other-developing-countries-adaptation-plan-workspace-2015
Overview
Question:
How should the other developing countries adapt to changes caused by climate change?
Submit proposals: https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/1302206
Rules: All entrants must agree to the 2015 Contest Rules. and Terms of Use.
Deadline: This contest has no deadline.
Judging Criteria & Prizes: See below.
Background
In this workspace, you develop plans for how other developing countries as a whole – including their governments, businesses, other organizations, and citizens – can take effective action to prepare for and adapt to the current and predicted impacts resulting from climate change.
Working as an individual or in a team, you can select and combine proposals from Climate CoLab contests, as well as from outside the Climate CoLab, to develop a cohesive plan for this sector. With help from the Impact Assessment Fellows, you will be able to see your plan’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenario from 2020 to 2050, and compare that with a business-as-usual emission scenario.
In addition to being completed pieces on their own, proposals submitted here will serve as building blocks for the development of plans on a regional and global level. They will only be evaluated if they are included in a regional plan.
This contest is part of new pilot initiative to create crowdsourced regional and global plans on how to most effectively address climate change. Learn more. If you have feedback on the approach, please let us know by sending email to admin@climatecolab.org.
Judging Criteria
Different from a contest, a workspace has no evaluation period. Rather, it is an open phase where proposals can be created and edited on an ongoing basis. Proposals submitted here will only be evaluated if they are included in a regional plan.
Prizes
Proposals submitted here are eligible to receive prizes if they are included in a winning global plan. All subproposals of the winning global plan will receive Climate CoLab Points, and the top point-getters will receive share of a cash prize of $10,000.
Submission Format
Building the plan.
When creating your plan, you will be asked to select multiple proposals from across the Climate CoLab platform using the proposal picker.
If you don’t see a proposal that outlines what you think needs to be done – or, if you would like to include ideas created outside of the Climate CoLab (such as policies currently under consideration; actions proposed by cities and governments; potential technological developments) – create a new proposal in a sector contest that summarizes (and links to further descriptions of) the actions you want to include, and link it in your plan here.
You will also be asked to justify how the selected actions fit together; describe the key benefits, costs, challenges and timeline of the plan; and estimate (working the Impact Assessment Fellows) the emissions that would result from the actions proposed (see below).
Evaluating impact.
The platform currently has a feature that allows you to estimate the impact a proposal has on greenhouse gas emissions. As proposals about climate change adaptation do not focus on reducing emissions, you do not need to enter values in the Impact tab. In the future, we hope to incorporate other ways for adaptation proposals to assess their potential impact in preparing for climate change.
Building blocks for global plans.
In addition to being completed pieces on their own, sector plans also serve as building blocks for the development of plans on a national, regional and global level. The Climate CoLab regional and global contests invite individuals and teams to build plans for how countries and the world as a whole can address climate change. Authors may select sector plans submitted in this workspace to include as a part of their regional plan, and sector and regional plan authors are strongly encouraged to work together. In many cases, the same teams may create both sector and regional plans that are designed to be compatible.
Resources for Proposal Authors
Although, the impacts of climate change is global, countries differ both in their contributions to the challenge and in their vulnerability to its impacts. Ironically, developing countries produce minimal emissions relative to the global emissions, yet they are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their geographical features, such as the low-lying states, small island countries, and arid and semi-arid regions, make them susceptible to extreme climate related events including flooding, prolonged droughts, hurricanes, tropical diseases and more. More specifically, scholars have attributed the drivers of risk for small islands during the 21st century to include sea level rise (SLR), tropical and extra tropical cyclones, increasing air and sea surface temperatures, and changing rainfall patterns (Nurse et al. 2014) while in Africa, evidence of warming over land regions, consistent with anthropogenic climate change has increased (Niang et al. 2014). Events such as these pose heightened threats to their socio-economic development. In addition to this, high incidence of poverty, inadequate public infrastructure and weak institutions are other factors capable of amplifying the vulnerability of the economic, social and ecological systems to the impacts of climate change in these countries. Reliance on activities susceptible to impacts of climate change like rain-fed agriculture has also created a confluence of negative factors inhibiting true resiliency. Consequently, adaptation and mitigation measures for these countries are critically important. When put together, these challenges have serious implications for the attainment of sustainable development goals in the developing countries.
Though developing countries need to prioritize adaptation measures, it should be noted that most of them are on the development path to attain high economic status. Some may be tempted to take the fastest route to develop economically, which may drastically increase their emissions. This is already being witnessed in some developing countries, which has led to an increase in global emissions. While taking into account their need for development, developing countries need to take a low carbon development pathway and avoid the high emissions pathway that developed countries have historically pursued to attain high economic status. Developing countries can implement both adaptation and mitigation strategies that not only reduce GHG emissions but also contribute to sustainable economic development.
The information on this page is produced to highlight the concerns and needs of developing countries in adapting to the effects of climate change. The issues raised should guide the contestants when preparing the regional plan for developing countries. Contestants can also make use of data on emissions from each country per sector in their plans for the GHG emission scenario in any of the five sectors. This data can be accessed via http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-GHG-Emissions-by-Sector-and-Gas#tspQvChart More data can be obtained from the Global Carbon Atlas http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/?q=en/emissions.
Please Note: For the purpose of this contest, developing countries are referred to as those not in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), not including China and India. The list can be accessed viahttps://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/resources/-/wiki/Main/Other+Developing+Countries'+Climate+Action+Plan.
Reference
Niang, I., O.C. Ruppel, M.A. Abdrabo, A. Essel, C. Lennard, J. Padgham, and P. Urquhart, 2014: Africa. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Barros, V.R., C.B. Field, D.J. Dokken, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1199-1265.
Nurse, L.A., R.F. McLean, J. Agard, L.P. Briguglio, V. Duvat-Magnan, N. Pelesikoti, E. Tompkins, and A.Webb, 2014: Small islands. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Barros, V.R., C.B. Field, D.J. Dokken, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1613-1654.
