This article highlights emerging insights from recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) work in six developing countries: Bangladesh, Egypt, Fiji, Nepal, Tanzania and Uruguay, on the synergies and trade-offs involved in mainstreaming adaptation to climate change in development assistance, projects, and plans. Over the medium to long term, there is greater potential to adapt to climate change impacts as part of core development activity, compared with the financing of action on adaptation initiated from within the climate regime. Furthermore, OECD work highlights that development activities might need to adapt to medium/long-term trends in climate, and not just current weather extremes and climate variability. Policy coherence between climate and development however remains a major concern. There is a need to downscale the discourse on adaptation from a multilateral negotiations context, to a more substantive dialogue between sectoral planners, relevant stakeholders and climate experts on how best to operationalise adaptation as part of ongoing development activity.
Agrawala, S
Adaptation, development assistance and planning: Challenges and opportunities
Ids Bulletin-Institute Of Development Studies