Korea Global Adaptation Week Accelerates Progress

Korea Global Adaptation Week wrapped up today in Songdo, Republic of Korea, with over 400 experts and leaders identifying innovative ways to raise ambition to build resilience to the inevitable impacts of climate change and the presentation of new national adaptation plans.

The world is already experiencing changes in average temperature, shifts in the seasons and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events and other climate change impacts, and it is crucial that efforts are stepped up to boost resilience.

The meeting took place against the background of the aftermath of Cyclone Idai, which has impacted millions in Africa, and one of the largest wildfires in the history of the Republic of Korea in Gangwon province.

Raising adaptation ambition through national adaptation plans (NAPs)

A NAP Expo, focusing on National Climate Adapation Plans (NAPs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, featured a range of tools and applications to help countries improve their national strategies to combat present and prevent future climate impacts.

Nearly 30 organizations and programmes served as contributors by designing, mobilizing speakers and conducting sessions on specific themes.

In the spirit of raising ambition, four new NAPs were presented by Ethiopia, Togo, Honduras and Burkina Faso. This raised the total number of published national adaptations plans to thirteen.

Also, the NAP Expo for the first time launched practical engagement of youth in climate change adaptation by launching the Global Youth Adaptation Dialogue, to open a conversation by youth that considers the future of adaptation through NAPs.

Two other meetings, the Adaptation Forum and the Technical Adaptation Meeting for Adaptation, provided hands-on solutions on how to better integrate private sector stakeholders into adaptation planning process and how to support the private sector in doing so.

Using the tools of futurists and foresight experts to create a climate-resilient future

At a special event within the Korea Global Adaptation Week, “Resilience Frontiers”, experts started a collective intelligence process on how best to respond to the deep societal transformations driven by emerging technologies and new sustainability trends, and maximize the resilience of societies to climate change beyond 2030.

After five days of intense brainstorming and plenary discussion, Resilience Frontiers concluded with the identification of ten visions of climate resilient futures in 2030 and beyond.

Those visions address the crucial transformation of our ways of meeting basic needs – for example food, water, health, nature and human security - and the necessary shifts in the enabling environment to achieve regenerative resilience.

The visions will feed into the design of the road mapping initiatives to be undertaken by consortia of expert organizations as a follow up to the event.

About the UNFCCC

With 197 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement. The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.

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