I have just raised and try to analyze a question related to integrated urban water management. It seems that the major challenges to develop institutional mechanisms for climate change adaptation in developing countries should be tied up with more local participation, education and research that can have an immediate, substantial and indispensable role to play.

Seems very 'common' issues are very much common in many places. How about the coordination part ?

I think setup of local level institution for climate level institution. In the case of Nepal CC adaption is dealing by ministry of environment , which does not has institutional linkages at local level. Ministry of local development has local level unit to deliver development activities. In this connection coordination between ministries is not easy in developing countries because every ministry is worring for own target and following their own channel to achieve target. Particularly CC adaption is multi-sectoral issues should reflect in every line agencies annual plan rather deal by one single institution. country specific it may be different because environment sector belongs to different ministry. It would be best to use local existing institution as VDC ( village development committee) where every line agencies have plan to carry out annual activities. it is on a mater of co ordinate and develop integrated plan at VDC level and clearly define every on role and responsibility.

In international discussions on how to counter the effects of climate change on developing countries, most of the focus so far has been on how development can support adaptation interventions. Much less attention has been paid to the more specific but vitally important question of how development agencies can support effective decision-making processes for adaptation by national governments.

Climate change presents extraordinary challenges both to preserving current progress in the developing world, and for fulfilling global anti-poverty objectives such as the Millennium Development Goals. Vulnerability to climate change impacts is greatest in poor countries and their capacity to manage this complex problem will be critical to economic and social progress and effective adaptation. Key sectors including water and forest management, agriculture, electricity production and coastal zone management will all be affected by climate change impacts. Not only are development goals unlikely to be achieved if future climate risks are not also taken into account in the near term. Past expenditures may become less effective and previous investments may become obsolete. In other words, the way decision-making processes are designed to integrate climate risks will be a key determinant in a country’s ability either to mitigate or to exacerbate current and future climate-related impacts.

Sadly, it's a question of social evolution. Take my country, Brazil, for instance and China - the trendy prosperous (therefore super-polluting) country that can barely control its own population and suffer of one of the biggest unequal societies in the world.. I strongly agree that is first of all a matter of education. Having living in Japan for 4 years, I admire the education that people have in basic things such as not littering in most of the public places and government management - almost immediate - of any basic service. All of that costly, of course, but efficient. If my people had half that education I believe we would have much more of the progress we so proudly stamp in our flag. I say that because I love my people and my land and I wanna it to change.

That said, management in developing areas can be tricky because of the necessary moving of masses of people in poor areas to sanitize the area - or even give the basic infra-structure. Another thing is to force Eco-policies over people, since just asking usually doesn't work. Many people work hard to educate the population and I hope the future to be more optimistic. In resume, we need to reach an acceptable level of basic life quality and access to all basic needs (at least as much as possible) to, while doing that, integrate solutions that aim ecological/climatic ends. Might sound pessimistic, but given the mankind history after industrial revolution, developing countries are just passing what developed countries passed in the past, the same hard lessons. The problem is there space is diminishing and so are resources.

We just had a meeting about this subject in Brazil last week (IPCC SREX Regional Outreach Meeting), which included countries for all Latin America and Mexico. The problem is related to many variables, including the economic and social progress as cited by Saeed Farhangi (above).

In some countries from Central America, where the natural disasters occur more frequently are very weel more developed than us in Brazil. This point regards to the difficult of our population to understand what is happening due to its difficult to "see" the problem, mainly if we compare with other countries which are always devastated by climatic events. One of our problems is make people understand that this is a real problem. If the nation can't see it as a problem they will never ask for actions to the decision makers.

Another point, and this one is real for many countries, is the difficult in integrate different intitutional datas. Additionally to this difficult we again have the problem of pass the knowledge to the general public. Is not only integrate the data, but is also make it useful to the decision makers act.

Now in Brazil we have two new "tools" created by the government that could help our developing in the climatic change adaption. One is the (not so new) Brazilian Climatic Change Panel (http://www.brasil.gov.br/cop17/atuacao-brasileira/o-painel-brasileiro-de-mudancas-climaticas) and the other is the CEMADEN - National Center for monitoring and alerting natural disasters (http://www.cemaden.gov.br/).

But despite this new government initiatives we still have a lot of problems and questions to solve before we really be prepared to act as necessay in the climatic change adaptation and mitigation.

It's a hard work but we hope we will arrive there!

In (some parts of) Indonesia, I guess the largest hurdle would be: political will. Regional and urban authorities still think about Return on Investment and such, thus in my humble opinion, place us very far from prepared for climatic change adaptation, let alone mitigation. Sad but true.

