UN
Climate Change
Global
Climate Action
16
March
2021 | |
High Level Climate Champions
Newsletter | |
We Won't Get To Zero Without
Resilience | |
The race to
zero emissions may be gaining steam, but the
climate crisis is already hitting rural and
coastal communities, agribusinesses, smallholder
farmers and others across the developing and
developed worlds. If we want to create a
healthier, cleaner, more liveable world with no
more than 1.5°C of warming, we need to race to
greater resilience at the same time.
Floods,
droughts, extreme heat, wildfires and other
impacts are affecting communities, businesses
and livelihoods around the world. But the
effects differ from place to place. They are
local, and they require local solutions that
enable people to live, work and thrive in spite
of the growing challenges.
This is why
we’ve launched the Race to
Resilience, a
campaign that will catalyze action from the
private sector and local governments to enhance
the resilience of 4 billion people who are most
at risk from the climate crisis by 2030. As a
sibling to the Race to
Zero, the Race to Resilience will deliver a
step change in global ambition across urban,
rural, coastal and oceanic resilience, while
advancing the principles of locally-led adaptation already supported by
more than 40 organizations.
The people
living and working in impacted communities
understand best how to build their own
resilience. Yet, they rarely have a voice in the
decisions that affect them. Under the
locally-led adaptation principles, decisions are
devolved to the lowest appropriate level,
structural inequalities are addressed, and the
focus is on investing in local capabilities that
will create an institutional legacy of work and
expertise.
Building
resilience is not just the right thing to do -
it’s the smart thing, too. According to the
Global
Commission on Adaptation, investing US$1.8
trillion this decade in developing early warning
systems, climate resilient infrastructure,
improved dryland agriculture crop production,
mangrove protection and resilient water
resources could generate $7.1 trillion worth of
net benefits.
For example,
spending $800 million on early warning systems
for storms or heat waves in developing countries
could help avoid $3-16 billion in damage every
year. Protecting mangroves helps avoid $80
billion per year in losses from coastal flooding
and protects fisheries, forestries, tourism and
other industries and livelihoods.
Such
investments could strengthen the world’s
economic recovery from Covid-19, creating jobs
and bolstering public health. Yet stimulus
spending so far still favours carbon-emitting
measures over green initiatives by four-to-one,
the Global Commission on Adaptation
cautioned. | |
The Race to a Resilient COP
26 | |
The
run-up to November’s COP26 summit in Glasgow
offers the opportunity to spread the focus from
just cutting emissions to building resilience as
well as mitigating the crisis. It’s an
opportunity to meet UN Secretary-General António
Guterres’ call for half of
all climate finance
to be spent on resilience and adaptation.
To
meet escalating risks, global adaptation funding
should reach around US$300 billion per year in
2030 and $500 billion 2050, but it was still
around $70 billion 2020, according to the
UN
Environment Programme.
The
Race to Resilience will work to support the UK
government’s effort to turn political
commitments made through the UN’s Call for
Action Adaptation and Resilience into
on-the-ground support for vulnerable
communities. As the COP26 presidency, the UK
launched the Adaptation Action
Coalition
in January alongside Egypt, Bangladesh, Malawi,
the Netherlands, Saint Lucia and the UN.
We
will announce the first set of Race to
Resilience partner initiatives on 30 March, just
ahead of the UK’s
Global Summit on Climate and
Development
on 31 March. At the same time, we will unveil a
diverse line-up of Race to Resilience
ambassadors who will be tasked with mobilizing
more members and amplifying their work.
But
we’re still looking for more resilience
initiatives to join the campaign, more members
to join the initiatives and more ambition from
all the private sector and local government
actors who can drive greater national ambition
ahead of the COP.
| |
- 15
UN entities endorsed the call for a universal right to a healthy
environment,
arguing that it will support efforts to leave no
one behind, ensure a just transition to an
environmentally healthy and socially equitable
world and realize human rights for all.
- In
the first of two podcast episodes of the new
Race to Zero series, the Outrage
& Optimism
team speaks to COP26 President Alok Sharma, UN
Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia
Espinosa, COP26 High-Level Champion for Climate
Action Nigel Topping, Occidental Petroleum Chief
Executive Vicki Hollub and others.
- Multilateral engagement
is
key to responding to Covid-19 and achieving the
Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, UN Deputy
Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told European
Parliament Vice-President Heidi Hautala.
- Zero-emissions
shipping fuel needs to account for 5 percent of
the international mix by 2030 in order to
decarbonize the shipping sector in line with the
Paris goals, according to analysis by the
Global
Maritime Forum’s Getting to Zero
Coalition.
- The
UN has adopted a framework for measuring
economic prosperity and human wellbeing that
includes the
contribution of nature
-
thereby ensuring that forests, wetlands and
other natural capital is recognized in economic
reporting.
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