Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-10 (section)

==== 10.5.1.2 Findings ====

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In order to facilitate local adaptation, especially in a context characterised by regional diversity and spatio-temporal variation, climate-adaptive governance invites greater policy attention to institution building (formal and informal) at multiple scales and across sectors ( [[#Mubaya--2017|Mubaya and Mafongoya, 2017]] ). An incremental EbA approach underlines the advantage of drawing upon ecosystem services for reducing vulnerabilities, increasing resilience of communities to adapt to climate change, and minimising threats to social systems and human security, provided climate change remains below 2°C or, better yet, below the 1.5°C of global warming ( [[#Barkdull--2018|Barkdull and Harris, 2018]] ).

Focus on multi-level governance, both below and beyond the state level, is steadily growing ( [[#Jogesh--2015|Jogesh and Dubash, 2015]] ; [[#Jörgensen--2015|Jörgensen et al., 2015]] ; [[#Beermann--2016|Beermann et al., 2016]] ). Discernible diversity across political systems and sectors in Asia notwithstanding, issues relevant to multi-level climate governance includes interplay between top-down national initiatives, which stem from supranational, regional and sub-regional levels. In the case of India, national climate governance has proliferated beyond the National Action Plan on Climate Change to include State Action Plans on Climate Change of over 28 states and union territories, demonstrating graphically the shared ‘co-benefit’ in terms of creating greater space for innovation and experimentation ( [[#Jörgensen--2015|Jörgensen et al., 2015]] ).

In Japan’s Climate Change Adaptation Act, enacted by the Japanese Diet in June 2018, the national government shall formulate a national action plan to promote adaptation in all sectors. This Act recommends that prefectures and municipalities designate a ‘local climate change adaptation centre’ as a local climate-change data collection and provision centre to provide more locally specific information and support for adaptation planning at the level of local municipalities. The Japanese government, in partnership with the private sector, has formulated a new comprehensive strategy, named Society 5.0, which aims at devising a number of technologically innovative solutions ( [[#Mavrodieva--2020|Mavrodieva and Shaw, 2020]] ).

Significantly, the co-benefit concept for international city partnerships along with comparative analysis of the challenges, capabilities and limitations of urban areas in Asia with regard to CCA governance remains under-researched ( [[#Beermann--2016|Beermann et al., 2016]] ).

In the case of Vietnam, especially at district and community levels, where the policy capacities in hierarchical governance systems to deal with climate-change impacts are generally constrained, the value of clear legal institutions, provision of financing for implementing policies and the training opportunities for governmental staff has been well demonstrated ( [[#Phuong--2018b|Phuong et al., 2018b]] ). A key finding is that any effort to support local actors (i.e., smallholder farmers) should ensure augmentation of policy capacity through necessary investments.

In the case of China, a combination of market-based policies, emissions trading systems, a growing number of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international networks appear to be serving as an important tool for climate governance ( [[#Ramaswami--2017|Ramaswami et al., 2017]] ; [[#Wang--2017b|Wang et al., 2017b]] ). Public private partnership (PPP) too is receiving increasing focus, especially with regard to climate-related cost-effective and innovative infrastructure projects. In the absence of major investments in resilience, climate change may force up to 77 million people into a poverty trap by 2030 ( [[#World%20Bank--2016|World Bank, 2016]] ). As seen in the case of Japan, most of the countries in Asia face the challenge of contractual allocation of risks associated with natural hazards and climate change between the public and private sectors and its long-term management in the face of uncertainty. Risk sharing, therefore, could be addressed by clear definition and allocation ( [[#World%20Bank--2017|World Bank, 2017]] ). Given that in Asia, especially Singapore, China, Japan and Republic of Korea, where the water sector is a target of industrial and technology policy, PPPs could prove to be mutually beneficial. As a middle ground, key findings of a study on Indonesia ( [[#Yoseph-Paulus--2016|Yoseph-Paulus and Hindmarsh, 2016]] ) underline the importance of building, sustaining and augmenting local capacity by addressing inadequacies with regard to resource endowment and capacity building, public awareness about climate change, government–community partnerships, vulnerability assessment and providing inclusive decision-making spaces to Indigenous knowledge systems and communities.

