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LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Efforts to adapt to worsening climate change impacts are no longer playing “Cinderella” to better-financed work to cut emissions - but big obstacles still stand in the way of staying safer from climate threats, adaptation experts said on Thursday.
Those range from inadequate investment in adaptation work, to over-zealous accountability mechanisms for public spending and a failure to include local people in developing plans and judging their success, they told an online discussion.
Too many poor countries, meanwhile, are waiting to receive donor cash to adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, when rethinking their own spending could also play a role, said Tom Mitchell, chief strategy officer for Climate-KIC, a European Union-funded climate innovation initiative.
Forty governments, leading global institutions and local and international NGOs, including UN Development Programme, Climate Investment Funds, Zurich Investment Group, BRAC and Slum Dwellers International, have committed a new set of principles to ensure climate adaptation is led by local people. ‘ The Principles for Locally Led Adaptation ’ were recently launched at the Climate Adaptation Summit.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), World Resources Institute (WRI), and International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) facilitated the Principles’ development with over 50 other organisations under the Global Commission for Adaptation, steered by commissioners Sheela Patel of Slum Dwellers International and BRAC executive director Dr Muhammad Musa.
RELEASE: 40 Governments and Leading Institutions Commit to Support Locally Led Climate Adaptation
Press Release - January 24, 2021
Climate emergency threatens to push 130 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, yet local people are often left out of decisions and funding; Momentum emerges to shift status quo
Forty governments, leading global institutions and local and international NGOs, including the United Kingdom and Irish governments, UN Development Programme, Climate Investment Funds, Zurich Investment Group, BRAC and Slum Dwellers International, have committed a new set of principles to ensure climate adaptation is led by local people. ‘The Principles for Locally Led Adaptation’ are launched today at the start of the Climate Adaptation Summit (25 January).