Institutional mechanisms can be created in developing countries, I do not see a problem there. The real problem is that those mechanisms are so far from the average-citizen daily reality. I grew up in Mexico but I have lived in the US for many years. In my home town of Mexico people are still struggling to get potable water or wastewater services. How can they even consider climate change adaptation? President Calderon has officially accepted the danger of climate change, but for most people the priorities are very different. Even in the USA I do not think climate change is a priority for the average citizen. Therefore, politicians are not forced to act on climate change. I think we should work to create instittutional mechanisms, but equally if not more important is to promote basic improvements in people's life that promote a more perfect education and democracy.

Increase the economic and social level should be the priority....

I think that Ricardo and Sereno are right. These institutional mechanisms are expensive and the effects will be observed in long-term, and there are other priorities to take care of people from the economic, educational, social and health points of view. I believe that goverments do not think about that problem, they only wait that the developped countries send some help. And those countries are now under the "crisis". Bad times to come for a lot of problems.... included this one

Climate change --- anywhere --- is a mighty serious business. Restricted to itself, this is only the tip of the iceberg of the inclusive problem of "sustainable development", famously popularized by the Brundtland Commission in the dictum “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has been doing pioneering work in the understanding and popularization of what exactly constitutes sustainability in development that by implication must necessarily be unsustainably degrading.

I suggest that the freely downloadable UNDP Annual Reports, published since 1990, can offer excellent educative value in obtaining a feel of the intricacies of the non-reductionist, self-organizing, and emergent holistic dynamics involved.

Hi, my graduate student Grace Tan has been studying adaptation mechanisms in N Philippines and I would be happy to share her/our findings with you. I also have a new Masters student from Nepal starting work and his thesis topic will be looking at LCA/LCC of environmental impacts of a dam project in Nepal.

I am an adjunct prof in ENSCIMAN so easiest way to get me is via phone 416 530-0934 or email [email protected]. Regards Bernard Fleet

Inadequate technical and human capacities are among the factors which hinder the creatiion of institutional mechanisms for adaptation to climate change.

I live in the city of Mansoura, the northern Nile Delta region

We note

Rising waters of the Mediterranean Sea

The presence of water in swamps coastal beaches

Increase agricultural soil salinity

Decrease of annual agricultural production

The emergence of worms and parasites agricultural

We need to integrate education for sustainable in school curriculum from primary level so that we bring generations which are environmental conscious

Answering Tek jung Mahat question, I haven’t got experience with developing institutional mechanisms for CC adaption in developing countries. But I can share my experience in my research field now centered in sustainability on complex organizations, as universities, where there are strong similitudes to countries, in another scale, of course.

Environmental issues should be integrated, both developing and consolidated institutions, as a cross-discipline. I agree with Nadjet Aroua and Nagendra Prasad Yadav that local institutions must be the institution that performs the actions according to the environmental policy of the country. But the commitment of governments/leaders and the establishment of an environmental policy adapted to the reality of the country/organization is essential. This should ensure the allocation of resources, human and financial, necessary for succeeding in local actions under the umbrella of the environmental policy. As Moses Kamanda stated, education is one of the keys of the solution, but governor’s commitment is needed as well as human and economic resources.

Also, as stated by Ricardo Mata-González, unfortunately, when basic needs are not covered, it isn’t possible to divert resources to this kind of issues. However, the state could promote those solutions to basic needs more environmentally sustainable.

It is clear that, without economic, social AND environmental stability, there is no sustainability.

Be a wizard ... And combine a working institutional network on climate change adaptation with an equally distributed socio-economic growth ...

Responding to the basic question which has led to wonderful discussion above, I firmly believe that lack of quality scientific research on the impacts of climate change at local level, based on my experience,( I'm working on autonomous adaptation measures in urban area of India) is one of the major hinderence in creating institutional mechanism for climate change adaptation in developing country. Adaptation became the most important and talked about issues ever since the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC came in 2007. Governments of the developing countries responded to it by creating seperate departments and allocating additional budgets for it. Indian government came up with the 8 fold mission under National Action Plan for climate Change (NAPCC) comprising of at least 3 such programmes which could be categorized as adaptation. But most of the institutional mechanisms still prepare their strategies assuming the impacts based on the global or the regional studies. Better understanding of the impacts at the local level is far more important in effectiveness of such institutional mechanism. Lack of information derails the success of the entire progaramme or the institutional mechanism. Such developing countries which still do not have any such institutional mechanism must consider this issue and must be very specific.

