The library is being populated with the most relevant publications, including the latest ones of 2011.

Alternatives to land acquisitions: Agricultural investment and collaborative business models

Recent years have witnessed a renewed interest in private-sector investment in agriculture. Some have welcomed this trend as a bearer of new livelihood opportunities in lower and middle-income countries. Others have raised concerns about the possible social impacts, including loss of local rights to land, water and other natural resources; threats to local food security; and, more generally, the risk that large-scale investments may marginalise family farmers. The recent debates about “land grabbing” – whereby investors acquire large areas of land in lower- and middle-income countries – illustrate these trends and positions. There is great demand for insights on how to structure agricultural investments in ways that leave land and share value with local farmers and communities. And in many parts of the world, there is growing experience with models for structuring agricultural investments other than large-scale land acquisitions. This publication captures the highlights of the international workshop “Agricultural investment and more inclusive business models”, which took place in Maputo in March 2010. At the workshop, farmers’ organisations, agribusiness, government and civil society came together to share lessons from practical experience. The publication makes the insights gained from this exchange available to a wider audience.

KEYWORDS: Agriculture, Food, private investments, Investment and Trade, Natural Resource Management

SOURCE: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/12567IIED.pdf

Community based adaptation projects toolkit

The Toolkit offers a practical “how-to” guide for practitioners as they go through the project cycle. It includes step-by-step guidance and recommended tools for all stages of the project cycle, along with links to useful resources and checklists for key project documents. It also includes CBA Project Standards to support high-quality analysis, design, implementation and knowledge management (including monitoring & evaluation).

KEYWORDS: Toolkit, adaptation, Climate Change, community based

SOURCE: http://www.careclimatechange.org/tk/cba/en/

Integrating Climate Change into development projects toolkit

The Toolkit provides practical assistance for adapting design, implementation, monitoring & evaluation to the challenges posed by climate change. Its step-by-step structure helps users design climate-resilient interventions with sustainable impacts. The Toolkit also includes simple checklists to ensure that activities don’t inadvertently increase people’s vulnerability to climate change. It provides guidelines and recommended tools for all stages of the project cycle, as well as practical examples. Water resource management and agricultural projects are specifically highlighted, as they were prioritised for field testing by beta-versions of the Toolkit.

KEYWORDS: Toolkit, Climate Change, sustainable development, guidelines

SOURCE: http://www.careclimatechange.org/tk/integration/en/

Designing Climate Change Adaptation Initiatives

The toolkit is a step-by-step guide on how to develop adaptation initiatives in developing countries. The guide helps to understand how to differentiate between a climate change “adaptation” and a traditional development initiative, and what key elements must be considered when developing and designing an adaptation initiative. It sets out the fundamental components of the design process, the approach to building stakeholder consensus, and key tools and methodologies. The toolkit is breaking grounds being one of the first hands-on guides assisting developing countries to move to low emission climate resilience growth paths while mobilizing financial resources to scale-up good practices with sufficient speed and where most needed.

KEYWORDS: Toolkit, Adaptation, Climate Change, UNDP, developing countries

SOURCE: http://www.adaptationlearning.net/sites/default/files/17750_CC_un_toolbox.pdf

A method to finance a global climate fund with a harmonized carbon tax

Funding a response to climate change after Kyoto will require another look at both burden sharing and funding mechanisms. After reviewing the risks of cap-and-trade with carbon offsets and the advantages of a harmonized carbon tax, a method is proposed to utilize a harmonized carbon tax to finance a global climate fund. A common carbon tax rate is assessed across all nations and collected internally for internal investments in climate change. Financing for the global climate fund is generated from transferring a percentage of the collected carbon tax based on historical responsibility for carbon emissions and national wealth. Collected revenue is disbursed for climate aid based on a set of national climate need factors for adaptation, preserving strategic carbon sinks, low-carbon infrastructures and population management. In the interest of distributive justice, nations themselves determine the need factors of each other. Unlike cap-and-trade, this method does not explicitly require emissions caps. Formulas are presented for collection and disbursement, which require parameters for a globally harmonized carbon tax rate, a climate fund contribution rate, a national wealth threshold for fund contributions and need factors for each nation. Published economic and emissions data are used with the formulas to demonstrate an example of how the financing can work. This presents an equitable way to address climate needs across all nations on both a global and regional level.

KEYWORDS: climate change, global warming, climate fund, carbon tax, cap-and-trade, climate finance, Kyoto protocol

SOURCE: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/27121/1/MPRA_paper_27121.pdf

Harvesting Knowledge on REDD-plus:Early Lessons from the FCPF Initiative and Beyond

FCPF is a global partnership of 37 forested developing countries, 14 donor countries and organizations, and civil society, indigenous peoples, private sector, and international organization observers. FCPF is working to pilot REDD-plus: reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (UNFCCC, Decision 4/CP15). FCPF‘s Readiness Mechanism assists countries in moving from a planning stage to a phase of REDD-plus Readiness preparation. Its Carbon Fund intends to pilot generation and payment for emission reductions from REDD-plus countries, and is expected to become operational in 2011. Eighteen ‘REDD countries’ have submitted formal or draft REDD-plus Readiness Preparation Proposals (R-PPs) for consideration by its governing body, the Participants Committee. These R-PPs provide a wealth of experience from which the international community is learning about REDD-plus. The FCPF also is serving as a key platform in bringing together its wide range of partners to discuss opportunities and challenges to implementing REDD-plus in their respective countries, in a neutral space outside of climate negotiations.

