Adaptation Planning: The Role of Government and Communities

Understanding the Paris Agreement in the Pacific, Part 2

In part 1 of this series, we discussed the importance of the recognition of the role of local government in the fight against climate change in the Paris Agreement. Not only was this recognition groundbreaking, it is absolutely critical for the effective implementation of climate adaptation activities. While national policies and strategies on adaptation provide a framework for action and allocate financing, the majority of activities take place at the local level on a case by case basis.

What is important about the Paris Agreement is that it is explicit about what needs to take place in order for adaptation to actually work. It notes that adaptation should be ‘country-driven, gender responsive, participatory and fully transparent,’ while ensuring the needs of ‘vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems’ based on science and local knowledge. This last bit is integral - scientific responses are important but the Agreement recognizes that communities have local wisdom and practices that have served them well in the past and grounding current a future adaptation on this knowledge will increase the resilience of communities because the processes will be something that they inherently understand and accept, versus foreign scientific methods which don’t always mesh with local culture and capacities to sustain such processes.

Recognizing the Role of Local Government in the Paris Agreement

Understanding the Paris Agreement in the Pacific, Part 1

The Paris Agreement, resulting from the COP21 in Paris in December 2015, was a landmark agreement that, while far from perfect, goes a long way towards recognizing the needs and priorities of vulnerable countries such as small island states and least developed countries in relation to climate change. While recognizing that limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels won't be enough to protect SIDS and LDCs, and aiming to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees was the highlight of the document and a win for Pacific island countries, among others, there was also another key aspect of the Agreement which will make response to climate change all the more effective in the long term. Specifically, the Agreement recognizes the role of subnational and local governments in mitigation, and in particular, adaptation actions. This is the first climate change agreement to do so, and it means a lot.

Why? To date, response to climate change has centred on the national and international levels - global agreements with national policies and action plans to implement commitments made by Parties to those agreements. However, the actual process - the day to day actions of mitigation and specifically adaptation - take place at the subnational and local levels. And so the recognition not only of the role of subnational and local government, but also their needs in terms of finance and capacity building, is crucial.