Farrukh Iqbal Khan, chair of the Adaptation Fund, with Yvo de Boer

Farrukh Iqbal Khan is the lead negotiator for Pakistan at the UN climate change negotiations and the current head of the Adaptation Fund set up by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn. This is the first time that the UNFCCC will be able to disburse funds directly to developing countries to deal with the impacts of climate change. Farrukh is the third (and youngest) chair of the 32-member Fund’s board, established in 2008. Members come from both developing and developed countries. The board held its tenth meeting in Bonn on June 15 and 16.  CCMP’s Rina Saeed Khan spoke to him:

Rina: Has the fund given any money as yet for adaptation?

Farrukh: We are currently looking at eight adaptation projects submitted by developing countries – Senegal, Solomon Islands, Turkmenistan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Egypt, Mauritania and Pakistan. The project from Pakistan, for example, is on reducing risk and vulnerabilities from Glacier Lake Outburst Floods in the Northern Areas by building the human and technical capacities of local communities. We have not given any money as yet as the projects are still under discussion and technical review.

Where is the money for adaptation coming from?

We received 45 m euros from Spain, and Germany gave us 10 m. Sweden has also announced another 10 m that it will give to us. We have roughly 400 m euros of our own money, the amount projected from the proceeds of the Clean Development Mechanism levy (2% on each CDM project). I have pushed for full operationalization of the Fund and we will start financing projects soon. We have accredited three agencies with the fund; two are multi-lateral entities, the World Bank and the UN Development Programme, and one is what is called by the UN a national implementing entity, the Centre de Suivi Ecologique from Senegal.

Why is it taking so long for the Fund to start operating?

It takes time to build institutions. In the next few months the board will approve the projects. It took us two years to build everything from scratch. We have evolved a direct access modality whereby countries can access the Fund’s resources directly and without having to go through the multi-lateral entities. This has never happened before and this is the innovative feature that this board has evolved.

How will this fund be different from the Green Climate Fund?

While the name is yet to be agreed, the so-called Green Climate Fund will be a major fund. An agreement on financial architecture is the key to unlocking a pathway for a climate change regime in the post-2012 scenario. We are still in the process of defining its governance structure. In addition, we have not made any determination as what would be the sources of funding. However, it is expected that this new fund will be under the authority of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties and that it should be several times bigger than the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

Are you expecting more money to come in from fast-start financing?

I do expect more countries to contribute. We are best placed to channel resources towards adaptation, including through the fast start financing. As chairperson of the Adaptation Fund Board, I have written to all Annex I countries [required under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions] to ask them to consider channelling their adaptation contribution through the Adaptation Fund. Indications are positive, and one is expecting that developed countries are seriously considering channelling financial resources through this fund.

During the ongoing UN climate change conference in the German city of Bonn, just as Nepalese officials announced an initiative to form a group, the Mountain Alliance Initiative, two Central Asian nations and one from the Caucasus outsmarted them by notifying the UN that they were establishing a similar group.

Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan got together and wrote to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) saying they had agreed to establish the Group of Mountain Landlocked Developing Countries.

Landlocked Nepal’s officials say the group it has announced will be effective in getting mountainous countries heard in international forums like UN climate conference.

“This alliance has been initiated so that mountainous countries can raise their climate-related concerns and influence the UNFCCC’s decision-making process to our advantage,” said Nepal’s environment ministry secretary Ganesh Joshi.

The three rival countries have stated almost the same reason for their move.

In their letter to the UNFCCC, they wrote: “We have agreed to establish the Group of Mountain Landlocked Developing Countries for protecting and lobbying for the interests of this group of countries in the framework of the UNFCCC’s negotiation process.”

While Nepalese officials have prepared a calendar to hold workshops and meetings between mountainous countries before requesting the UNFCCC to officially recognise the MAI, the other three have already done that.

“We request to the secretariat to take note of the new group and include it in all its listings,” the letter from Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan read.

The UNFCCC has officially listed its member countries under several groups, including small island states, developing countries and least developed countries.