Funding is another big issue in setting up of institutional mechanism. Most of adaptive measures overlaps with the development which further aggravates the problem. Complete information on the impact at the local level would help in demarctaing the two processes leading to success of the mechanism.

I am not very much into institutional mechanisms research area but just my view on the hurdles related to that are-- there exists much more bigger problems in developing nations that the governments try to solve as poverty, shelters, sanitation, literacy etc. In addition to this corruption in developing nations prevents the policy development (though they exist, their implementation) towards climate change and environmental protection issues. Though they exists the ministries, govt offices for environmental protection, there power / functions are limited by politicians, and the rich industrialists who barley care for environment over their profits and riches. Aslo a common problem is more worried about his daily life / local problems and have a very little time to think globally esp. about environemntal protction/ climate change isuess includes is very less awareness brought in the society by the govt towards envi. protection. All these factors become big hurdles for climate change mitigation project development and their implementations in developing nations.

Developing nations face a greater risk of changing climate and far more potential threats are extreme climate events which are still quiet unpredictable. Not mentioning the problems associated with climate change, the primary obstacles for developing institutional mechanisms or implementing them is in consideration with their impact on the regional basis. Even in a particular country, different states are affected by various kinds of climate change problems i.e. in some states, droughts, in some places its flood, in others its cyclone etc. Hence, the biggest challenge is to integrate the regional problem into developing institutional frameworks. Apart from this a public consultation would give a closer view of the actual ground level problems. Combine the knowledge from science and consulting the people for ground level problems could possibly help in drawing better mechanisms to combat climate change impacts and help in overcoming the developmental challenges by ensuring economic growth.

I've participated in Mae kong river commission of dam safety strategy on SEP 5-7,2012.LDP. What is your opinion of important issues to purpose on this meeting ?

Climate change has impact ed water resources in Mae Kong River countries,what is your idea?

mr. venus Kaeworadub

We in Egypt we have the same problem in the impact of climate change on water resources of the Nile River and the High Dam

Thank you, if you published any information about this meeting

Hello All, I'm late to the discussion but wanted to share some references that have helped me develop a conceptual framework around 'institutional adaptive capacity'. It is important for you to define 'what' institutions and the 'context' in which you are looking at this topic. Is it national govt, NGOs, private sector, certain industry or All of the above  etc. 

The key determinants of adaptive capacity draws on a range of literature that spans Earth System Governance (Biermann, 2007), climate change adaptation (Ekstom et al., 2012), resilience in institutions (McManus et al., 2008) and practice theory (Strengers, 2010) Earth System Governance (ESG), which involves the participation of varying public and private, non-state actors at different levels of the decision making process (Biermann, 2007). Here are some useful references. 

Biermann, F. (2007) ‘Earth system governance’ as a crosscutting theme of global change research’. Global Environmental Change, 17(3-4): 326-337.

Kuruppu N. and Liverman D. (2011) Mental preparation for climate adaptation: The role of cognition and culture in enhancing adaptive capacity of water management in Kiribati.  Global Environmental Change, 21, 657-669.

Mcmanus, S., Seville, E., Vargo, J. and Brunsdon, D. (2008) Facilitated Process for Improving Organizational Resilience. Natural Hazards Review, May 2008, 81-90

Maclellan, N. (2011) Turning the tide: improving access to climate financing in the Pacific Islands, Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Strengers, Y. (2010) Conceptualising everyday practices: Composition, reproduction and change. Working Paper 6, Carbon Neutral Communities, Centre for Design, RMIT University and University of South Australia.

FAO (2010) Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change. FAO, Rome.

Hope this helps.

Cheers Steph

P.S there is much work going on in this area in Pacific Islands, some good references are online. Just search for the key terms- that should be helpful.

I am a Plant Scientist working in SE-Asia. I think it is a waste of time to even try and discuss this problem. There are too many people chasing dwindling resources and so until something is done about population control, population increases will eat up any gains and exacerbate the problem. India and China will torpedo any global reform. Not politically correct but intellectually honest. Atmospheric CO2goes up every year following a simple expoential + background pre 1800 constant value. Nothing on the horizon will stop it.

