Civil society stresses on ‘adaptation goal’

Harjeet Singh of ActionAid International said: “The impacts of climate change we are seeing today is not the result of emissions from today but of the last 150 years.” According to the panel, the UN climate talks tend to focus more on greenhouse gas emissions than helping the poorest adapt to climate change. “All the climate action we are doing here has the ultimate objective of protecting people and ecosystems,” said Singh, but somehow adaptation has gotten less attention” Sandeep Champing Rai from the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF): “If you look at the international agreements in the past they are mostly focus on mitigation. The Paris Agreement has somehow lifted the bar on adaptation in the whole discourse. It made adaptation as equal as the mitigation” “The task in Marrakesh is to unpack what the global goal means and how we are going to achieve that,” said Singh. According to Champing Rai, achieving the adaptation goal will be about: “Enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change.” “We need to achieve this with reference to Sustainable Developed goal and adequate adaptation in reference to global temperature rise.” However, a key challenge remains in how to determine the effectiveness of adaptation projects, particularly when projects unintentionally increase people’s vulnerability. Singh added: “A lot more experimentation is required, and some amount of learning by doing needs to happen.There needs to be a recognition that this is a global challenge, and we need to find a solution together.”