ASSAR presents at UNFCCC Thematic Expert Meeting on Adaptation in Bonn

21 May 2018
21 May 2018

 

 

By Daniel Morchain

In preparation for COP24 in December in Poland, this month the UNFCCC conducted its annual Thematic Expert Meeting on Adaptation (TEM-A) in Bonn. Daniel Morchain, from ASSAR, was a panellist in the session hosted by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre on ‘Adaptation planning for vulnerable communities’. It was facilitated by CARIAA SPAC member Dr. Musonda Mumba.

The discussion touched on several important points, including:

  • The importance of recognising the holistic nature of climate change – in other words adaptation planning cannot take place in isolation from other planning processes

  • Understanding climate change research as being about doing research with people, not for people or on people – see interesting blog by Dr. Abhay Bang on the subject of research for whom;

  • Valuing the knowledge and lived experiences of so called non-expert and non-technical stakeholders is really fundamental

  • Recognising the need to counterbalance the predominance of technocratic approaches to adaptation and promoting the rise of others that address social norms, gender equality, and behaviour change

  • Strengthening the link between academia (and research more broadly) and practitioners; working further on decentralising climate financing mechanisms.

Following the TEM-A meetings, and with the invaluable collaboration with the RCCC, we will now have the opportunity to get some of ASSAR’s key messages/visions in the report coming out of the session - which is expected to inform the COP24 and the Adaptation Committee.

There will be an additional influencing opportunity for ASSAR at COP24 – or in the fringes of it - during the Development and Climate Days (DCD), as IDRC has kindly invited Oxfam to co-host with them a session there on gender and climate change. The DCD are held in parallel to the COP and have become a much needed space for speaking truth to power and bringing important, perhaps forgotten or uncomfortable, views to the negotiating table.

We’re very much looking forward to that!