Nepalese officials think adequate attention has not been paid to the issues of mountainous countries in international climate negotiations.

“Our mountain ecology stands so vulnerable to climate change and we believe Nepal can ideally lead to bring that point to the fore,” said Madhab Karki, Deputy Director of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which is helping Nepal in its bid.

Although judged susceptible to the impacts of climate change, the Himalayan region has seen very little scientific research.

The most talked-about impact has been the retreat of Himalayan glaciers due to temperature increases caused by rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

That has triggered fears of lakes and rivers swelling to dangerous levels in the near term and running dry in the long run, spelling disaster for millions of people in the region who rely on the river systems.

Increasing floods, droughts and landslides, the northward movement of some plant and animal species, a drop in water availability and agricultural production have been some of the observed results many link to climate change, although these are yet to be established scientifically.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called the Himalayas a white spot, meaning there is a big information gap in this region.

And there are concerns that nothing much is being done to find out what has been happening to the mountain ecology as climate changes.

That was why, Nepalese officials say, the country’s Prime Minister, Madhab Kumar Nepal, addressing the climate change summit in Copenhagen last December, had proposed forming a common platform of mountain countries.

But while the Nepalese administration took time to move on with the idea, officials from Kyrgyzstan were already taking the lead.

“We had last year even before the Copenhagen conference floated the idea of bringing the mountainous countries together,” says Ysmail Dairov, who heads the Regional Mountain Centre of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek..

But he said several countries, particularly from South Asia, had not responded to the idea.

“At first they said this was something that would have to be done at the foreign ministry level. And even when we managed to send a letter from the Kyrgyz foreign ministry to the foreign ministries of these countries, there was no response.”

Nepalese officials say even they were approached by the Kyrgyz officials to join the Group of Mountain Landlocked Developing Countries.

“We don’t need to do that as we have support from many mountainous countries, including those in Latin America,” said Nepal’s environment secretary Joshi.

“Moreover, we are not just bringing together landlocked mountainous countries; our support base is quite a bit wider.”

That remains to be seen. But for now, the competition between Nepal and its rivals has left some mountainous countries bewildered.

“We don’t know what we do now,” says Abas Basir, Deputy Director of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency.

“But what we do know is that if they remain divided like this, the whole effort of amplifying the voice of mountainous countries will collapse.”

“Some one billion people have little access to clean water, another 2.5 bn don’t have access to sanitation. Climate change will make this situation worse,” said outgoing UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer this week in Bonn, where climate negotiations have been continuing.

For Africa alone these figures are 350 million and 500 million respectively said Bai-Mas Taal, Gambia’s former Minister of Water Affairs, now executive secretary of the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW).

Climate change will affect weather patterns, rainfall cycles, river flow and soil moisture content, which in turn determine floods, droughts and agricultural yields, argues the Global Water Partnership (GWP), an umbrella for 2,176 water organisations in 153 countries.

“There is an international convention regulating water resource management, but there’s no single UN body dealing specifically with water issues, and water is marginalised in the climate negotiations,” says GWP executive secretary Dr. Ania Grobicki. “Water evaporated from the negotiating texts in Copenhagen” (where the last UN climate summit took place in December 2009).

“We are calling for a programme on water, climate and development to be established under the UNFCCC’s work on adaptation,” Grobicki announced at an 8 June press conference.
The aims of the programme would be to incorporate Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) thinking and practice into efforts to combat climate change.

Such a programme would also open up the water sector for adaptation funding, something that is badly needed, says the GWP. “In the past couple of decades investment in water infrastructure and water information systems has declined,” said Grobicki. But the current US  $30 billion fast track funding on the table is not enough. “To achieve water security in Africa alone more than $16 billion is needed and that calculation is based on spending only $50 per person that currently doesn’t have access to clean water,” stressed Taal.

Adaptation measures would include building a large network of storage dams throughout Africa, Grobicki told CCMP. “Most agriculture is rain-fed. As climate variability increases and temperatures rise. water security drops radically, but dams ensure water is available throughout the year.”

