A note on including climate change adaptation in an international scheme

This note contributes to IDDRI’s support to Michael Zammit Cutajar, Vice-chair of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

This note supports the view that an international scheme designed to help developing countries adapt is necessary, but that, in the near future, using a too strict definition of adaptation would not allow the funding of the most useful projects. The most efficient projects to reduce climate vulnerability, indeed, have often development-related benefits that are large enough to justify their implementation even in absence of climate change. There are not, therefore, adaptation projects in the strictest sense, but they may be the most able to reduce future impacts of climate change. These projects, in spite of their benefits, are not always implemented because of insufficient funding. An international support to adaptation should make these investments possible, thereby reducing future climate vulnerability.