“Climate change poses serious threats to development. The increased severity and frequency of droughts, floods and cyclones risk reversing our efforts to improve food security reduce disease and safeguard livelihoods.” Irish Aid White Paper
Climate change has been described by Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, as the greatest humanitarian challenge facing mankind today.
The recent climate change conference in Copenhagen brought together 115 world leaders in a bid to agree a comprehensive and legally binding agreement, that would set the world on a path to avoid dangerous climate change and which would govern the global response to climate change post 2012.
After two weeks of intense and difficult negotiations, the participants finally reached a compromise, detailed in the Copenhagen Accord. There was broad consensus that while the Accord fell well short of the hoped for agreement, it does represent a step towards a better future agreement.
Some of the key points of the Accord include:
The objective to keep the maximum temperature rise to below 2 degrees celsius.
Provision for a review of progress in 2015, including consideration of moving from a 2 to 1.5 degree celsius target.
A commitment to list developing country emission reduction targets and the intended mitigation actions by developing countries for 2020, by the end of January 2010.
Provision for immediate and long-term financing to assist developing countries to adapt to and mitigate against climate change, as well as mechanisms to support technology transfer and forestry.
While recognising the climate change challenge and its urgency, the Accord agrees that deep cuts in CO2 emissions are required but fails to set targets and dates for such cuts, only agreeing that it should happen as soon as possible, and that countries should all adopt low emission development strategies.
The Copenhagen conference was successful in bringing together the majority of the World’s leaders to seriously consider the threat that climate change represents. It has contributed significantly to the global momentum towards greener and more climate resilient development plans.
While not all that was wished for, the Copenhagen Accord marks a significant step on the road to a comprehensive and legally binding global climate deal. The challenge now is to move this agreement into a legally binding treaty, with clear agreed targets and commitments, ideally when the UNFCCC meets again less than a year from now in Mexico.
Climate Change and Development
Climate change is a global problem and a global solution is urgently required. 192 countries around the world including Ireland have joined an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that sets general goals and rules for confronting climate change.
Climate change poses serious threats to development. The communities which have been most severely affected by climate change to date, have been those in the world’s poorest countries. With their low per capita green house gas emissions, developing countries make the case that they have contributed the least to causing the problems associated with climate change.
Through Ireland’s work in developing countries we can see clearly that they are already suffering the effects of climate change including increased severity and frequency of droughts, floods and cyclones, lower agricultural yields and the spread of infectious diseases to new, warmer areas.
Irish Aid is committed under its environment policy to ensure that climate change and other environmental issues are recognised and addressed across its programmes. Using its mainstreaming strategy and its results based management approach to country strategy planning, Irish Aid is currently examining what further steps can be taken to climate proof existing development programmes to ensure that they take into account climate change issues.
Ireland also continues to support the climate change advocacy work of key international environment and development organisations, such as the International Institute for Environment and Development and the World Resources Institute. Irish Aid provides support for the work of the Least Developed Expert Group (LEG), set up under the UNFCCC. This expert group helps the least developed countries develop national adaptation plans of action. These plans contain the urgent and immediate adaptation actions of developing countries, and are now being used by a number of countries as a basis to develop more comprehensive climate resilient development plans.
Agroforestry has an important role to play in both mitigating the effects of and adapting to climate change. Irish Aid funds Malawi ’s Agroforestry Food Security Programme which will enable at least 200,000 families increase their food production and enhance their nutrition
Subsistence Agriculture is particularly vulnerable to climate change as smallholder farmers do not have adequate resources to adapt to its effects. Irish Aid supports the Bale EcoRegion Sustainable Management Programme, which aims to protect indigenous forests and rivers by using the land in a more sustainable way
Agroforestry in Malawi (pdf)
