The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2015 Paris Agreement are two of the most important policy frameworks of the twenty-first century. However, the alignment of national commitments linked to them has not yet been analysed for West African states. Such analyses are vital to avoid perverse outcomes if states assess targets and develop SDG implementation plans, and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, without integrated planning and cross-sectoral alignment. This article provides a situation analysis guided by the following questions: (a) Which priority sectors are mentioned in relation to adaptation and mitigation in West African NDCs? (b) Are the NDCs of West African states well aligned with the SDGs? (c) What are the co-benefits of NDCs in contributing towards the SDGs? and (d) How are West African states planning to finance actions in their NDCs? The study uses iterative content analysis to explore key themes for adaptation and mitigation within NDCs of 11 West African states and their alignment to selected SDGs. A national multi-stakeholder workshop was held in Ghana to examine the co-benefits of the NDCs in contributing towards the SDGs and their implementation challenges. Results show that agriculture and energy are priority sectors where NDCs have pledged significant commitments. The analysis displays good alignment between mitigation and adaptation actions proposed in NDCs and the SDGs. These represent opportunities that can be harnessed through integration into national sectoral policies. However, cross-sectoral discussions in Ghana identify significant challenges relating to institutional capacity, a lack of coordination among institutions and agencies, and insufficient resources in moving towards integrated implementation of national planning priorities to address successfully both NDC priorities and the SDGs.Key policy insights
Positive alignments between West African NDCs and SDGs present opportunities for mutual benefits that can advance national development via a more climate resilient pathway.
NDCs of West African states can provide mutual benefits across the water–energy–food nexus, such as through climate-smart agriculture and low carbon energy technologies.
Ghanaian multi-sectoral insights show the need to empower national coordinating bodies to overcome misalignments across different sectors.
Food-insecure households in many countries depend on international aid to alleviate acute shocks and chronic shortages. Some food security programmes (including Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program–PSNP – which provides a case study for this article) have integrated aid in exchange for labour on public works to reduce long-term dependence by investing in the productive capacity and resilience of communities. Using this approach, Ethiopia has embarked upon an ambitious national programme of land restoration and sustainable land management. Although the intent was to reduce poverty, here we show that an unintended co-benefit is the climate-change mitigation from reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increased landscape carbon stocks. The article first shows that the total reduction in net GHG emissions from PSNP’s land management at the national scale is estimated at 3.4 million?Mg?CO2e?y?1 – approximately 1.5% of the emissions reductions in Ethiopia’s Nationally Determined Contribution for the Paris Agreement. The article then explores some of the opportunities and constraints to scaling up of this impact.Key policy insights
Food security programmes (FSPs) can contribute to climate change mitigation by creating a vehicle for investment in land and ecosystem restoration.
Maximizing mitigation, while enhancing but not compromising food security, requires that climate projections, and mitigation and adaptation responses should be mainstreamed into planning and implementation of FSPs at all levels.
Cross-cutting oversight is required to integrate land restoration, climate policy, food security and disaster risk management into a coherent policy framework.
Institutional barriers to optimal implementation should be addressed, such as incentive mechanisms that reward effort rather than results, and lack of centralized monitoring and evaluation of impacts on the physical environment.
Project implementation can often be improved by adopting best management practices, such as using productive living livestock barriers where possible, and increasing the integration of agroforestry and non-timber forest products into landscape regeneration.
Flash drought is a rapidly intensifying drought with abnormally high temperature, which has greatly threatened crop yields and water supply, and aroused wide public concern in a warming climate. However, the preferable hydrometeorological conditions for flash drought and its association with conventional drought at longer time scales remain unclear. Here, we investigate two types of flash drought over China: one is high-temperature driven (Type I), while the other is water-deficit driven (Type II). Results show that the frequencies of the two types of flash drought averaged over China during the growing season are comparable. Type I flash drought tends to occur over southern China, where moisture supply is sufficient, while Type II is more likely to occur over semi-arid regions such as northern China. Both types of flash drought increase significantly (p0.01) during 1979-2010, with a doubled rise in Type I as compared with Type II. Composite analysis shows that high temperature quickly increases evapotranspiration (ET) and reduces soil moisture from two pentads before the onset of Type I flash drought. In contrast, there are larger soil moisture deficits two pentads before the onset of Type II flash drought, leading to a decrease in ET and increase in temperature. For flash drought associated with seasonal drought, there is a greater likelihood of occurrence during the onset and recovery phases of seasonal drought, suggesting perfect conditions for flash drought during transition periods. This study provides a basis for the early warning of flash drought by connecting multiscale drought phenomena. 相似文献
