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Black earth tongue | © Dheer Kaku
Ink on paper, 2020
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Dear ICC community,
With COP27 on our calendars, the spotlight – for the first time – is on the critical need for investment in resilience and loss and damage. This includes conversations around how climate finance from developed countries can reach developing and least developed countries, to support ongoing climate efforts.
While the world decides how to best address climate change impacts, distressing news about the effects of climate change seems to be on the rise – of suffering, of loss and damage across the world, of helplessness in the wake of extreme weather events. The Brazilian Amazon is experiencing one of its worst droughts in decades, immediately after enduring floods that submerged entire communities. Heavy, untimely rains brought cities across India to a standstill in October. Yet, if we look carefully, we can find instances of hope and resilience in these challenging times. Vulnerable communities in different parts of the world are rallying with the support of governments and civil society to save their homes, biodiversity, and livelihoods, from increasing desertification, forest fires, floods, and famine, by applying traditional knowledge to scarce resources.
In famine-affected Somalia, for example, government programs, such as the Baxnaano Program, are providing a social safety net for food security and livelihoods, to former farmers prone to chronic poverty and multiple climate-shocks. To address food insecurity aggravated by heavy monsoons in Nepal, the Nepal Agriculture Research Council is developing climate-resilient, drought- and submergence-tolerant seeds, and working alongside farmers to move towards climate-smart agriculture. In Ernakulam, Kerala, the Chittattukara gram panchayat is working towards carbon neutrality, by planting saplings in barren lands and households, through the Bhavvikkoru Kudamaram project. Stories of adaptation and resilience such as these can inspire us, highlighting the need for courageous and sustained efforts in the face of adversity, as well as viable climate solutions that are people-centric. As we learn more about communities and governments that are rising to the challenge of climate change, their spirit reminds me of Carl Sagan’s words, ‘Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, it’s the only home we’ve ever known’.
Our newsletter this month visualises climate resilience, in view of the upcoming COP27. We know that resilience is the need of the hour - but how do we imagine communities and cities that thrive along with nature? We can look to Dheer Kaku’s series, Casual Thoughts on Doom, to dwell on the interconnectedness of humans, nature, and development. By highlighting existing infrastructures of transport and shelter in nature, he reminds us that we, as humans, were not the first to come up with infrastructures, and that, to be resilient, we need to embrace this interconnectedness in our villages, towns, and cities.
On behalf of the ICC team,
Shloka Nath
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What does climate resilience look like?
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Apophenia | © Dheer Kaku
Ink on archival paper, 2020
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While envisioning climate resilience in rural and urban spaces, projects across India and the global South can show us the way forward. Excerpts from DownToEarth’s article ‘Hiware Bazar – A Village with 54 millionaires' show us the potential for rural resilience.
‘In the 1970s, Hiware Bazar, (a village in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district), lost its fight against ecological degradation. Drought was chronic and acute--a slight drop in rainfall resulting in crop failure. The village faced an acute water crisis, its traditional water storage systems were in ruins.’
With a participatory institutional set-up, this village is now a model for watershed literacy. Between the 1990s and early 2000s, the gram sabha implemented successive five-year plans for ecological regeneration, and directed funds towards water conservation and surface storage systems to collect rainwater, in collaboration with the state government. Within a decade, the village observed the ripple effects of watershed management – from surplus grass and milch livestock numbers, to an exponential rise in income from dairying and agriculture.
With a 73% decrease in poverty, ‘a fourth of the village's 216 families are millionaires. In the past 15 years, the average income has risen 20 times.’ This success story is a timely reminder of the power of collaboration and community-led resilience, in adapting to climate change.
We can look to Surat’s Smart City model to understand urban resilience. As a part of the Smart City Mission, the Surat Municipal Corporation, Gujarat, aims to build a futuristic city that enhances its economy and quality of live, while protecting its ecology. This model of resilience integrates robust water supply management, renewable energy development, and affordable housing through a ‘Zero Slum Area’, among others. Other prominent cities in the global South, such as Dhaka, Bangladesh and Guadalajara, Mexico, are also making positive strides towards urban resilience. Adjudged the C40 winner in the category ‘Building Climate Resilience’, the Dhaka North City Corporation’s climate action plan aims to increase green spaces by 70%, to bolster climate resilience to heat waves and flooding, with a focus on improving conditions for low-income residents and migrants. Learning from these models, we must place resilience at the heart of development while dreaming of a climate-conscious future. |
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Shaping climate finance negotiations at COP27
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Apophenia | © Dheer Kaku
Ink on archival paper, 2020
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Over the years, the voice of the global South has played a critical role in shaping international climate discourse; and this is especially clear this year – as adaptation and resilience, as well as loss and damage, occupy significant space on the COP27 agenda. With Pakistan presently chairing G77 plus China and India chairing the G20 later this year, the moment is opportune for the global South to bring focus to adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage, within the realm of climate finance.
