Building a regional adaptation strategy for Amazon countries

Abstract

The IPCC has predicted that the Amazon rainforest will suffer strong consequences from a changing climate in the near future. The Amazon countries still have limited national policies on how to adapt and have failed to cooperate to promote adaptation plans at the regional level. Most studies have focused on adaptation policies at a local or national level, but overlook how these interact with the necessary regional cooperation required in transboundary ecosystems. This article assesses regional and national plans for climate adaptation in Amazonia, asking whether these provide a basis for regional adaptation policies. Have countries addressed climate adaptation in their NDCs and are there any synergies between countries? Are the Amazon countries currently implementing adaptation policies through the regional framework Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization, and if so how? The analysis is then contrasted with the regional adaptation policies promoted in Central America, a region that faces similar challenges. The analysis finds that regional adaptation governance in the Amazon region is still incipient, and requires a holistic view that integrates a multi-stakeholder approach to climate adaptation. This article makes a vital contribution to the impact and contribution of Amazonia to climate governance, which is still poorly understood.

Governing borderless climate risks: moving beyond the territorial framing of adaptation

“…Media reports are now linking migration flows from Central America to the US as climate change related (Blitzer 2019). Water scarcity, in terms of climate-induced water shortages in transboundary watersheds and river basins, is another frequently cited and well-established risk (Challinor et al 2018;Banda 2018;Wilder et al 2010;Tigre 2019). In terms of ecosystem shifts and extraction of natural resources, climate-induced species range shifts can be considered a borderless climate risk (Oppenheimer et al 2014), which is now being linked to international conflict in the field of fisheries and marine animal distribution (Pinsky et al 2018).…”

“…Whereas regional governance of borderless climate risks seems to evolve more naturally and can be modelled on existing transboundary cooperation (e.g. around shared water resources) (see Roggero et al 2019;Tigre 2019), two overarching questions of institutional design at the international level arise as the territorial framing of adaptation is increasingly contested. First, what kind of powers should be afforded to international governance initiatives and how strong should they be?…”

Amazon in flames: for a multilevel environmental transnational governance

“…The emperical studys about the tropical forests of South America complements this understanding and demonstrate the need to address the lack of regional cooperation on climate adaptation in the Amazon region (Tigre, 2019). This study provides a view of how a regional strategy could result in the provision of water security as a common public good.…”

The effect of exports on a wealth of a country: a comment on the role of natural capital in the Amazon basin

“…The forest is PRACS: Revista Eletrônica de Humanidades do Curso de Ciências Sociais da UNIFAP https://periodicos.unifap.br/index.php/ pracs ISSN 1984-4352 Macapá, v. 13, n. 2, p. 17-30, jul./dez. 2020 source of one-fifth of all freshwater on the plane, discharging into the Atlantic Ocean, influencing large ocean currents that are important climate system regulators (Tigre, 2019). And approximately eight trillion tons of water evaporate from Amazon forests each year, with important influences on global atmospheric circulation (Nepstad et al, 2008).…”