“Water-saving technologies can assist farmers to use their scarce water resources efficiently,” said Grobicki . “Drip irrigation offers huge potential for saving water in rural areas, while remote sensing can be used to inform farmers about the moisture content of the soil so they know how much water they need to use to grow their crops.”

What would it take for you to leave your comfortable car at home and jump on a bicycle to get to work, school, or even to go shopping? As cities focus more and more on clean energy, residents of Copenhagen – a developed city – have adopted cycling as the preferred mode of transport. Rosalia Omungo reports on the Copenhagen cycling experience.

Nearly 35 people were reported dead in Kenya in the first few weeks of January, following heavy rains. The Meteorological Department says the rains will subside by the end of the month, but the destruction in their wake is linked to years of environmental degradation. Rosalia Omungo reports on the reality beyond the Copenhagen summit.

The fate of climate negotiations in Copenhagen hangs in the balance after African nations suspended talks today. Even though the talks later resumed, the African Group and G77 plus China accused the Danish host government of trying to sideline talks on setting more emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol. The Africa Group is rooting for a two track system, in which the Kyoto Protocol is continued in conjunction with other long term agreements.

Colombia’s indigenous peoples are working together to create an adaptation plan against climate change, which will bring together their own traditional knowledge with outside help from other agencies.

“It is better to die fighting in a war than to die from thirst”, says Walter Peña as he walks on the stones at the bottom of a dry stream after six rainless months in the department of Cauca, part of the Macizo Colombiano, a mountainous region in Colombia’s south-west.

Walter, a peasant from the region, has not seen a drought like this in almost 30 years. People who live some distance from the rivers usually transfer river water to their houses via small open water channels. But the recent drought has caused the channels to develop large cracks and the water doesn’t reach their houses any more.
 
The dry season also brings a wind blowing in every direction, drying every plant in its path. “This didn’t happen before. With this situation, there is no way to protect any plantation. This is all crazy, some water springs are gone,” adds Walter.

Unpredictable weather

Something similar is happening to the indigenous communities living in the area, home to seven ethnic groups. During the last 10 years José Domingo Caldón, a leader of the Kokonuco Indian community, has seen the dry and rainy seasons getting longer every year.
 
Before, he says, the indigenous authorities could predict winter and summer time, as well as the best time to cultivate, “They used to ask Nature’s permission”.
 
Now the weather changes from one day to the next and people can no longer predict what is going to happen tomorrow or when the best time will be to cultivate or harvest. The old authority figures are dying and taking their knowledge with them, and the young people are not maintaining it. As they integrate into Western society they leave behind their customs and stop believing in traditions and ancient wisdom
 
“Now people are cultivating anywhere and at any time. This is greatly affecting the socio-economic situation of the community as many crops have been damaged”, Jose Domingo laments. “It is the responsibility of humans for not respecting the environment”, he adds.
 
He knows his people cannot remain inactive in the face of this situation.

Joining forces

That is why his community and four other Indian communities (Poblazón, Quintana, Puracé, Paletará and Kokonuco) have joined forces. They are developing an adaptation plan to reduce their vulnerability to climate change.
 
Supporting them are two peasant associations, Asoproquintana and Asocampo, with the help of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), alongside four agencies of the United Nations (UNDP, FAO, UNICEF and PAHO, the Panamerican Health Organization) and some local authorities.
 
It is the first time that four UN agencies have worked together on a joint climate change project, with the aim of using the results to develop a national climate change policy.
 
The plan includes water resources management, the conservation of the environment, and health protection, all within the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. The agencies have already identified several traditional practices that may be useful for adaptation programmes.

Traditional meetings create early warning systems

Manuel Mompotes, former Governor of the Puracé community and a local leader of the project, believes that one of the strengths of the indigenous peoples is their custom of meeting and discussing problems. Community meetings where leaders take collective decisions and exercise justice in the Indian way are for them a tradition.
 
