Too Little, too slow says the recent Adaptation Gap Report. And despite the overwhelming urgency for action and support, the first round of workshops on the Global Goal of Adaptation (GGA) ended with so little, oh so slowly.
There is a reason.
At the best of times, ECO finds it hard to convey what is happening in our communities and the ecosystems we inhabit to these national and international platforms. Yet everybody knows that most often, adaptation means people coping with the consequences of climate breakdown on their own, with families and neighbours. Evidence is that the most effective adaptation efforts are community based, by a few thousand people dealing collectively with their unique circumstances, vulnerabilities and capacities.
But at the 4th workshop on the Global Goal for Adaptation on Saturday, discussions were still firmly centred on international and national affairs. No surprise there, it is the United Nations. But ECO insists the role of national systems in bridging the local to global nexus must not be underestimated. The GGA must reinforce existing foundations of adaptation action in countries, such as National Adaptation Plans and related monitoring, evaluation and learning systems, to channel finance to the appropriate levels and truly accelerate adaptation actions.
The institution should not get in the way of strengthening resilience, reducing vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacities if efforts are best planned, executed and evaluated locally. Because of its denial of the centrality and diversity of local adaptation, the workshops of the Glasgow Sharm El Sheikh work programme this half year have singularly failed to agree on ways of boosting ‘the understanding of the global goals on adaptation, adaptation action and support, and all the learning, monitoring and evaluating and communicating and messaging’ entailed. Unless it recognises where the action really is, it will be defining and counting a fantasy of international action. Intimations of a different way came from Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples’ Platform at Saturday’s workshop promoting the inclusion of knowledge from those groups in national communication and reporting, and Saleemul Huq’s intervention on locally led adaptation and support from a couple of parties.
Opportunities offered by adherence to the Principles for Locally-led Adaptation can improve both reporting and processes towards more effective adaptation action. A truly ambitious GGA will improve the capacity of and give local institutions and communities decision-making powers over adaptation actions. It will encourage vulnerable and marginalised individuals to meaningfully participate in and lead adaptation decisions. It will make processes transparent and accountable downward to local stakeholders. By doing this, the GGA can promote collaboration across sectors, initiatives and all scales, ultra-local to global, to ensure that different initiatives and different sources of funding are supporting each other.
This is the transformation that is needed. With the gap constantly widening, developed countries need to deliver on their COP26 funding promises now. That won’t be enough but it is a start. In the meantime, is COP ready to admit that adaptation solutions lie elsewhere – and put the local forward as a global goal?