In the agriculture sector, farmers in Asia are adapting to climate change at the grassroots level ( [[#Tripathi--2017|Tripathi and Mishra, 2017]] ). A recent, comprehensive and systematic review ( [[#Shaffril--2018|Shaffril et al., 2018]] ) shows how farmers in diverse sub-regions of Asia have adopted diverse adaptation strategies through management of crops, irrigation and water, farms, finances, physical infrastructure and social activities. Much more qualitative research on farmers’ perceptions and decision-making processes about adaptation practices is needed in order to capture their location-specific priorities and get a diverse understanding of the risks and threats. A study of Vietnamese smallholder farmers’ perceptions of their current and future capacity to adapt to climate change ( [[#Phuong--2018a|Phuong et al., 2018a]] ) found considerable differences between farmers in crop production and livestock production in terms of their motives behind adopting particular planned adaptation options.

A study on farmers’ awareness of, and adaptation to, climate change in the dry zones of Myanmar, critically dependent on agriculture, indicates how those at the front line of the adverse effects of climate change are steadily abandoning the common sesame/groundnut cropping pattern, and trying to adapt to risks and uncertainties with the aid of conventional agricultural practices such as rainwater collection, water-harvesting techniques and even traditional weather forecasting techniques for weather prediction. Similarly, a case study of the Gandak basin in Nepal showed that incorporation of local knowledge into agricultural practices and weather warning systems works best when coupled with multiple sources of information based on a method of triangulation. This also intersects with gender outcomes, where women frequently receive information from the men of their households rather than directly from state institutional sources ( [[#Acharya--2019|Acharya and Prakash, 2019]] ). Climate-change adaptive governance is facilitated by improved cross-scalar and cross-sectoral cooperation, exchange of information and experiences, and best practices ( [[#Smith--2014|Smith et al., 2014]] ; [[#Watts--2015|Watts et al., 2015]] ; [[#Gamble--2016|Gamble et al., 2016]] ; [[#Gilfillan--2017|Gilfillan et al., 2017]] ).

An integrated approach informed by science, which examines multiple stressors along with Indigenous knowledge, appears to be of immense value ( [[#Elum--2017|Elum et al., 2017]] ). A study on Pakistan concluded that poor agricultural communities are among the worst victims of climate change ( [[#Ali--2017|Ali and Erenstein, 2017]] ) and that farmers who are younger, better educated, belong to joint families and possess more landholdings are ''likely'' to adapt sooner and better. Correspondingly, this category achieved higher levels of income and food security. The climate-development nexus suggests that CCA practices at the farm level can have significant development outcomes, besides reducing risk posed by changing weather patterns. Central to the CCA process is the growing recognition of the role that institutions play in both the hierarchical setting and across different scales to influence implementation of CCA in diverse areas of governance across social and political domains. [[#Cuevas--2018|Cuevas (2018)]] highlights the usefulness of mainstreaming CCA into local land-use planning in Albay, the Philippines, by involving networks of interacting institutions and institutional arrangements for overcoming obstacles that are potentially counterproductive and conflictual.

As noted by AR5 ( [[#IPCC--2014a|IPCC, 2014a]] ), research on issues related to both climate-change impacts on livestock production–demand for which is expected to double by 2050 in a world of 10 billion people–and policy choices with regard to adaptation, especially at the local scale, is still limited but progressing ( [[#Rojas-Downing--2017|Rojas-Downing et al., 2017]] ). The promise of diversification of livestock animals (within species), crop diversification and transition to mixed crop–livestock systems needs to be further explored. A study of livestock farmers in Pakistan showed that risk-coping mechanisms, such as purchasing livestock insurance and increasing land areas for fodder, are far more rewarding policy options in comparison with selling livestock and migrating to another place. Relatedly, the association of migration with adaptation measures is context specific and involves a number of factors pertaining to the socioeconomic circumstances of vulnerable agricultural groups in countries like India and Bangladesh ( [[#Ojha--2014|Ojha et al., 2014]] ). In the 2010 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Cancun Adaptation Framework, migration was recognised as a form of adaptation that should be included in a country’s long-term adaptation planning where appropriate (Paragraph 14 f).