“With this strength we can get the active participation of the communities, raise awareness and achieve goals in adaptation”, says Mompotes. And through these meetings, he says, the participants can also create early warning systems.

Trueque improves food security

UN officials say trueque (bartering) is another traditional activity which can help people adapt to climate change. Bartering events, which unite people from different ethnic groups and also peasants, take place every two months in different parts of the region. “It is the place to exchange information and to create links between people living in different climatic zones”, says Luis Sanchez, from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.
 
He points out that bartering also makes a contribution to food security because people exchange goods from different zones, helping to supplement diets.
 
The Kokonuco community, for example, has often moved in search of new settlements. When the community resettles, it brings seeds which it has learned to protect and to adapt in the right mixtures to new climates. Now the different families are spreading the seeds of best quality to ensure food security. “This is autonomous community knowledge and it is a strategy to face climate change”, José Domingo says.

Harmful traditions to be tackled

But not every traditional practice is beneficial for the environment.
 
Burning the ground during droughts to prepare the soil for planting is something indigenous people have done for years. But the practice is condemned by environmentalists because it destroys soil nutrients and is a threat to drainage basins so it becomes a threat to food security.
 
This practice is one reason why some ecologists think indigenous people pose as much of a threat to the environment as anyone else. What’s more, taking care of the environment may not be a priority for many people already dealing with conflict and natural disaster. 
 
“As part of the project we will analyse what are the traditions that must be strengthened and which ones should be reconsidered to better adapt to climate change”, says Luis Sanchez, the FAO representative.
 
It is a challenge the UN project must address if it is to succeed.

“One path would lead to prosperity for all and the other path… would lead to something very bad”,  said Kandi Mossett, a Native American activist who spoke at a side event held in Copenhagen at the start of the 2009 UN climate change conference.

Kandi belongs to the Indigenous Environmental Network and comes from North Dakota in the US, where large oil and gas companies have wrought havoc on their tribal (reservation) lands. “Where I come from, it is not a matter of if you get cancer, it is about when you get it”, she told us.

So which path did the world choose at the end of those two exhausting weeks? Copenhagen will be remembered more for what did not happen than for what actually transpired.

What was needed was a strong, binding treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. What we got instead were some vague pledges by world leaders to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (how it will be done and who will do it has been deliberately left unanswered).

The US National Academy of Sciences says that if the planet warms beyond 2C the Greenland ice sheet may melt, ultimately raising global sea levels by around seven meters,  enough to flood most small island states and coastal areas.

A seminar organized by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation on the second to last day of the conference focused on solutions to the climate crisis, while world leaders were arguing over emissions cuts in a nearby hall.

Professor John Schellnhuber, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: “If we add up the current pledges of emissions targets we have on the table here, it would result in a warming of 3.5 C.

“Time is of the essence. If we start reducing carbon emissions in 2011, the reduction rate to be achieved would be only three per cent, which is manageable.

“In 2015, it would be five per cent. And if we wait until 2020 it would be nine per cent per year, which is unimaginable (given the structure of the world economy).

“So we must peak before 2020 – that is the most crucial point to be negotiated here”.

In May 2009 more than 60 Nobel science laureates gathered at St James’s Palace in London on the invitation of Prince Charles and signed a petition calling for global carbon emissions to peak by 2015.

So far, the European Union is offering the highest emissions cuts (in the industrialized world) at around 30%. “It would be a real shame if the EU could not deliver on that. Actually they should be offering 60%”, Professor Schellnhuber said.

“Developing countries also have to adopt low carbon emission pathways as soon as they can. We need global cuts of 40% by 2020. It is an absolute necessity.”

Carbon offsetting in the south by rich countries could not be incorporated into the peak calculations, he said.

There are a number of ways in which rich countries can cut emissions without carbon offsetting or switching to nuclear power (whose waste remains a big problem) or even converting to biofuels (which take up valuable agricultural land).

These include changes in the transport sector (introduction of hybrid or electric cars), industry (electric furnaces, switching from coal to natural gas, cement industry reduction), households (new energy-efficient homes, reduction of fossil fuels in household heating) and so on.

