From Risk to Resilience: Accelerating Adaptation Action at COP26

In-person/virtual panel discussion with Q&A. Press invited.

25 October, 15:00-16:30 BST / 16:00-17:30 CEST / 10:00-11:30 EDT

Outline

COP26: The event spotlights one of the key goals of the COP26 meeting in November, Adaptation: Developing and implementing credible strategies to adapt to the destructive impacts of climate change. It will explore the adaptation finance gap, how to plug it, and available collaborative international efforts to build defences, early warning systems and resilient infrastructure to avoid the loss of life, livelihoods, and natural habitats. Speakers will also discuss using risk-informed approaches to build long-term resilience, improve and foster the international community’s response when a disaster hits and build local capacity and improved preparedness to protect people and infrastructure, along with preventing subsequent conflict from arising in a fragile setting.

Advocacy: An integral part of COP26 is to have countries put forward Adaptation Communication to enhance learning and share lessons learned between countries and raise the profile of adaptation action. The Paris Agreement asks that all parties have adaptation plans with a view to integrating it into all national and subnational planning and decision-making (Art.7(9) Paris Agreement). This session serves to reinforce that ask with the Geneva network of development, humanitarian, health, and human rights agencies, along with government bodies, civil society, and private sector initiatives.

Highlight the Science: Spotlighting the latest science on climate impacts and risks will be an integral component to the event. The organizers are committed to advancing the global adaptation agenda, heeding the warning from the UN climate science panel (IPCC) that extreme weather and rising seas are happening faster than expected. This objective also seeks to improve coordination between in-country operational agencies (proxies of Geneva-based institutions) and the scientific community; coordination between agencies for evidence-based policy to improve the risk management capacity.

Purpose of Convening: Ahead of COP26, it is timely to make strides in identifying solutions to improving adaptation and resilience measures for disasters and supporting national adaptation planning. In doing so, a wide array of stakeholders must be brought into the discourse and decision-making process for mobilising actions and increasing the accessibility to adaptation and disaster risk and response finance from both public and private sources.

Objectives

• Convene governments, intergovernmental organisations, academia and others engaged in resilience building and adaptation financing.
• Raise the political profile of the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction agenda ahead of COP26 among Geneva-based multilateral organizations.
• Discuss the relationship between climate change, recent disasters and interface with conflict and fragility, raising the profile of the latest IPCC report (AR6 WGI).
• Strengthen synergies in operationalizing and reaching the targets set under the Paris Agreement and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
• Promote the available resources, initiatives, and campaigns engaged on the issue, including the Risk-Informed Early Action Partnership (REAP); and the High Level Climate Champions Race to Resilience; and UNSG’s Climate Resilience Initiative, among others.
• Foster ties between the organizations and institutions working on humanitarian relief, in-country adaptation and resilience-building, and climate finance.

Moderator

• Loretta Hieber-Girardet, Chief, Risk Knowledge Branch, UNDRR 

Opening Remarks

• Simon Manley, Ambassador and Permanent Representative, UK Mission to the WTO, UN and Other International Organizations

Speakers

• Jérôme Bonnafont, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the UN in Geneva and international organizations in Switzerland
• Samuel K. Jr. Lanwi, Deputy Permanent Representative to the Republic of the Marshall Islands to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva
• Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization
• Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and Head of UNDRR
• Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, Senior Adaptation and Resilience Advisor, World Resource Institute and focal point for the Adaptation Action Coalition
• Pascale Meige, Director, Disasters, Climate, and Crises (Prevention, Response and Recovery), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

Background documents

• Words into Action guidelines: Developing national disaster risk reduction strategies
• Promoting synergy and alignment: between Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction in the context of National Adaptation Plans
• What is Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction?
• IPCC Sixth Assessment Report
• CREWS: Delivering at scale
• COP26 briefing press release

Further background documents are enclosed in the Attachments section.