Presentation
Climate change impacts are occurring and expected to increase under all global emission reduction scenarios, even under a 1.5°C warming. Accordingly, countries recognize the need for preparing, anticipating and reducing vulnerability to those impacts in their adaptation plans. However, the question emerges on how to navigate adaptation trajectories, and on the potential knowledge gaps. The Global Stocktake in 2023 will aim to bring substance to the Global Goal on Adaptation by preparing a first estimation of adaptation progress and potential gaps and needs at a global level. What modalities can be agreed upon to assess global adaptation progress given several technical and policy challenges? The Global Adaptation Progress–Tracker (GAP-Track) developed by IDDRI aims to inform and support those discussions by presenting a new approach to tracking adaptation that could provide complimentary information on adaptation progress at a global scale, and therefore support existing approaches.
The GAP-Track: Key takeaways
- Highlights a new method to assess adaptation progress (question-matrix, expert judgment and scoring system).
- Supports the scientific community, informs policy-making, provides complimentary information on adaptation progress to convene stakeholders and discuss adaptation processes.
- Structures a framing of adaptation at multiple scales using a common language informed by the question matrix.
- Supports regional to national and local stakeholders (adaptation planning and monitoring and evaluation systems), as well as possibly UNFCCC mechanisms, for example, towards enhanced structuring of the next generation of Adaptation Communications (e.g., organized by the six overarching questions of the GAP-Track framing).
- Helps identify common challenges across Representative Adaptation Challenges and study systems (e.g. socio-geographical), in order to identify priority areas of action. Some examples could be: increasing knowledge on current and future climate risks from score 2 to score 3 (for instance); understanding the context-specific synergies and trade-offs between several adaptation-related options, and potential for sequencing over time; ensuring that funding mechanisms and project implementation go beyond several years; assessing the effect of adaptation-related policies and actions on current risk reduction; etc.
- Given its cross-country entry point, the GAP-Track could support international cooperation on climate adaptation, in relation with the emerging challenges raised by transboundary climate risks.
