My Adaptation Journey

by Carys Richards, TGT Volunteer

One of TGT’s aims is to help nurture the next generation of climate change adaptation professionals. In this guest blog, one of our volunteers, Carys Richards, charts her journey into the world of adaptation and the role The Glacier Trust has played.

Like most good things, I stumbled upon the world of climate adaptation almost by accident. Back in 2017, I was an undergraduate student studying Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews. Climate change was inescapable, but while my degree (due to my module choices) focused more on climate science, I was more concerned about what was happening to those already dealing with the impacts of climate change.

It is in this context that I stumbled across The Glacier Trust. The warm and enthusiastic welcome I received from my first email to Morgan (TGT's Co-Director) enquiring about climate adaptation sealed the deal, and I began supporting TGT as a volunteer.

We (Still!) Need to Talk about Adaptation

My main involvement has been with the We Need to Talk About Adaptation project which focused on assessing the degree to which UK NGOs (and the Green Party of England and Wales) have engaged with adaptation. Our reports in 2019 and 2020 were stark: adaptation was very much out of sight and out of mind in the UK, obscured by an immovable (and still important) focus on climate mitigation. Adaptation should not be a poor relation of mitigation. The two are complementary; they must go hand-in-hand. For many, mitigation is too little, too late, and adaptation has become vital for countless communities across the world to cope with the worsening impacts of climate change.

Framing Adaptation

After an eye-opening year spent studying in Canada and Singapore, I returned to St Andrews determined to further study climate adaptation. Along with making all of my essay titles adaptation-related, I decided to use the We Need to Talk about Adaptation data as the basis for my dissertation. Rather than focusing on whether organisations were talking about adaptation, I decided to focus on what they were saying - how were they framing adaptation?

In summary of that work, I found four main frames: (1) mitigation, (2) techno-economic, (3) security and (4) biological. Essentially, adaptation was either an afterthought of mitigation, a concept related to finance or technology, a development agenda useful to address security concerns (particularly related to climate-induced migration) or a process that animals were undertaking to cope with climate change. A multi-dimensional framing of adaptation, which we hoped to see, proved to be something of a 'unicorn'.

The Politics of Adaptation

With the pandemic in full swing, I decided to delay entering the 'real world' for a little longer to pursue an MSc in Environment, Politics and Society, purposefully opting into a programme where I would focus more on politics. If I had learned anything during my degree, it was that adaptation is highly political. It was at about this time that Morgan started collating all of his wisdom into writing Great Adaptations - an excellent introduction to climate adaptation - and something that I was privileged to read an early draft of.

My postgraduate dissertation with the (not so catchy) title of “’The Adaptation Project’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Projectisation, Performativity and the Paper Trail” focused on the impact of the project form on adaptation by looking at the documents of 20 adaptation projects funded by the Least Developed Countries Fund. Why is adaptation, which many agree should be a long-term process, always broken down into chunks called projects? How does this process of “projectisation” shape adaptation? It gave me space to tackle an issue that I think has great bearing on the type of adaptation that is being funded.

In summer 2021, while preparing my dissertation, Morgan contacted me and asked if I would support TGT as a panellist for their Asia-Europe People's Forum (AEPF) discussion on "Just & Transformative Adaptations - A Foundation for Climate Justice". It was a very inspiring event, and was made even better by the opportunity to work and collaborate more closely with Andy (TGT Trustee) and Narayan and Anisha from TGT's partner in Nepal, EcoHimal. It was great to hear about adaptation action on the ground, and the incredible work being done in Nepal, and across Europe and Asia to support communities to adapt to climate change.

