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Project

Uptake of climate change adaptation research results in South Asia
 

Bangladesh
India
Nepal
Pakistan
Project ID
109220
Total Funding
CAD 655,520.00
IDRC Officer
Heidi Braun
Project Status
Completed
End Date
Duration
18 months

Programs and partnerships

Lead institution(s)

Project leader:
Judith Klostermann
Netherlands

Project leader:
Munsur Rahman
Bangladesh

Project leader:
Saskia Werners
Japan

Summary

Climate and Resilience (CLARE) is a partnership co-funded by IDRC and the UK’s Department for International Development. CLARE selected a group of recently closed or near to closing IDRC-supported research programs to further develop and scale their results for greater impact.Read more

Climate and Resilience (CLARE) is a partnership co-funded by IDRC and the UK’s Department for International Development. CLARE selected a group of recently closed or near to closing IDRC-supported research programs to further develop and scale their results for greater impact. The selected recipients are expected to participate in a mid-term learning review in late 2020 to reflect on their efforts to achieve scaling and research uptake.

One of these recipients is the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA). This project integrates results from CARIAA by supporting three initiatives in South Asia with strong potential for scaling or research uptake for greater impact.

The first initiative focuses on scaling adaptation trials to inform climate financing in Bangladesh. The research will build upon earlier CARIAA results to evaluate the suitability of a set of adaptation options and work with government departments to develop an adaptation funding proposal to invest in and scale promising strategies and increase resilience in coastal Bangladesh.

The second initiative focuses on reducing the health risks of rising temperatures in India. The team will follow up on CARIAA pilot studies to assess the effectiveness of the first year of India’s heat stress warning campaign. Working with the Indian Meteorological Department, it will prepare tailored heat stress advice for 50 rural villages.

The third initiative will identify pathways for climate-resilient development in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. The team will map outcomes, explore the effectiveness of livelihood innovations piloted in four countries under CARIAA, and critically examine the opportunities for scaling, creating climate resilient development pathways, and integrating promising strategies into adaptation planning.

Expected results include contributions to knowledge through peer-reviewed publications, contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report, policy-oriented outputs, and practice through strategic engagement and research-into-use activities. It will also strengthen collaboration amongst the network of researchers previously engaged in CARIAA.

Research outputs

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Paper
Language:

English

Summary

Adaptation pathways are a decision-focused approach to account for future uncertainties and complexities in planning and implementation of adaptation actions. The pathways approach incorporates flexibility into decision making to accommodate for changing conditions over time, and to reduce undesirable path dependencies and maladaptive consequences. While the pathways approach for adaptation planning has received great interest from both climate scientists and practitioners, there has been little specific guidance on how to implement them and how to sustain the resulting outcomes. Accordingly, pathways approaches include diversified methodologies, with scope for reorienting and adjusting methods for different decision contexts. This special issue explores both theoretical and empirical cases of adaptation pathways in different contexts. A learning framework on adaptation pathways has been developed from a systematic review of adaptation literature. In this editorial, the framework is used to characterize the twelve case studies presented in the special issue, followed by a synthesis of lessons which point to some critical research gaps in adaptation pathways.

Author(s)
Sparkes, Edward
Report
Language:

English

Summary

Communities throughout the world face substantial challenges in the face of climate change. This is of particular concern in climate change hotspots, especially where extreme climate effects coincide with large numbers of vulnerable and poor people. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region is one such climate change hotspot. For development to be sustainable in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, interventions need to include choices and actions that improve livelihoods and alleviate poverty, counteract climate change, are inclusive for the most vulnerable and resilient over time. Climate resilient development pathways present an option to bring together these goals, by consolidating climate action and development choices to generate pathways towards sustainable development.

Author(s)
Werners, Saskia E.
Report
Language:

English

Summary

The RRR project (Reducing health risks of rising temperatures in South Asia) investigates real life heat stress experiences, both in urban and rural settings in India. A heat warning indicator, based on the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) index was developed using local weather data. It tailored local forecasts based on these weather data, so the India Meteorological Department (IMD) could express heat stress levels that people could expect to experience three days ahead. South Asian regions have high temperatures already and these will worsen. People with low income have dramatically lower access to cooling.

Author(s)
Klostermann, Judith
Report
Language:

English

Summary

Climate Resilience and National Resilience programs focus on formulating the Bangladesh National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for long-term adaptation investments and enhancing the national capacity to integrate climate change adaptation (CCA) in planning, budgeting, and financial tracking process. However, these programs and projects need a system-level quantitative tool to assess the requirement for adaptations at different scales and consequently decide on adaptation financing for these programs and projects. The current project is built on the earlier findings of the DECCMA project to address the above issues, with the target to add the necessary refinement through incorporating the equity, accessibility, adequacy, and gender dimensions to be useful at different scales of adaptation for climate change. The Dynamic Adaptation Model (DAM) is a product that has been developed gradually. It can be applied at different scales that can support the different communities and sectorial agencies/departments to guide local and national planning to adaptations while prioritizing in selecting appropriate options in different programs and projects to ensure the efficient use of available resources. DAM is developed based on strong mathematical formulation supported by field evidence. The model is calibrated and validated using field data to quantify the present-day adaptation need and now is being tested for some of the proposed adaptations in the NAP processes to assess its usefulness at the national level. Moreover, it is the home-grown model; therefore, the required customized version for different communities and agencies is possible through updates in the future with its extension for new areal coverage in collaboration with the developers and the alignment of the recent national initiatives. These are the ongoing processes essential to make it worthwhile for the mainstream national adaptation plan that needs further work.

Author(s)
Rahman, Munsur
Brief
Language:

English

Summary

Outcome mapping incorporates principles that can be used to inform considerations for the challenges and requirements for climate resilient development pathways. Before reaching the stage of an intervention when practitioners are designing a monitoring and evaluation approach, important steps must already have taken place in the intentional design phase. Indicators should be representative of intervention goals and clear in their direction in relation to long-term model projections of change in climate shocks and stresses. Development pathways in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region informed the results of this report. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region is a climate change hotspot.

Author(s)
Sparkes, Edward
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About the partnership

Partnership(s)

Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE)

CLARE is a Canada-UK partnership to enable socially inclusive and sustainable action to build resilience to climate change and natural hazards for people across the Global South.