Doesn't the programs of IMF and the World Bank generally deny climate change in the chance to provide money for "development" which is top down capitalist enterprises that use more water, pesticides, land, capital investments in producing products for international markets, rather then local, organic, or restoration, protection and prevention? Why prevention after all one has to increase GMT rather then health for the people. In my local underdeveloped country the NAFTA agreements managed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore dismissed any restrictions on trade -- Unions and Environmental laws were negated. Mexico gets a dose of pesticided foods chemicals and all that plus anything that restricts "trade." Now, is it information and science entrepreneurs need? Will agencies devoted to the increase in production first, no matter what kind, do they need more facts, data, proof - perhaps a visit to a devastated would teach them something? Give them garden plots so they can put their hands in the soil.

Perhaps another little flood, perhaps a draught, would that influence their programs?

In the recent description of the drought in the US cutting corn production 43 to 63% the NY Times (the official paper of record) compared the drought to the 1936 US drought and never, in my reading, the possibility that US pollution from all sorts of industrial production, coal, gas, chemicals, might have created conditions for the over heating. Climate change? Hmmm what's that?

In the less intellectually developed countries denial of glacial melt, and sea level rise is the result, in my estimation, in the rejection of science, anti intellectualism and fear that their over consumption might be in danger. Facts, data, information, charts I think its all useful -- for whom?

Just some few points to developing institutional mechanisms to climate change adaptations. The most important thing is to first identify all stakeholders. After that, you might want to:

1. Inception workshop: Developing roles and responsibilities of members, management structure, data sharing and reporting framework.

2. Data availability and Gaps: Gather existing data, identifying data gaps, examining the resolution and scale of available data, identifying needs to collect additional data.

3. Needs/Knowledge assessment: Conduct a needs and knowledge assessment, examining current practices, knowledge of climate change and health.

4. Address additional data needs: Collect additional socio-economic, vulnerability, health hydrology and climate science data, through model runs and socio-economic surveys, including participatory research exercises .

5. Development of adaptation options: Deliberative and inclusive workshop with stakeholders and research team, taking the available data and experience to develop adaptation options.

6. Participatory assessment of adaptation options: Use outcome of 5 above to prioritise the relevant policies that could lead to these optimal adaptation options through field-based participatory assessment, modification and validation of options.

7. Economic costing of options: Use of state-of-the-art modelling and quasi-experimental approaches based on 5 and 6 to develop optimal cost-effective and sustainable disease control options that ensures sustainable implementation of outcomes subject to physical constraints of climatic drivers and critical natural resources of the region.

8. Dissemination Workshop: including training on accessing adaptation financing, write-shop for project outputs. Development of data dissemination forums and related outlets such as information services at the regional, national and community levels.

The greatest barriers I found in Eastern Europe were first awareness, then understanding and finally capacity to take decisions (both scientific capacity and management practicalities). The processes to overcome these barriers take years to diminish. However, with dedicated effort, the countries evolve a greater understanding of the difficulties, novel ways to solve local issues, and with the right support and advocates, advance beyond "developed" nations. Their advancement beyond current global thinking raises heckles/barriers in developed nations which must also be navigated politically.

I can't speak to developing countries, but the political-economic nature of the challenges sound very similar at their core to those within the United States (perhaps in some respects culturally we are still a developing country). One problem is the time scale for feedback in the investment economy still appears to most people to be shorter than the times cale of consequences from global warming. Real catastrophes that are linked to climate change rae probably what it will take to break that cognitive problem.

A social-political model that may have some traction in developing countries emerged in Oregon over the last decade, starting with what began as a university-sponsored institute, the Climate Leadership Initiative, which now functions as an independent nonprofit NGO, The Resource Innovation Group (web site at http://www.theresourceinnovationgroup.org/). Take a look at their program for Climate Preparedness and Resiliency." For some years they made significant headway with this model (in a nutshell):

1) Identify scientists with respected credentials, familiarity with the biophysical, climatic, hydrological and social-economic features of a particular geographic area (such as a river basin or rural county), and willingness to evaluate lots of data in an intensive workshop format; 2) convene technical workshops to brainstorm projected regional environmental. economic and social consequences of climate change as projected under a variety of models and scenarios; 3) have the same group brainstorm potential adaptive responses to climate impacts that could help sustain or improve human resilience and well-being; 4) synthesize and summarize these interpretations/projections; 5) present this information to local community leaders and local governments (town councils, county commissions, business and fraternal organizations) and work with their knowledge to further identify specific threats to the communities' infrastructure, culture, and economies from future climate change, and 6) identify a slate of policy and funding changes needed to support and sustain local adaptation strategies, and 7) work with those leaders and organizations to carry the message up the political chain to educate and lobby state and federal political leaders about specifically needed changes in law, administration, and appropriation to support local and regional adaptive responses and preparedness.

