Climate change impacts such as drought, floods, severe weather and sea-level rise are likely to result in food shortages, increases in vector-borne diseases, infrastructure damage, and the degradation of natural resources upon which livelihoods are based. The negative impacts of climate change will hit poor people and poor countries disproportionately. Development choices made today will influence adaptive capacity and also determine future greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, climate change threatens development objectives and is in turn affected by development choices. Furthermore, the impacts of climate change are likely to become progressively more significant in the years and decades beyond the 2015 target date for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
In principle, a range of development activities could help reduce vulnerability to many climate change impacts. In some cases, however, “development as usual” may inadvertently increase vulnerability. For instance, new roads might be weatherproofed from an engineering standpoint, even taking future climate into account, but they might trigger new human settlement in areas highly exposed to particular impacts of climate change, such as coastal zones vulnerable to sea-level rise. This is known as maladaptation. The risk of maladaptation points to the need for partner countries to systematically assess climate risks and vulnerabilities, and to include potential adaptation measures in development policies, plans and projects.
Yet, many development policies, plans and projects currently fail to take into account climate variability, let alone climate change. While efforts to integrate climate change adaptation into development will be led by developing country partners, donor agencies have a critical role to play in supporting such efforts as well as in integrating such considerations within their own organisations. To this end, partners and donors alike need adequate guidance.