The argument presented by the Stockholm Environment Institute was that economic growth and emissions could be decoupled. Sweden has done it successfully.

As for developing countries, the formula presented by Tariq Banuri, a Pakistani director of the UN’s Division for Sustainable Development, is to scale up renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

Ninety per cent of the energy infrastructure in developing countries will be built between now and 2050. With technology advancing so fast there can now be low carbon solutions to many energy problems.

The market, however, cannot provide everything – subsidies are still necessary and renewables have to be encouraged by government policies.

The subsidies can be phased out when the new fuels are affordable. Banuri called for the establishment of a “global investment fund for renewables” and advocated a “green energy revolution”.

Unfortunately this innovative thinking was missing in the plenary taking place next door, where world leaders were quarreling over the remaining atmospheric space that scientists say is left (some think we have used up this space already with our carbon emissions).

The Chinese climate change envoy, Qing-tai Yu, said: “Our [developing countries'] emission space is under occupation and we want it back”. For a while it looked like the world would fail to agree to any sort of deal.

“I am reminded of my days as a trade union leader… I feel like I am meeting with business representatives”, complained Lula de Silva, Brazil’s president. He asked for rich countries to cut their emissions, saying it was the developing countries’ “turn to grow”.

The US, historically the world’s largest emitter, did not offer any new emission reductions targets other than the 4% (below 1990 levels) announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before President Obama even arrived for the last day of the summit.

She also announced a US contribution to a fund of US $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change. Who will manage this fund is also not clear, as developing countries protested against the involvement of the World Bank.

Hopes were high that President Obama would somehow promise more and hence seal the deal, but he only reiterated what Hillary had said the day before, stating clearly that he had to ensure that “whatever we promise, we can deliver on”.

He has learnt his lesson from Al Gore, who pushed through the Kyoto Protocol only to return to the US to be defeated by the Senate.  President Obama might personally believe in the notion of “climate justice”, but his hands are tied by the Senate.

A senior American journalist told me: “Basically, the US Senate is holding the entire world hostage”. The big polluting industries are very active lobbyists in the US and have the ear of senators.

In the end, the weak Copenhagen Accord salvaged by the US and the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) did not offer the world anything new and deferred most of the major decisions to Mexico, where the 2010 UN climate conference will be held.

There is in fact no deadline for transforming the accord into a binding deal, although UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said it needed to be turned into a legally-binding treaty by 2010.

In the meantime, science tells us the window of opportunity is closing – so if there is no deal this year, then we will rapidly reach the point where we will no longer have the option of choosing which path to take.

Ambassador Lumumba Di-Aping, the chief negotiator of the G77 group of developing nations, described the proposed budget as ‘insignificant’.

“It is not only insignificant, but it has actually shown the mistrust of EU leaders in addressing climate change. There is a serious deficit of leadership in the EU”, Di-Aping added.

Apparently the less-affluent EU countries are reluctant to participate in costly emission cuts or to contribute to a fund intended to help developing nations address climate change.

The G77 is pressing the EU and other industrialised countries for more upfront funding and for assurances about long-term financing for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Yvo de Boer, however, thought the proposed budget could positively influence the negotiation process.

“The fact that Europe is going to put a figure on the table will, I think, be hugely encouraging to the process,” said de Boer.

Meanwhile the Pan-African Parliamentary Network on Climate Change (PAPNCC) expressed concern about the lack of progress in the negotiations.

“We wish to caution the industrialised countries that this is the last chance to act unselfishly to ensure that future generations have a cooler world to live in”,  Awudu Mbaya Cyprian, the PAPNCC president, told reporters.

The PAPNCC said: “Developed counties created the climate crisis as they became wealthy and they have the financial resources to tackle it. This gives them a double duty to act. Developed countries must compensate Africa”.

According to PAPNCC, over 70 per cent of CO2 from industrial sources is emitted by the 20 per cent of people living in the industrialised world, whereas Africa’s emissions account for less than four per cent.

adaptation mixed