Climate-Resilient Development
Participatory solutions from developing countries
- 300 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Climate-Resilient Development
Participatory solutions from developing countries
About This Book
The concept of resilience currently infuses policy debates and public discourse, and is promoted as a normative concept in climate policy making by governments, non-governmental organizations, and think-tanks.
This book critically discusses climate-resilient development in the context of current deficiencies of multilateral climate management strategies and processes. It analyses innovative climate policy options at national, (inter-)regional, and local levels from a mainly Southern perspective, thus contributing to the topical debate on alternative climate governance and resilient development models. Case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America give a ground-level view of how ideas from resilience could be used to inform and guide more radical development and particularly how these ideas might help to rethink the notion of 'progress' in the light of environmental, social, economic, and cultural changes at multiple scales, from local to global. It integrates theory and practice with the aim of providing practical solutions to improve, complement, or, where necessary, reasonably bypass the UNFCCC process through a bottom-up approach which can effectively tap unused climate-resilient development potentials at the local, national, and regional levels.
This innovative book gives students and researchers in environmental and development studies as well as policy makers and practitioners a valuable analysis of climate change mitigation and adaptation options in the absence of effective multilateral provisions.
Frequently asked questions
- Where and how are climate stressors endangering livelihoods, how are the affected actors responding to them, and what can be learned from a bottom-up perspective for best practice and policy design with respect to climate change management?
- Whether and how are policies and politics at local and national levels effectively supporting these efforts, and which improvements or reforms are needed?
- To what extent and how does the international climate regime provide mechanisms that help (or hinder) local and national adaptation and mitigation efforts, and how could these be improved?
- How can the tardiness, even de facto stagnation, and the limited outcome of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation process be bypassed through bottom-up approaches in the form of enhanced local, national, and inter-regional action, and (how) could this (re)inject new energy into the global climate management process?
- Finally, what lessons can be drawn for a research agenda on climate-resilient development, and which recommendations can be given for actors at different levels?
- What contribution can the empirical case studies, research, and conceptual reflections make to climate-resilient development in the various countries and/or regions?
- What can be depicted as ‘best practice’ from a normative and problem-solving perspective in the analysed cases, or what has to be improved to transform them into best practice? Who will learn what from which kind of action?
- Which practical lessons can be learned from the analyses for national, regional, and/or international framework conditions regarding climate-resilient development? And what could this mean for the international climate regime?
- Why is the UNFCCC process, at least at present, a blind alley for the effective management of climate change?
- Why is CRD a value-adding concept that facilitates the integration of ideas and actors from, so far, four separate realms: science, climate diplomacy, policy making, and actors ‘on the ground’?
- How is CRD embedded in the wider framework of sustainable development and its implementation problems?
- Why does it make sense to use CRD as a theoretical concept, and how is it defined?
- How is CRD related (or not) to processes, such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Green Economy?
- How can CRD contribute towards developing and implementing, bottom up and step by step, a realistic policy model?
- Why and how can CRD trigger a new dialogue between the ‘development/ poverty eradication world’ and the ‘environmental/climate world’?
- What innovative contributions can CRD make to the international climate regime?
- Chapter 3 ‘Shaping strategies: factors and actors in climate change adaptation’ by Ciara Kirrane, Cliona Sharkey and Lars Otto Naess. Through action research on households in four countries in Africa and Latin America, these authors analyse how actors, in this case rural families, are coping with climate stressors and livelihood issues.
- Chapter 4 ‘Climate change adaptation in southern Benin: a multi-scale perspective on rural communities of Mono and Couffo’ by Marie-Ange Baudoin. This author illustrates the felt threat of climate change (CC) to farmers in Benin, their autonomous adaptation and the (lack of) impact of National Action Plans for Adaptation (NAPA) to support local resilience and livelihoods by planned adaptation.
- Chapter 5 ‘Building community-based institutions in Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project for green development’ by Gala Bhaskar Reddy and Niranjan Sahu. Based on their work in a community-based rural and ‘green’ approach to integrated regional development in Orissa, India, these authors present a successful example of institution-building for coping with development and climate stressors to increase the resilience of rural actors.
- Chapter 6 ‘How good are good practices? Understanding CBDRM in Mozambique’ by Luís Artur. This author critically analyses the actual output of what turned out to be an only theoretical bottom-up approach to community-based disaster risk management in Mozambique.
- Chapter 7 ‘Making a difference through Integrated Natural Resources Management: the role of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana’ by Sampson E. Edusah. This author describes the process and results of the university’s response to stakeholders’ demands to introduce INRM into its teaching, research, and advisory services.
- Chapter 8 ‘Green gold versus black gold: the Yasuní-ITT Initiative as an alternative way forward?’ by Amy Woodrow-Arai. This author discusses the results of the REDD process and the innovative Yasuní Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini (ITT) approach in Ecuador, which aims to trade a national policy of ‘not digging out oil’ for nature conservation and international financial compensation.
- Chapter 9 ‘Developing economies in the current climate change regime: new prospects for resilience and sustainability? The case of CDM projects in Asia’ by Pauline Lacour and Jean-Christophe Simon. These authors analyse the implementation and impact of the CDM in Southeast Asia and China, and draw lessons for its future application and the effects on the current position of developing countries within the climate regime.
- Chapter 10 ‘Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing? Similar problem, opposing remedies – a comparison of the Montreal Protocol and Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism’ by Thomas Grammig. This author describes the reasons for and effects of the overlap between the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols and explores the impact of diverging approaches for phasing out ozone-depleting substances with global warming potential (HFC-R 134a).
- Chapter 11 ‘Interregional climate cooperation: EU–China relations as a success story?’ by Astrid Carrapatoso and Mareike Well. Using the example of the dialogue between the European Union (EU) and China, these authors assess the potential of inter-regional initiatives for stepping up action on concrete climate change management.
- Chapter 12 ‘How to bypass multilateral gridlocks: resilient climate change management and efficient multi-level climate politics’ by Edith Kürzinger.This author analyses the shortcomings of the ‘dead horse’ UNFCCC and the potential for reform, primarily from a change management perspective. A rest period for stocktaking and evaluation should lead to a redesign of the process based on the subsidiarity principle and a reorientation through new content, perspectives and methods, as well as to ‘bypassing mechanisms’ bottom up: massive scaling up of successful action experienced at different policy levels, especially the use of the untapped potentials of best practice in resource efficiency, cost-effective change management processes, no regret front-runner approaches, and climate-resilient policy reforms.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Foreword
- Acknowledgement
- Abbreviation
- Part I: Introduction
- Part II: The contribution of local, regional and national approaches to climate-resilient development, or what good practices can be disseminated or mainstreamed?
- Part III: Climate-resilient development, innovation, and best practice: how to reform and bypass inefficiencies in the international climate regime
- Part IV: The way forward to climate-resilient development
- Index