Climate change and fragile states: rethinking adaption

AuszugThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2007 stated that developing countries are particularly vulnerable to the socio-economic impacts of climate change, as they are often dependent on agriculture, and suffer from high population growth and weak infrastructure. At the same time, about 1.6 billion people in the developing world have no access to modern energy supply, and over three quarters of the global energy infrastructure needed by 2030, most of which will be needed in emerging economies, have yet to be built. It is widely recognized that the effects of climate change will affect world’s fragile and leastdeveloped countries most, although contributing least to their cause. The particular challenges in fragile states and the risks associated with project development are vast and should not be downplayed. However, there are distinctive improvements happening in these states as well, for example in the areas of environmental management and energy. Below the media radar, there are new approaches already grasping, which have worked surprisingly well considering the difficult contexts. There is an opportunity to build on small-scale successes that could be replicated regionally and internationally. The conflicts over limited resources, political obstacles or economic stagnation that generally characterize the notion of fragile state might be mitigated by market-based innovations which could offer a way to head off the “worst-case scenarios” with impacts rippling all over the world. The 2011 Summer Academy “Climate Change and Fragile States: Rethinking Adaptation” aimed to establish guiding principles for international institutions for climate change adaptation in fragile states, focusing on exploring the institutional action in fragile states as well as international/institutional aid architecture. This SOURCE illustrates the outcomes of the 2011 Summer Academy by presenting selected papers from PhD students who attended the Academy. Coming from diverse backgrounds with different academic perspectives, the authors cover various aspects of fragile states in the framework of climate change adaptation. By using concrete and relevant case studies, these papers identify obstacles to building resilience and explore different strategies and conditions/solutions to overcome them, both climate and conflict-related. It is a privilege for UNU-EHS, together with the Munich Re Foundation, to support young scientists in their endeavor to create and explore options for effective solutions and furthermore to develop proposals for institutional policymaking in regards to climate adaptation strategies in fragile states.