Adaptation planning | Integrating Agriculture in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

From NAPAs to NAPs

T he framework for the formulation and implementation of National Adaptation Plans (NAP) was established in 2010 at the 16th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16). It was designed specifically to help Least Developed Countries (LDC) with the identification of medium and long-term key adaptation issues, gaps, priorities as well as the related resource requirements.

The NAP process evolved from the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA ), in which LDCs were asked to use existing information to select their most pressing adaptation activities that must take place to avoid further vulnerability to climate change or even greater costs in the long-term. At COP 22, countries were asked to submit information on the progress made to formulate and implement a NAP by 4 October, 2017 rather than 1 February, 2018, as originally planned.

NAPs are an organic part of the formulation and implementation of countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). Countries’ climate change-related intentions were summarized in their (I)NDCs for the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. Almost all developing countries, including LDCs, included priority areas for adaptation and/or adaptation actions focusing on the agriculture sectors, showing the important role that the agriculture sectors will have in national climate change adaptation planning and budgeting processes.