The basic social concept here is twofold: The first premise is that people and governments can be politically motivated when the nature of the potential impacts of climate change or variability are made clear and brought close to home. As long as the consequences are seen as "global" or "somewhere else," there is not sufficient motivation for policy and political change. The second premise is that people need to see the possibility and benefits of specific action. identifying locally achievable methods for improving resilience to climate variability and events is crucial to motivating political systems and driving governmental (and business) investment. There are some good thinkers at TRIG that may be able to help move this discussion forward.

A precautionary note is that adaptive strategies should be carefully screened to ensure the cure is not environmentally or socially worse than the illness. For example, we know from considerable experience world wide that construction of headwater dams in an attempt to mitigate hydrologic change more often than not fall into this category of more harm and less good than anticipated.

Of course those of you in places like Bangladesh and the South Pacific are at the mercy of already-ongoing climate and sea level change, and already paying the price of international global action or inaction, so this model may seem less relevant to your situation than it is to some others. But perhaps the construct might offer some small ideas for how to more cogently communicate the needs of those places to other countries and international authorities (such as they are).

Third World countries still need to develop and development is closely related to climate change. There they find themselves torn in between development that will contribute to climate change and poverty. Political will also contributes. Politicians who need to put in place these institutional parameters to oversee issues of climate have to either lose their political popularity or ensure that that citizenry utilize resources without fear of environmental consequences. Lack of education and public conscitization on climate climate particularly in Africa contributes to development of such institutions. This is a matter that is too academic and elitist for many who lack education. There are so many of these reasons. It really requires robust research.

Absolutely agreed.

The corollary to my precautionary statement about "bad" adaptive responses is that "good" and robust adaptive responses often can be widely appreciated as improving cultural, economic and ecological resilience whether or not climate change occurs. Hence broad support for these measures is not necessarily contingent on "belief" in climate change.

A comprehensive study has been done earlier on how energy efficiency can be incentivized so that developing countries reduce their carbon emissions. It takes into account the development factor, institutional mechanism & policies. Please see the attached document, it includes good case studies.

The biggest problem is when the government doesn't have any commitment or any clear and visible solutions to adapt with climate change. At least that's what I feel in Indonesia. The government doesn't have long term and sustainable plan for it.

Most of developing countries may not have their clear vision and policy on it, and their people may lack awareness. However, the major activities related to cause the climate changes are done in developed countries. So, the causes go to the richer countries and effects go to the poorer countries. This is the real fact!

So far as our state (kerala, India) is considered, the southern state is having a width of 11 to 121 km and the length of coastal area is 590 km. Geographically, Kerala roughly divides into three climatically distinct regions. These include the eastern highlands (rugged and cool mountainous terrain), the central midlands (rolling hills), and the western lowlands (coastal plains).Flash floods, drought, sea level rise are caused in our state. But the lack of data and related research on these aspects is the main problem. We can't say clearly the drought is caused by climate change. Different departments are dealing with different aspects of the State. Agriculture department is dealing with agricultural matter, fisheries department with the fisheries matter, forest department with the forest matter, floods are dealt by revenue department. Research organisation are dealing with research matter. There is no coordination between the different department is another barrier. First of all what is needed is to have a coordination among different departments. Meteorlogical data, data concerned to agriculture failure due to drought, fisheries, forest, coastal line, flooding etc., and adaptive measures are to collected by individual department. One department shall act as a coordinating department with the different departments. Research organisations, local people, farmers, environmentalists shall also be consulted for the preparation of action plan for adaptation/mitigating measures containing the agencies to be involved and fund to be allocated,

The only answer I can share here (from Bangladesh perspective) that there is a serious lack of research in the climate adaption strategies. The research is mostly being undertaken by the researcher community abroad, which is not contributing at all to the institutional mechanisms. The blame applies to the latter.

Though there is lot of research on climate change, we have to take effort to compile the results from different organisations. The effects of climate change is almost same all over the world. Rise in temperature, sea level rise, flash floods, drought. First of all we have to find how these are affecting the different sectors agriculture, fisheries, forests, urban sector, water resources, health, energy, and tourism.

High temperature and drought shall affect agriculture, forest, fisheries. Flash flood affect urban sector, etc., Hence the part of country having agriculture, fisheries, etc., we have to identify first. From that we can find out vulnerable areas.

Further adaptive measures can be proposed accordingly. In each sector, fund can be proposed for sustainable activities, policy and institutional matters and research and policy. The allocated amount and agencies implementing the activites can also be incorporated in a tabular form.

kind regards

Dr. Sheela A. M.