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Asia is home to two-thirds of the world’s poor, resulting in the prioritisation of job access, education, and healthcare in most nations. Climate adaptation with strategies and measures to minimise the vulnerability of societies to the impacts of climate change is essential. Up to USD 340 billion of global adaptation costs is needed annually by 2030, which is nearly 10 times higher than that spent today — and the funding gap is widening[1].
AVPN hosted the Climate Pathfinder workshop on 22 April 2024, bringing together 72 participants to explore on Climate Adaptation. It focused on a forward-thinking approach to address the climate challenges and discussing how emerging economies are actively shaping the narrative in climate adaptation. This paper presents the key takeaways of the workshop.
Guidance on Climate Adaptation and the Practices in Action
Supported by Google.org and ADB, AVPN has partnered with Dalberg Advisors to look into the essence of climate adaptation and guidance for funder communities. Jagjeet Sareen from 
Dalberg Advisors presented the four-step framework for investors looking to support adaptation solutions, which includes
1. Understanding climate risks and vulnerabilities;
2. Identifying solutions for anticipating and/or adapting to the risks;
3. Providing scaling support to impactful solutions; and
4. Measuring and communicating the impact of investments.
To achieve successful adaptation investment, investors need to focus on the “systems” which support the communities most vulnerable to climate impacts, break silos and embrace intersectionality across climate and social sectors, and make climate adaptation solutions affordable.
Five thematic areas of climate adaptation were also shared by experts in the respective fields.
Oceans & Coastal Ecosystem Management
Bowen Zhang from Society of Entrepreneurs & Ecology (SEE) shared about climate adaptation measures in ocean and coastal areas, including nature-based solutions and blue economy initiatives.
Coastal and ocean ecosystems are supporting 600 million people globally, while facing significant climate impacts. Challenges in addressing the impacts include huge financial gaps and maladaptation measures with only short-term benefits. Currently, innovative hybrid approaches combining ecosystem-based and engineered adaptation strategies are gaining attention, and sponge cities and sustainable fishery practices are being explored. Restoration of the blue carbon ecosystem is also a promising nature-based solution for climate adaptation.
Agriculture and Food Systems
Ritu Verma from Ankur Capital highlighted the disproportionate impact of climate change on agricultural food production in developing and emerging markets, complexed by agriculture being a cause of the climate problem itself, with diverse practices and impact on marginalised groups.
Facing population growth and climate change, social investors should look into scalable, local, and socially sensitive solutions which can increase food production while reducing environmental impact. Examples include tech-led solutions like parametric insurance for agriculture, which utilises satellite data and AI for weather forecast, and genetic engineering technologies to breed climate resilient crops.
Urban Resilience
Myrna Asnawati Safitri from Indonesian Authority of Nusantara National Capital shared Indonesia’s examples on how they are developing a climate-resilient new capital city. In 2022, the Indonesian government decided to move the capital city from Jakarta to Nusantara, largely due to the threat of rising sea-level. The Nusantara’s development plan incorporating three concepts of Forest City, Sponge City, and Smart City was outlined, emphasising the sustainable, inclusive, smart and resilient city development. The plan also includes initiatives like designating protected areas and promoting regenerative agriculture, to restore the degraded ecosystem along with the city development.
Just Energy Transition
Wini Rizkiningayu from Rocky Mountain Institute discussed the importance of aligning energy transition with principles of equity, justice, and ecological sustainability. The key challenges of just energy transition include the lack of institutional coordination, difficulty in identifying and engaging with the vulnerable communities, as well as their low accessibility to clean energy financing. There needs an equitable distribution of costs and benefits of the energy transition process, and inclusive participation and systemic change for just transition. Designing financing solutions and investment in capacity building to establish stronger institutions and communities for climate resilience are essential.
Public Health
Kelly Willis from Forecasting Healthy Futures highlighted how climate change exacerbates health issues, for instance, extreme heat causes more deaths than any other natural disaster, and flooding leads to significant increase in malaria and other waterborne diseases.
There is currently inadequate financing available at the intersection of climate change and health, which deserves more attention. Social investors can consider addressing the climate-health nexus by focusing on the direct health impacts of climate change, building predictive capacity and resilient healthcare systems, as well as promoting health co-benefits of climate initiatives.
Key Takeaways from The Workshop
There are common challenges and opportunities that the breakout discussion identified across the various topics:
- There are challenges of allocating resources to individual sectors and coordinating practices for effective implementation of climate actions. Integrated approach to address both mitigation and adaptation is required, that emphasises the equity dimension of solutions.
- Financing gaps in climate adaptation solutions are huge, particularly in reaching the last mile. Solutions need to be affordable and accessible to the vulnerable communities. Blended finance can be a key to scale up impact.
- Guidelines and common frameworks for measuring, reporting, and communicating progress of climate investments are lacking. Knowledge sharing needs improvement to facilitate replication of successes by building stronger partnerships.
- There is a need for innovation in climate adaptation technology and technical assistance in each sector, with capacity building for their deployment to support resilience building of the society.
- Community engagement through facilitating dialogues and strengthening broad participation is essential to acknowledge local knowledge and encourage local solutions and actions, which also promotes behaviour change and accountability from all sectors.
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Summary
The workshop reflections emphasised the demand for a comprehensive approach that prioritises equality and community perspectives in climate actions in the region. Participants call for integrating climate considerations into all sectors and build the capacity of governments as well as the private sector to incorporate this into the strategies for risk assessment and resilience building.
Through establishing support mechanisms in scaling sustainable solutions, including ecosystem building, and finance and technical assistance, together we can ensure the long term growth of the APAC region in a warming world. AVPN will continue bringing together the Climate Pathfinders community to figure out the way forward to support the co-benefit of climate actions, and addressing the intersectional social issues.
To learn more about climate adaptation, please read the report ‘Harnessing the power of digital technologies for climate adaptation: The opportunity for social investors’.
[1] United Nations Environment Programme, 2022, “Adaptation Gap Report 2022”