Furthermore, agricultural climate-adaptation policy targeting livestock farmers in rural areas is ''very likely'' to benefit from better education and awareness as well as increased access to extension services among livestock farmers on climate risk-coping choices and strategies ( [[#Rahut--2018|Rahut and Ali, 2018]] ). In Myanmar, the lack of adequate agricultural extension strategies has had a negative impact on adaptation outcomes in what is labelled the ‘central dry zone’. Farmers’ perceptions of climate change contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the context where they identify deforestation and related activities as the main culprits. Their adaptive methods include agricultural land preparation and crop rotation practices in addition to rainwater-harvesting techniques ( [[#Swe--2015|Swe et al., 2015]] ). A study of vulnerable areas in Bangladesh ( [[#Alam--2017|Alam et al., 2017]] ) has shown that with policy support, livestock rearing can prove to be a viable substitute for crop production in areas prone to riverbank erosion. Carefully developed partnerships between government organisations and NGOs can come to the rescue of poor farmers and their precarious households by providing information about best practices for local adaptation strategies, including credit options with various institutions and creating an enabling environment for the promotion of agro-based industries. A study in community forestry in the Indian Himalayan region ( [[#Gupta--2019|Gupta and Koontz, 2019]] ) has shown how the synergies and successful partnerships could evolve between government and NGOs in local forest governance, with the former providing technical and financial support, and the latter directing the communities to those resources, and in the making up for each other’s limitations thereby enabling and augmenting community efforts in forest governance.

A study of Pakistan ( [[#Ali--2017|Ali and Erenstein, 2017]] ) shows that factors such as enhanced awareness about various climate risk-coping strategies, better education and agricultural extension services, augmenting farm-household assets, lowering the cost of adaptation, improving access to services and alternative livelihoods, and providing support to poorer households appear to have paid rich dividends. Countries such as Bhutan and Sri Lanka have included provisions for ‘climate-smart agriculture’ in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) ( [[#Amjath-Babu--2019|Amjath-Babu et al., 2019]] ).

In the domain of forest adaptive governance, ever since the introduction of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus (REDD+) at COP 13 in 2007 in Bali, the Indonesian experience suggests that some of the major challenges include curbing emissions, changes in cross-sectoral land-use as well as practice within forestry and lack of effective, efficient and equitable implementation of diverse forest governance practices. The issue of how forest governance institutions are conceived and managed, both at national and subnational levels, involving state, private sector and civil society, also needs serious attention ( [[#Agung--2014|Agung et al., 2014]] ).

In an example from Nepal, [[#Clement--2018|Clement (2018)]] showed that deliberative governance mechanisms can create the space for alternative framings of climate change to take a hold in ways that are cognisant of both the local and global contexts; this moves beyond a dependence on techno-managerialism in the construction of solutions, where local governance solutions can support institutional changes. The possibilities more incorporating deliberative methods into wider governance architecture are also expanded through an acknowledgment of the role of social learning; this is observable in the multi-stakeholder involvement that this approach fosters in regions of South Asia such as the Brahmaputra River basin ( [[#Varma--2018|Varma and Hazarika, 2018]] ). Additionally, recent studies have reconfirmed the importance of linking Indigenous knowledge with the scientific knowledge of climate change in diverse regions of the globe, including Asia and Africa ( [[#Hiwasaki--2014|Hiwasaki et al., 2014]] ; [[#Etchart--2017|Etchart, 2017]] ; [[#Taremwa--2017|Taremwa et al., 2017]] ; [[#Vadigi--2017|Vadigi, 2017]] ; [[#Apraku--2018|Apraku et al., 2018]] ; [[#Inaotombi--2018|Inaotombi and Mahanta, 2018]] ; [[#Makondo--2018|Makondo and Thomas, 2018]] ) for building farmers’ resilience, enhancing CCA, ensuring cross-cultural communication, promoting local skills, drawing upon Indigenous Peoples’ intuitive thinking processes and geographic knowledge of remote areas.

A study of the Sylhet Division in Bangladesh, deploying a knowledge quality assessment tool, found significant correlation between a narrow technocratic problem framing, divorced from traditional knowledge strongly rooted in local sociocultural histories and relatively low project success due to skewed risk-based calculations disconnected from the ground realities ( [[#Haque--2017|Haque et al., 2017]] ; [[#Wani--2018|Wani and Ariana, 2018]] ). Highlighting the vulnerability of the Bajo tribal communities, who inhabit the coastal areas of Indonesia, to climate change, the study showed how they share several examples of their Indigenous knowledge and traditions of marine resource conservation, and how this wisdom, a valuable asset for climate adaptation governance, has been passed from generation to generation through oral tradition.

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