Context is everything

An important topic that is never too far from my thoughts surrounds how I fit into the context of adaptation. I am highly aware of my background as a white, middle-class woman with access to a good education, finance, and opportunities, not to mention being a citizen of a country responsible for a lot of historical and current societal and environmental damage. It is from this privileged context that I have learned about climate change and adaptation, about loss and damage and compensation that should be paid to those countries most affected by, and least responsible for climate change. It is also from reflections on my context and my interactions with knowledgeable and passionate individuals from all different backgrounds, that I have learned just how central justice must be to adaptation. From my exposure to climate adaptation so far, I am determined to work in a way that puts justice at the centre.

Reflections

While the thought of leaving education a few months ago filled me with fear, my experience with The Glacier Trust gave me a sense of direction...a direction which enabled me to find my current role with an organisation called PlanAdapt. Based in Berlin, PlanAdapt is a network-based organisation that provides knowledge services supporting just and effective climate adaptation, through collaboration between researchers, practitioners and communities in the Global South and the Global North. In my time at PlanAdapt, it is clear that principles which I learned while working with TGT - social and economic justice, inclusivity, collaboration, and trust - are also central to how PlanAdapt works. At this early stage in my career, I am excited to see what’s next, to collaborate with people from all walks of life, to continue to learn and to work towards more just and effective climate adaptation. 

For me, with the ending and beginning of a new year, it feels important to reflect on how I got here. The truth is, I have been incredibly lucky to work (and to still get to work!) with The Glacier Trust, and to cross paths with the many individuals and organisations that have inspired and supported me on my ‘journey into adaptation’. One interaction with Morgan in 2017 has been the catalyst for many events and milestones that have happened in the last four years of my life, and will likely shape many more. If I were to sum up what I have learned about the adaptation world so far, I would say: it is really all about the people.

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We are so delighted that Carys has joined PlanAdapt, they have got themselves a sharp and dedicated new team member. Carys is going to go far, and it is fantastic to have crossed paths with her on her journey. Thank you Carys for all your support, we hope to continue to work with you long into the future.

To learn more about our efforts to nurture the next generation of climate change adaptation professionals, please visit our Higher Education pages.

If you would like to support our work, please make donation via our donation portal.

'Progress' on Adaptation at COP26

There is a live version of Desolation Row on volume 4 of Bob Dylan’s bootleg series. It is from a recording of his famous Manchester Free Trade Hall concert in 1966. I love it. I’ve been listening to it a lot over the last few days.

In other words, I’m feeling the melancholy that washes over me every time another UN climate circus comes to town, underwhelms us, and then leaves.

Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"

I’ll leave you to decide who I think the ‘Phantom’, the ‘Casanova’, and the ‘skinny girls’ are. You can also decide for yourself who is, and isn’t invited to the ‘feast’ - I’ll give you a clue, it wasn’t the marginalised mountain people of the global South.

Anyway, enough of the cryptic. Here’s a run down of the ‘progress’ made on adaptation at COP26.

The Gathering Storm

First, some context. On November 1st, UNEP released their annual ‘Adaptation Gap’ report. It was was titled ‘The Gathering Storm’. Here are some of the cold facts it told us [emphasis added]:

• The costs of adaptation are likely in the higher end of an estimated USD 140-300 billion per year by 2030 and USD 280-500 billion per year by 2050 for developing countries only.

• Climate finance flowing to developing countries for mitigation and adaptation planning and implementation reached USD 79.6 billion in 2019.

*It is important to note here that only USD 20 billion of that USD 79.6 billion was earmarked for adaptation.

• Estimated adaptation costs in developing countries are five to ten times greater than current public adaptation finance flows. The adaptation finance gap is widening.

Four things of note happened at COP26:

Adaptation was higher up the agenda for delegates, activists, and negotiators at COP26, than at any previous COP meeting. It is only going to keep moving up agenda and the media (which in the main continued to ignore it) will soon have to start covering it in depth. Our Great Adaptations project will continue to advocate for this.

Here are the four main outcomes from COP26 on adaptation specifically:

1. The Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh work programme was announced. It will give some substance to the Adaptation goal of the Paris Agreement. Amongst other things, this work programme will strive to develop a set of indicators to help policymakers and funding agencies assess the success of adaptation projects. This is something that is much less straightforward to do than you’d expect. So it is good that the nettle has finally been grasped.

