obtaining consensus on the objectives of adaptation; (b) agreeing the sources of evidence; (c) agreeing the search method; and (d) categorizing the adaptations. By focusing on documenting rather than evaluating adaptation, the simple approach avoids some of the adaptation heuristic traps. With guidance to countries on how to operationalize, this approach could improve the transparency of adaptation data collection and analysis, ensure comparability of findings across space and time, and inform the Adaptation Communications (Article 7.10)—a prerequisite to strengthening future ambition commitments within the Paris Agreement.
This article is categorized under:
Policy and Governance > International Policy Framework
Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation
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