Adaptation means adopting new, different ways of living. It can mean households managing the supply and storage of water more efficiently. It means making sure that homes, schools and hospitals are more flood resistant. Or for farmers, it could mean using crops which can resist drought.
To make this possible across the developing world, governments need to agree funding for adaptation as part of a global climate change deal, and to build up knowledge and experience of how to adapt.
Support for adaptation in developing countries is essential to long-term poverty reduction. The poorest people and countries tend to be the worst affected by climate change with the least capacity to respond. They are more likely to live in fragile or degraded environments and to be more dependent on the services provided by ecosystems, such as coastal protection, fuel wood, soil stability and pollination.
Development and economic progress are the best protection against climate change, but it must be a different sort of development that marries good development outcomes with low-carbon, climate-resilient growth.
Our approach
We will use our resources to build knowledge and evidence of what works to enable poor people to adapt and to catalyse global action. We will champion new and innovative approaches in bilateral and multilateral climate finance, challenging those systems to be effective, innovative and results driven.
In South Asia, we support the South Asia Water Initiative to improve the management of water resources in the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra river basins. The initiative seeks to reduce the vulnerability of poor people today and support adaptation to climate change tomorrow.
In Bangladesh, we have invested in the Chars Livelihoods Programme to help the extreme poor – especially women – build livelihoods that are more resilient to climate change.
In the past four years, the programme has helped to raise 90,000 homes onto earth platforms, protecting more than 400,000 people and their possessions from severe monsoon floods.
In Kenya, we are assessing the potential impacts of climate change on key sectors of the economy such as agriculture, water and health. For example, we are helping to predict new peaks in malaria outbreaks before they happen.
In Malawi, we are helping farmers to plant more drought-resistant maize. We have funded an insurance scheme to purchase and distribute international grain in the event of significant drought. DFID has also helped upgrade Malawi Met Office weather stations to provide weather data that can be used by local farmers.
We support the Global Adaptation Research Programme, a joint research project with IDRC Canada into what works and what doesn’t in terms of cost-effective and sustainable adaptation solutions for the poorest and most vulnerable people in three climate change ‘hot spots’: semi-arid regions, highly populated low-lying deltas and glacier and snow-pack dependent river basin systems.
We also support developing countries in adapting to climate change through international adaptation funds such as the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), the Adaptation Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF). Together this package provides a range of support that will ensure the most vulnerable countries are reached in short term whilst piloting new approaches and methods of disbursement and access.
The UK is providing £310m to the PPCR, which was designed to deliver results in a small number of pilot countries by bringing climate resilience into development planning and budgeting.Typical results expected include, for example, in Nepal UK funding will help with development of weather forecasting, early warning systems and improved access to credit and insurance in vulnerable communities that, particularly for women, can lessen the impact of climate-related disasters.
The UK is contributing £10m to the Adaptation Fund which could enable two countries to implement priority adaptation projects, with one of these delivered via the country’s own national institutions, and directly benefit 72,000 people. For example, a recent $4m project in Pakistan will reduce the risks of glacial lake outburst floods, identify all risk sites in Pakistan and reduce risk in two flood prone valleys, enabling 90% of households able to respond to early warning signals.
The UK has also provided further support of £30 million to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) to ensure adaptation finance reaches the poorest and most vulnerable countries. This contribution could support up to six LDCs to develop national adaptation plans and implement priority projects. For example, it could fund projects in Togo, Timor Leste, Mali and Gambia, with results including support to 25,000 small scale farmers to adopt more resilient crops, construction of climate resilient physical infrastructure benefitting at least 100,000 people and the operation of eight meteorological network stations to predict climate change events and issue early warnings.