2. There were pledges from Developed nations to increase their contributions to the Adaptation Fund, it is being roughly tripled compared to three years ago, it will now be USD 356 million / year, compared to USD 116 million / year.

3. The Adaptation Research Alliance (ARA) was officially launched. ARA is a group of over 90 organisations from 30 economies driving research and innovation for adaptation that strengthens resilience where it is needed most.

4. There was also a commitment to double adaptation finance, so that by 2025 it is double the 2019 levels. The COP26 1/CMA.3 draft text ‘Urges developed country Parties to at least double their collective provision of climate finance for adaptation to developing country Parties from 2019 levels by 2025, in the context of achieving a balance between mitigation and adaptation in the provision of scaled-up financial resources.’

Given that adaptation finance was only USD 20 billion in 2019, an increase to USD 40 billion in 2025 does not put adaptation finance on the pathway to the ‘USD 140-300 billion per year by 2030’ amount that UNEP calculate is needed (see The Gathering Storm).

Loss and damage

Funds for adaptation are not quite the same as funds to compensate for the losses and damage caused by climate change. They are, however, close cousins and so it is worth noting here what happened.

A proposal for setting up a ‘Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility’ was submitted by all the 138 developing countries representing 5 billion people. This was first time requests for compensation for loss and damage have ever been looked at ‘officially’ at a COP.

The proposal, which if adopted would establish a fund to ensure developed nations began to pay back their climate debt. It made it into early drafts of the final text, and was there right up until late on Friday. However, overnight, after interventions by the EU, US and UK, the UK presidency was cajoled into deleting the facility from the text.

This, understandably, sparked outrage and nearly led to the collapse of the entire process. In the end, when the gavel came down on late Saturday afternoon, the only thing committed to in the final ‘Glasgow Pact’ is a ‘dialogue’ on loss and damage.

Our view is this: There has been enough talk, the case for compensation couldn’t be more clear. Global South nations are owed money for the reckless damage being done to them by the polluters of the global North. The creation of a Loss and Damage Facility must be at the top of the priority list for COP27. And it should be non-negotiable for global South leaders.

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How you can help

The people of Nepal, who are on the front line of climate breakdown, will have watched COP26 and concluded that the leaders of Developed world are not coming to save them. Sadly, it appears, they are right. USD 40 billion sounds like a lot, but it isn’t, and it won’t go very far. The last-minute refusal to include a Loss and Damage Facility is a travesty and a betrayal.

However, the ordinary people of the Developed world continue to show their solidarity. They are stepping in to enable adaptation projects that just won’t happen if we rely on the paltry flow of adaptation finance from the UNFCCC process.

By becoming a supporter of The Glacier Trust you can show your solidarity. So please step in, the people of Nepal need us now, they can’t wait until 2025, or 2030, for funds to materialise from central banks. Climate change is hitting them now and they need to adapt now.

Please set up a £10 monthly donation today to enable a Nepalese family to adapt to climate change.

100% of the money you donate will be spent on project work in Nepal.

Thank you.

Great Adaptations - The Beer!

We are absolutely delighted to have struck up a partnership with the Wiper and True brewery in Bristol. It is a business TGT is very closely linked to and we have had a lot of fun working up a collaboration to bring you a unique beer!

The beer, named ‘Great Adaptations’ in homage to our book, features coffee and cardamom grown in Nepal by farmers involved with the Deusa Agro Forestry Resource Centre that TGT has played a key role in establishing.

What has been extra special about this project is that the coffee was roasted in Kathmandu, therefore in country, something we think is incredibly important as our Coffee. Climate. Community. film points out.

