What is effective adaptation? Being able to define and track climate adaptation success is an imperative for donors, implementers, and researchers alike. The past decade has seen a rapid rise in scholarship and practice focused on measuring, tracking, evaluating and interrogating concepts of success in adaptation. Despite this, data-driven analyses of adaptation options have been limited.
At the Adaptation Futures conference in Cape Town, South Africa, CARIAA will host a session titled “Embracing Complexity: The Challenges of Measuring and Defining Adaptation Success,” within which CARIAA members aim to identify what constitutes success from different perspectives, question how notions of adaptation success are constructed, and uncover what standard definitions “leave out”.
In a second session, CARIAA focuses on what makes for effective adaptation in deltas, one of our key climate hotspots. In the session titled “Adaptation practice and experience in deltas in the global south,” DECCMA consortium members aim to encourage knowledge exchange and debate on adaptation research needs, challenges, and opportunities in deltas across Africa and Asia. A panel discussion will address questions around how research can inform adaptation practice, the transferability of experiences, and opportunities to improve the science-policy interface.
In a third session, CARIAA focuses on facilitating effective adaptation in another climate hotspot, semi-arid lands (SALs), covered by both the PRISE and ASSAR consortia. SALs are characterized by their dispersed and rurally located populations, high levels of business informality, mobile populations, poorly developed infrastructure, and broader political and economic marginalization. The session, “Private Adaptation in Semi-Arid Lands,” reflects on the specific adaptation challenges that arise in SALs and aims to distil lessons about the kinds of policies, institutions and investments that can enable climate resilient development. Details on these sessions can be found below.
Adaptation Futures is the world’s premier conference on climate change adaptation. This year, CARIAA has a significant presence at the conference, with our consortia leading in excess of 30 special sessions such as the examples outlined above, and more than 30 oral presentations and 20 posters. This is a key opportunity for the program to showcase its maturing research results.
Session details
Title: Embracing Complexity: The Challenges of Measuring and Defining Adaptation Success
ID: S54
Date and time: 11:30 AM–1:15 PM on Tuesday June 19th, 2018
Title: Adaptation practice and experience in deltas in the global south
ID: S27 & S67
Date and time: 2:15–4:00 PM on Thursday June 21st, 2018
Title: Private Adaptation in Semi-Arid Lands
ID: S61
Date and time: 2:15–4:00 PM on Thursday June 21st, 2018