Climate Sense

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daptation

and

itigation

trategies

water management arrangements. Water is best managed in terms

of its basin or catchment area, and these rarely correspond with

political or administrative boundaries. About 40 per cent of people

live within the basins of international rivers, and about 90 per cent

of people live in countries that share these basins. Transboundary

water management is costly and resource-intensive but can yield

tremendous benefits, not only in terms of decreasing risks of floods

and shortages, but also in terms of decreasing risks of regional

conflicts.

At the international level, the donor community needs to reori-

ent its financial assistance toward supporting countries in water

management actions – to increase water’s contribution to develop-

ment in the context of risk and change. Key areas include support

for the development of hydrological monitoring systems and public

goods that are unlikely to appeal to commercial investors, such as

infrastructure for flood control.

In the area of health, development with risk management often

means spreading current best practices. Early warning systems for

heat waves are in operation in many countries, including some

in Asia, and these should be replicated elsewhere and coupled to

concrete action plans with activities throughout many different

sectors within a society.

Improving water and sanitation infrastructure and increasing

awareness of the importance of hygiene is key to reducing a commu-

nity’s vulnerability to extreme weather events and more long-term

changes in average water availability or average temperatures. The

Millennium Development Goals include the need to improve sanita-

tion and access to safe water – efforts to achieve this must take place

at local, national, and international levels. These are clearly positive

and crucial measures.

Other such health measures involve getting better at vector

control, detection, treatment of vector-borne diseases, and paying

attention to the most vulnerable populations. One of

the few early warning systems for vector-borne diseases

is in southern Africa, where malaria is sensitive to rain-

fall. The system puts together seasonal rainfall forecasts

with data on population vulnerability and coverage of

prevention activities. More such systems are needed.

In the forest sector, the new paradigm might be to

manage forests as if both people and carbon emissions

mattered. The proposal in the climate negotiations

known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation

and Forest Degradation (REDD), would encourage

emissions reductions in tropical forest nations, while

helping to manage the costs of compliance in countries

that take on economy-wide caps.

However, there is a danger that if forests are planted

and managed only to sequester carbon, they will cease

to offer to the poor – and the rest of the planet – the

variety of ecosystem services they now provide, many of

which are crucial in providing food and shelter.

The Forest Dialogue, a multi-stakeholder initiative

including 250 representatives from businesses, trade

unions, forestry companies, governments, and local

and indigenous peoples, argues that treating forests

only as ‘sticks of carbon’ will fail, as such treatment

does not take into account the human dimensions of

forest services. However, if based on sustainable forest

management principles, a REDD mechanism could lead

to mitigation, adaptation and development benefits.

The whole concept of insurance is being reinvented

under the pressure of climate variability and climate change.

In the public sector the World Bank Group is developing

a global facility for hedging development country risk. In

The Malian farmer faces weather patterns never seen before: too little rain one year, too much the next

Image: CCCD secretariat