Wiper and True’s Francesca Garton, daughter of Robin Garton, TGT’s founder, has written an excellent blog post, which we’d love you to read. Here’s an extract:

As someone who cares a lot about both beer and reversing the climate emergency, it is particularly exciting for me that Wiper and True is releasing a beer to mark COP26 – the 26th UN Climate Change Conference being hosted in Glasgow later this month.

Great Adaptations, a Cardamom & Coffee Stout, has been named in homage to one of COP26’s key goals: ‘adaptation - to urgently adapt to protect communities and natural habitats’. The beer has been developed in partnership with The Glacier Trust, a UK-based charity whose mission it is to help remote and vulnerable communities in Nepal do exactly that: adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change. 

The work of The Glacier Trust and the story behind it is what makes this beer such a particularly special one for us at Wiper and True, and it is especially fitting that we are launching it at the beginning of our Company’s quest to build a state-of-the-art new brewery and taproom with sustainability at the heart of all it does. 

Our partnership with The Glacier Trust is a very poignant one. The charity was founded in 2008 by my father Robin Garton, one of Wiper and True’s fondest supporters…

Read more

The beer is being sold in kegs to bars and pubs, and also in cans - you can order a 6 or 12 pack from Wiper and True’s online shop. We’ve tasted it and can confirm it is delicious. And what’s even better, Wiper and True are going donate 100% of the profit made to The Glacier Trust and we will direct all of it to the project work in Solukhumbu.

EVENT: Please join us at Waterstones Bristol Galleries on Tuesday November 9th for an event launching Great Adaptations, the book; and Great Adaptations the beer!

5 reasons to talk about adaptation

An extract from ‘Great Adaptations’ has been published on The Earthbound Report. In it Morgan lists five (of the many) reasons we need to talk about about adaptation.

The Earthbound Report also wrote a very thoughtful review of Great Adaptations.

Question to CCAG

We have been invited to ask a question to the August public meeting of the Climate Change Advisory Group, which was set up by Sir David King and colleagues to (in their words) ‘help inform the public, governments and financial institutions providing them with the most comprehensive science, and more crucially, guiding them towards action for climate repair.’ It is a promising initiative.

Obviously questions need to be short and to the point (nobody likes a long-winded sermon disguised as a question at an event like this!) But, climate change is complicated and the questions that need to be asked aren’t simple, so here is a fully referenced long version of the question we are going to ask, with the short version (that will actually be asked) below.

Long version of question:

Increasing numbers of political leaders are starting to question the logic of orientating their societies around the pursuit of endless GDP growth. They are doing this in recognition of evidence that shows how poor a proxy GDP growth is as a measure of societal wellbeing, and because they see that how the pursuit of GDP growth (for its own sake) is accelerating the climate and ecological emergency. The IPCC, however, continues to only use integrated assessment models (IAM) mitigation scenarios that have a built-in assumption that Governments will continue to prioritise GDP growth as a core policy objective. Every one of these scenarios relies, ever more heavily, on controversial amounts of carbon dioxide removal and unprecedented levels technological development and roll out. A reason why the IPCC’s recent conclusions were so bleak is arguably because it is trapped in an economic growth paradigm that places limits on how it imagines the future. Panel, it is obvious now that limiting global heating to 1.5C while also infinitely pursuing GDP growth is mission (very nearly) impossible.

A leak of the second draft of the IPCC Group III report, focused on mitigation strategies (due to be published in March 2022), is reported to include these words: “the character of economic development produced by the nature of capitalist society … [is] ultimately unsustainable”. In short, this new leak acknowledges that if we want to keep global heating below 1.5C of warming, there is little or no room for further economic growth. So, our question: Is this an indication that the IPCC is preparing to present mitigation scenarios that highlight what might be possible if Governments in the global North abandon GDP growth as core economic objective, in favour of post-growth, or degrowth, objectives that would make the mitigation task that much easier? And, panel, should it?