The United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) launched at the end of 2016 a decade-long (2016-2025) flagship programme on Climate, Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CEL), with the aim to assist developing countries in delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate targets while protecting their ecosystems and improving the livelihoods of their people. The CEL programme is a major initiative supported by China and other developing countries to promote long-term South-South cooperation, led by the United Nations Environment Programme International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP). This article presents the conceptual framework and implementation strategy of the CEL programme, which were proposed through consultations between UN Environment, Chinese and international experts. Within the conceptual framework, the CEL programme will 1) focus its work on the nexus of climate change, ecosystem services and sustainable livelihoods as the primary priority; 2) encourage cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder cooperation, enhance interdisciplinary research, and strive for breakthroughs that cross disciplinary boundaries; 3) provide four types of services and products—monitoring and assessment, capacity building, technology demonstration, and science for policy through mainly South-South cooperation; and 4) have far-reaching impacts on delivering SDGs and climate targets in vulnerable developing countries. The CEL programme is going to be implemented in a strategic way through a set of related projects and initiatives. More particularly, it will 1) focus on fragile ecosystems like drylands, mountains, river basins and coastal zones in Asia, Africa and other key regions along the Belt and Road, in the early stage and expand to include some other regions at a later stage; 2) take a three-phase approach, including Phase I, Kick -off (2016-2018), Phase II, Development (2019-2021), and Phase III, Scaling-up (2022-2025); and 3) draw on the globally relevant knowledge, expertise and other resources of a substantial network of partners. So far, UNEP-IEMP has developed more than twenty projects and initiatives in the regions along the Belt and Road, especially in Africa and the Greater Mekong Subregion, which lay a solid foundation for the implementation of CEL programme in its first phase. 相似文献
The development of legitimate, operative, and feasible landscape adaptation planning for climate change is dependent on the specific characteristics of the landscape and its inhabitants. Spatial patterns, culture, governance systems, socio-economic structures, planning methods, history, and collectively envisioned futures need to be accommodated. The literature suggests that landscape is a complex and dynamic socio-ecological system, the management and adaptation of which requires systemic and integrative approaches to respond to a wide variety of drivers of change, challenges, and interests. Based on activities developed in 15 European pilot landscapes, we identify some of the key factors and conditions affecting the generation of representative local networks for landscape adaptation to climate change. We illustrate how social learning and co-creation processes can be implemented in them and how their co-produced outcomes can help local communities overcome barriers and address critical issues in adaptive planning. Our results provide a framework for the creation of similar networks in other landscapes, exploring at the same time the interactions between the composition of networks, social learning, and the quality of the co-produced outputs as a fundamental step for the development of Landscape Adaptation Plans to Climate Change. 相似文献
Climate resilient development is emerging as a global policy strategy that integrates climate adaptation and mitigation into sustainable development decisions. For the Caribbean small island developing state (SIDS) of Antigua and Barbuda, the national government is pursuing climate resilient development through multilateral climate funds to protect economic growth from climate and weather-related disasters. Critical adaptation literature argues that interpreting climate vulnerability through an economic growth lens prioritizes economic solutions over other development concerns, which can further the uneven distribution of climate vulnerability and risk. Despite revealing the consequences of market-based climate actions, research has yet to fully understand the economization of vulnerability, which describes the political techniques that render and reconfigure vulnerability in calculated ways. By tracing the discursive interactions between multilateral climate financial institutions and the Antigua and Barbuda national government, this paper empirically examines how vulnerability is economized through climate resilient development. Findings identify the construction of ‘adaptation economies’ in watershed areas, which are economies that can capitalize upon climate challenges within areas of highest vulnerability through fee-for-climate services. The results illustrate that economic growth rationalities characterize climate vulnerability problematizations, which incentivize solutions that enforce the economic development of areas with the highest disaster impacts. Based on these findings, this study emphasizes a need to critically evaluate national actor efforts to re-organize development under climate financing rationales, and its vulnerability-inducing effects. 相似文献
Urban water systems need to serve increasing numbers of people under a changing climate. Studies of systems facing extreme events, such as drought, can clarify the nature of adaptive capacity and whether this might support incremental (marginal changes) or transformative adaptation (fundamental system shifts) to climate change. We conducted comparative case studies of three major metropolitan water systems in the United States to understand how actions taken in response to drought affected adaptive capacity and whether the adaptive capacity observed in these systems fosters the preconditions needed for transformative adaptation. We find that while there is ample evidence of existing and potential adaptive capacity, this can be either enabled or diminished by the specific actions taken and their cascading effects on other parts of the system. We also find social dimensions, such as public acceptance, learning, trust, and collaboration, to be as critical as physical elements of adaptive capacity in urban water systems. Finally, we suggest that changes in practices initiated during drought, combined with sustained engagement, collaboration, and education, can lead to substantial and long-lasting changes in values around water, a precursor to transformative adaptation. 相似文献
Climate adaptation is not a neutral or apolitical process, but one that ignites social resistance. Government responses to risks of floods, droughts, or hurricanes – even those using a language of participation – might follow historical development pathways, strive to maintain the status quo, and directly or indirectly serve elite interests. Little attention has been paid to how people defy or resist top-down adaptation processes, overtly or covertly, in particular cultural, historical, and legal contexts. Drawing on sociological thought on popular resistance, this paper systematises research on people’s resistance to climate adaptation by scrutinising the sites, repertoires, and consequences of such resistance. We identified overt and covert resistance in 56 scientific adaptation articles, which concentrated on 5 ‘sites’ of resistance: Rural livelihoods, Urban informal settlements, Islands, First Nations, and Institutional landscapes. The findings imply that resistance to adaptation occurs globally, and not least in the context of relocation processes and participatory adaptation. We show how a resistance lens can help understand contemporary political behaviours, shed light on dynamic and compound vulnerability, and’unlock’ more context-sensitive and even transformative adaptation. Meanwhile, resistance and popular movements are not only progressive, and there might be conceptual barriers to moving from resistance to transformation or reconciling resistance with actions by or with the state. 相似文献