Measuring and tracking the flow of climate change adaptation aid to the developing world
Simon D Donner (Liu Faculty Affiliate, UBC), Milind Kandlikar (Liu Faculty, UBC), and Sophie Webber (Grad Student, UBC)
May 3, 2016
This publication is available for download here.
Source: IOP Science: Environmental Research Letters
Liu Faculty Affiliate Simon Donner, Liu Faculty Milind Kandlikar, and graduate student Sophie Webber at the University of British Columbia discuss climate change adaptation and the problems associated with such financing. By arguing that there is no clear definition of what separates adaptation aid from standard development aid, the authors use a historical database of overseas development assistance projects to test the effect of different accounting assumptions on the delivery of adaptation finance to the developing countries of Oceania. The results show that explicit adaptation finance grew to 3%–4% of all development aid to Oceania by the 2008–2012 period, but that total adaptation finance could be as high as 37% of all aid, depending on potentially politically motivated assumptions about what counts as adaptation. There was also an uneven distribution of adaptation aid between countries facing similar challenges like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The analysis indicates that data allowing individual projects to be weighted by their climate change relevance is needed. A robust and mandatory metadata system for all aid projects would allow multilateral aid agencies and independent third parties to perform their own analyses using different assumptions and definitions, and serve as a key check on international climate aid promises.