Short version of question:

The IPCC continues to only assess mitigation scenarios that have a built-in assumption that governments will always prioritise GDP growth. And yet, Government’s such as New Zealand are looking at whether they should prioritise wellbeing instead. So, why doesn’t the IPCC present mitigation scenarios that highlight what might be possible if global North governments abandon GDP growth as their core economic objective and, instead, adopt post-growth economic policies that would make the mitigation challenge that bit easier?

Please tune in here from 12pm (UK time) to hear how the panel responds.

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P.S. We have a book coming out ‘Great Adaptations - In the shadow of a climate crisis’. You can pre-order it now from all major retailers, and our website.

Quantifying children's risk to climate change

Prof. Craig Hutton, a Trustee with The Glacier Trust, was asked to lead a multi-university team including Universities of Edinburgh and Stirling in developing a global Child Climate Risk Index (CCRI) with UNICEF for delivery to the COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.

In this article Craig outlines how the CCRI was formulated and what it reveals about child climate risk in Nepal.

The CCRI uses global data sources, such as the World Resource Institute and World Bank, to identify the risk of climate impacts specifically from a child and teenager perspective, providing a risk value for each country including Nepal.

This work recognises that children and adolescents have little or no agency in decision making processes and are impacted by climate change in unique ways compared to broader society. Children have particularly sensitivities to diseases, malnutrition, and disasters and are subject to the indirect effects of climate change such as migration. As well as producing global maps for 2020, the project will produce more detailed maps for Tanzania and Uganda demonstrating the need to understand child risk to climate in high spatial detail so that differences between environments such as cities and rural areas can be studied. 

The 2020 CCRI was published on August 19 2021, and the projection of risk to 2050 will be released for COP26. UK partners are Edinburgh University, who lead on the climate and hazard modelling including  heatwaves, floods, droughts and disease; University of Sterling, who lead the examination of the global literature on the specific challenges to children of climate change; and the University of Southampton who, as well as leading and conceptualising the overall project, are leading the development of the child vulnerability component of the work such as poverty, local livelihood types, child education level, and child health, as well as coordination of the statistical processes leading to the production of the Child Climate Risk Index (CCRI).

Nepal features in this index. Whilst Nepal ranks equal 51st on the CCRI index, with Burundi and Zimbabwe, Nepal ranks 69/200 for child vulnerability and 19/200 for climate and environmental hazards which make up the index. Within the vulnerability pillar Nepal scores particularly poorly in child nutrition, but fairs better in the education component. However, it is also noted that there is data missing on poverty and inequality for Nepal which may be significant in determining overall vulnerability. The environmental hazards pillar shows Nepal scores poorly on water scarcity and air pollution. The hope is that the team will go on to focus on a few case study countries to develop the index at a higher resolution and that Nepal could be nominated as one of these countries.

Where is the climate justice?

Consider this: At the Paris climate conference, developed world nation promised to make $100bn / year available to tackle climate change by 2020. They've failed on this promise, best estimate is that $80bn was forthcoming in 2020.

Of that $80m, 80% was spent in Developed world countries on mitigation efforts, leaving just 20% (~$16bn) for adaptation projects. Of that $16bn only 10% ($1.6bn) is reaching the most vulnerable communities in the most vulnerable countries - this is how much is left over to enable #adaptation projects in the places that really need them. So, we live in a world where only 2% of the money set aside for action on climate change goes to support those who are suffering the worst impacts of climate breakdown. Where is the #climatejustice?

Why are we leaving millions of people to suffer, when we could be enabling #GreatAdaptations? They are possible our work in Nepal shows, but only possible if the $100bn pledge is realised and then ratcheted up year on year.

One other thing needs to change. Right now the $80bn is split 80/20 split in favour of mitigation projects. When $100bn is hit, a better balance needs to be achieved, with 50/50 being the aspiration so that adaptation projects get the funding they need.