This year has been taxing the world; rising inflation across East Asia, Africa, and Europe, coupled with energy and food crises, have led to a reduced global focus on climate commitments. With each country looking increasingly inward to address their own economic and climate crises, mobilising climate finance faces significant challenges. COP27 will likely draw attention to the still incomplete promise of annual USD 100 billion. However, cognisant that this figure was arrived at more than 13 years ago, prior to accurate costing of needs, developing countries can direct focus towards the UNFCCC’s recent Needs Determination Report (NDR). Importantly, this report recognises the growing need for climate adaptation in developing countries.
Prepared on the basis of quantitative and qualitative data collected from developing countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc., the NDR states that presently, costed mitigation (emissions reduction) needs are cumulatively larger than adaptation needs; possibly due to easier access to information about methodologies to determine mitigation needs. However, the NDR acknowledges that several needs of countries may have gone un-costed due to lack of availability of data. As countries develop improved tools to cost adaptation needs, such data is going to play a critical role in attracting finance to ongoing adaptation and resilience efforts in the global South. This is especially relevant as developing countries have identified a higher number of adaptation needs, over those of mitigation. As Kashmala Kakakhel of the Green Climate Fund pointed out in her recent address at the National Conference on COP27 Compass, developing countries must invest in costing their needs accurately, in order to identify the required quantum of global climate finance.
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Kashmala Kakakhel's address at the National Conference on COP27 Compass
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To address climate change impacts, which have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and global conflicts, developing countries are suggesting mobilising USD 500 billion as a stimulus for the worst hit economies to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals, providing emergency food supplies for over 250 million people, and ensuring the availability of energy for developing countries, among others. Significant issues that they will draw attention to include the need for enhanced transparency of finance flows, as well as access to such flows, particularly for Africa, least developed countries, and small island developing countries.
COP27’s agenda also includes a review of the present financial mechanism, updates from the Green Climate Fund, as well as funding arrangements for loss and damage. With climate finance at the heart of the agenda, parties at COP27 are also likely to deliberate on how to galvanise such climate finance, including UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ call for a windfall tax on the profits of fossil fuel companies for a loss and damage fund, to compensate countries for damage due to climate impacts. The World Bank has estimated that Pakistan suffered damages amounting to USD 40 billion due to its recent floods. In such circumstances, concerns such as increasing national debt, aggravated by past climate impacts, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war on Ukraine, must also be factored into such negotiations. Developing countries must also identify preferred sources of climate finance – whether from the private or public sectors, the nature of conditions imposed on such finance, as well as the triggers for the flow of such finance. Without these nuances, it will be difficult for negotiations on adaptation and loss and damage finance to account for equity amongst countries in the global North and South.
Read Pakistan’s statement at the 46th Annual Meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of G77 and China here. |
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Faces of Climate Resilience | Film screening & dialogue
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Apophenia | © Dheer Kaku
Ink on archival paper, 2020
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We screened a few stories from the documentary series Faces of Climate Resilience in Mumbai on October 14, 2022, with support from the IMC Young Leaders’ Forum, the Council for Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), and the Bombay Natural History Society. Created by CEEW and Drokpa Films, and supported by the ICC and EdelGive Foundation, this series captures 16 stories across 5 Indian states. From a women's collective in Odisha replanting trees along a cyclone-prone coast, to a youth group in suburban Mumbai sensitising slum dwellers about climate change, we witnessed the lived experiences of communities already bearing the brunt of climate change impact, as well as local adaptations to climate risks. Following the screening, the audience interacted with a panel comprising of Mr. Bittu Sahgal (Editor, Sanctuary Asia, & President, Bombay Natural History Society), Ms. Tejashree Joshi (Head – Environment and Sustainability, Godrej & Boyce), and Mr. Rajat Gupta (Senior Partner, McKinsey & Co.), as well as Amit Gawali of YUVA India, whose work features in one of the films, on how we can build climate resilience into businesses and societies, and integrate nature into our development narrative.
A part of CEEW’s and ICC’s ongoing efforts towards developing a Climate Risk Atlas, this documentary series visually highlights data collected by CEEW in their report ‘Mapping India’s Climate Vulnerability: A District-Level Assessment’.
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Watch a few stories from the series here
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Apophenia | © Dheer Kaku
Ink on archival paper, 2020
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- The UNFCCC’s latest press release calling for more ambitious climate action plans
- The Observer Research Foundation’s latest article on the rising challenge of urban floods in India
- A Joint Report issued by multilateral development banks, including the African Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, on climate finance commitments to low- and middle-income countries
- The Climate Policy Initiative’s report on public financial institutions’ climate commitments
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Emergence | © Dheer Kaku
Ballpoint pen and inks on paper, 2021
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