KEYWORDS: REDD+, FCPF, WB, Climate Change, financing

SOURCE: http://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/fcp/sites/forestcarbonpartnership.org/files/Documents/PDF/Oct2010/FCPF%20Harvesting%20Knowledge%20Nov%2019%202010-revised.pdf

Unveiling the Links between ICTs & Climate Change in Developing Countries: A Scoping Study

Alongside increasing awareness of the manifestations of climate change and the growing momentum of the debate, the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is starting to emerge and to shed light on potentially innovative approaches to respond, prepare for, and adapt to climate change impacts. Sources in the field started to explore the linkages between the information society and sustainable development in the late 1990s, shifting their focus in the early 2000s from broader global environmental issues to CO2 emissions and mitigation, thus addressing more specifically the role of ICTs in climate change. However, these explorations on the role of ICTs – in the reduction of emissions through smart grids, dematerialization or intelligent transport systems and buildings, among others – have focused mainly on addressing the priorities of developed countries in regards to climate change. Despite the prevalence of the mitigation lens among available sources, a growing body of literature indicates the emergence of research in the areas of adaptation and climate change strategies, acknowledging the priorities of developing contexts and the potential of ICTs. Experiences from vulnerable communities in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean point to the use of applications such as mobile phones, the Internet and community radio as part of climate change responses, including the strengthening of local livelihoods, natural resources management and training, access to relevant information and networking opportunities, and awareness raising, among others. However, this constitutes a very new field of enquiry where much remains to be explored. Developing country priorities and perspectives need to become a central part of the debate, if the potential of these technologies is to contribute to more holistic, inclusive responses to the challenges posed by the changing climate.

KEYWORDS: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Climate Change, adaptation

SOURCE: http://www.niccd.org/ScopingStudy.pdf

Food Security and Climate Change, challenges to 2050 and beyond

The first decade of the 21st century has brought harbingers of a troubled future for global food security. The food-price spike of 2008 led to food riots and political change in several countries. In 2010, the excessive heat and drought in Russia that led to wildfires and a grain embargo, as well as the unprecedented floods in Pakistan, signal more trouble ahead. A world population approaching 9 billion by 2050 and higher incomes in hitherto poor countries will lead to increased food demand, which means significant challenges to sustainable agricultural production. To these already daunting challenges, climate change adds more. Because food production is critically dependent on local temperatures and precipitation, any change outside the range of current conditions requires farmers to adapt their practices. The IFPRI study from which this brief is drawn, Food Security, Farming, and Climate Change to 2050, suggests that while the adaptations might be beneficial for a few famers, for most farmers they will pose major challenges to productivity and more difficulties in managing risk. This brief highlights results from the study on possible development and climate change scenarios between now and 2050 and on what these scenarios mean for food security.

KEYWORDS: Food security, Climate Change, IFPRI, Farming

SOURCE: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ib66.pdf

Climate Watchlist: key issues for Cancun negotiations

briefing A shared vision? In the Bali Action Plan, adopted at the 2007 UNFCCC talks in Indonesia, countries agreed to develop a shared vision of the long-term cooperative action needed to implement the convention effectively up to and beyond 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends. The vision is meant to include a long-term global goal for emission reductions that takes into account the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ — whereby everyone shares the common goal of effectively dealing with climate change, but with differing degrees of responsibilities for causing it — as well as the different socioeconomic conditions and technological and financial capacity for action that exists within each country. This long-term goal addresses mitigation for all parties to the convention, including the United States and large emerging emitters such as China and India that do not have binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. We must mitigate and adapt to climate change. On this,the international community is agreed. But exactly how to do that is still up for debate. There were high hopes that last year’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen would deliver a legally binding agreement for action on climate change. But the outcome — the Copenhagen Accord — was instead a political ‘statement of intent’ that fell significantly short of expectations. Now, after a year of interim meetings and several negotiating texts, parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are gathering in Cancun, Mexico, to try again. Their success will largely depend on settling disputes — particularly between the developed and developing world — about six key issues: shared vision; adaptation; climate finance; technology transfer; reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation; and post-2012 emissions reduction targets.

KEYWORDS: Policy brief, Climate Change, Cancun negotiations

SOURCE: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17089IIED.pdf

Fast-start adaptation funding: keeping promises from Copenhagen

The most concrete commitment to come out of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen was US$30 billion dollars in ‘fast-start climate finance’ to developing countries, with balanced support for both mitigation and adaptation. Fast-start adaptation finance, in particular, is crucial for poor countries facing rapid climate change. But so far, pledges for adaptation from developed countries have been inadequate and unclear. This briefing outlines ways for the Cancun negotiations to address five crucial issues for adaptation finance: (1) the amount and type of funding being offered, (2) the definition of adaptation, (3) global oversight and accounting, (4) a clear baseline and transparent spending and (5) the channel for delivering funds.

KEYWORDS: Policy brief, Fast-start, Climate Change, adaptation funding, Copenhagen

SOURCE: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17088IIED.pdf