Key Issues

Resilient drylands

The drylands matter. They cover 40% of the Earth’s land surface and 43% of Africa’s inhabitable surface, and are home to 2.3 billion people globally and 39% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa. Lack of awareness and understanding of the dynamics and contributions of dryland ecosystems, livelihoods and economies has meant that investment and development policies in these areas have too often been informed by myths and stereotypes. Through research, training and advocacy, we aim to improve institutional frameworks for the development and governance of the drylands.

Our current projects include:

• Total Economic Value of pastoralism
• Pastoral livelihoods and change
• Supporting pastoral mobility in East and West Africa

Economics and equity of Adaptation

Our focus is primarily on the economics of adaptation, providing decision makers with tools and information to make decisions for effective adaptation. Adaptation is going to be costly, and decisions will need to be made about how best to allocate limited funding. The case also needs to be built up to ensure developing countries receive the help they need to cope with climate change - costing adaptation will strengthen this argument.

Projects include:

• AdMit
• Economics of adaptation and policy in LDCs

Climate Negotiations Capacity Building

The very nature of the climate change problem – that greenhouse gasses produced in one place can alter the climate thus affecting communities living round the other side of the world – requires nations to come together to negotiate a global solution. IIED supports voices from developing countries by coordinating workshops, provides expertise and facilitates communication between negotiators and observers as well as fundraising for capacity building initiatives of our Southern partners.

• European Capacity Building Initiative workshops
• Capacity Building for Least Developed Countries through our CLACC Fellowship
• IIED presence at UNFCCC COP

Evaluating Climate Change Adaptation

Our projects seek to work alongside stakeholders and decision makers to find out what works, building up a picture of successful adaptation initiatives, so we can scale up community based adaptation where appropriate, share good practice and raise awareness about adaptation needs in Least Developed Countries.

Projects include:

• Workshops to Strengthen the Capacity of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to Negotiate and Implement the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol
• Up in Smoke Coalition
  
  

Community based adaptation

IIED, along with our partners in-country, work to support community-based adaptation (CBA) initiatives while raising awareness on local impacts at national and international level.

 Projects include

• CBA Workshop, Dhaka, Bangladesh
• CBA Exchange (CBA-X)
• CBA Conference, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Cities and Climate Change

To date, discussions of how to address climate change have focused far more on mitigation - reducing greenhouse gas emissions, than adaptation - coping with the storms, floods, sea-level rise and other impacts that climate change will bring. The limited discussions on adaptation have also given little attention to cities. But many cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean are at high risk from climate change.

Projects include

• CLACC Cities Studies - Mapping Vulnerability