Please read this interview with the irrepressible Saleemul Huq, one of the IPCC's lead authors: https://www.ciwem.org/the-environment/saleemul-huq-interview-climate-cop26

More important things

More important things

by Richard Allen in Kathmandu

It is one more stark example of the differences of the haves and have nots. The British press of all shades have been endlessly headlining, for months and months, the possibilities of when the British public will be permitted to go on holiday and where to, and the necessity for testing, quarantine, lock-ins on their return from an overseas holiday.  One of the worst examples of the British fake news spreaders recently headlined the fact that the Nepali variant (currently unproven and non-existent) is a threat to their holidays – and, oh horrors, Portugal has just moved from green to amber.

To me, a Brit living and working in Nepal, which is, as most will know, having a very tough time with COVID, this focus on when and where we can go on holiday, is astonishing. In comparison with so many countries in the world, the UK is so so comfortable, so much of that comfort still deriving from the long gone hundreds of years during which Britannia once ‘ruled the waves’.

Here in Nepal, the great majority of the population don’t have the resources or time to go on holiday – the great majority are farmers who have crops and animals to care for every day of the year. Nepal is not alone, we read too much of the wars and troubles in too many countries to list here. 

And now the Covid virus. But when nations of the world need to come together, realise at a fundamental level that we are all in this together, that it is not going away, and that the only way we can control the spread is to cooperate, scrap ideas of borders, and separateness……the worst elements of the British press nominate countries to blame and invent non-existent variants.

Added to the decision to reduce the overseas aid budget by £4 billion, which led to our NGO having to apologize to our Nepali partners who had wasted well over 100 hours on preparing a proposal for UK Aid for an enlightened agroforestry programme down the hills from Everest, the Brits in Nepal have now been further embarrassed by the naming and shaming of this wonderful country on the front pages of our little island newspapers.

Is there no empathy and compassion left? Is it all about separation nowadays? Are we all existing in our own little spaces, territories, countries within our own little blinkered support groups? No, it is not all about this, there are hundreds of examples of countries, peoples, trans national groups working together for the betterment of humanity, the environment and the world – but this Covid virus has certainly shone a light on the failure of world and national leadership to put politics aside and be able to work together in the time of a worldwide crisis. And it is not as if we do not have a few other crises bubbling up across the world!

It appears as if most world leaders are not plugged into the spirit of humanity. I saw the G7 described as the “leading” nations, then the “advanced” nations – what does the G stand for…… global – really?....... they are certainly advanced in galling, garrulous, gold-digging, greed, grating….. and refusing freedom from patents…..after all, we could be making our own vaccinations in Nepal.

If the seven of them, or 20 of them, whatever, need an example of focused energy, discipline and compassion, in relation to this Covid pandemic, please take a look at Bhutan and New Zealand.

Only two things can control this virus – a permanent lockdown, or vaccinating > 75% of the world population – the former is unrealistic, and we are very far from the latter.

Vaccines please, leaders – scientists in many different countries have done such an amazing job in developing these vaccines, please don’t screw it up with hoarding, allowing vaccines to expire, self-serving press conferences, unnecessary expenditure on flat and press room renovations - please leave your competitive personalities at the Olympics and on the football fields.  In fact, come to think of it, so much money is wasted on the never ending arms race, wars, conflicts, controlling of populations…., that maybe a short holiday for the wealthy is the least of our worries.  But, my God, it is annoying to see it on the front pages.

Many of us have seen friends, acquaintances, and people we know suffer or die during this pandemic. Can we not leave behind the baggage of fear, envy and resentment, and put judgements aside for this year? Can we instead be gentle and patient, and live the words “for the common good”, rather than just speak them.

Well, I am sending this over to the UK now, and I will get back to lockdown, Kathmandu style – wondering where the next bucks are coming from (haven’t earned a bean since June last year), but its fasting week with my daughter, and I’ll continue with my meditation course, reading and gardening….. sure, I would love to go on holiday, and I am one of the lucky ones that can afford it, but right now, dear Brits, dear editors, dear leaders, there are more important things.