At its 18th Intergovernmental Meeting (April 2013), the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) endorsed and launched its Climate Adaptation Framework (CAF) to enhance science-based adaptation activities of APN developing countries. CAF was established to consider, among others, approaches to address loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) in countries particularly vulnerable to climate change, and in an effort to contribute to the work of the UNFCCC Cancun Adaptation Framework and the later established Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) at COP19 in 2013. With funding from the Ministry of Environment, APN launched a call specific to linking CCA, DRR and L&D and 14 projects were funded and completed.
As a result of the now completed work undertaken by these projects and their outputs (over 100 to date), APN, in collaboration with SLYCAN Trust and project leaders and/or collaborators of the work, is planning a special issue publication that will synthesise the outcomes and provide a forward-thinking analysis. Essentially, it is our hope that the publication will provide both critical and insightful information on synergies among the global agendas of the UNFCCC (Paris Agreement, WIM, Santiago Network, etc.), the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Goals.
As part of this special publication, APN and SLYCAN Trust held an online virtual contributors’ symposium where each of the authors, who either led or collaborated in a CAF case study, presented on their research and capacity development work and how it would contribute to the special issue, which will cover four main thematic areas (1) assessing and understanding L&D on the ground: global science and projections, community-led assessments, toolkits, and conceptual frameworks; (2) sector-specific impacts and interventions: infrastructure, energy, mining, mobility, non-economic L&D, enabling environment, and resilient recovery and development; and (3) towards a unified framework for adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and L&D: understanding global policy processes, interlinkages and synergies.
The next event will be a two-day writeshop in October 2022 where authors will gather in Colombo, Sri Lanka to discuss further and write their peer-review publications for the special issue, expected to be published in late 2022 or early 2023.