The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) recently prepared a short orientation paper, entitled Addressing Climate Change Through Development Cooperation, with a focus on natural resource management, livelihoods, and food security. This document illustrates how the issue of climate change can be addressed and integrated into the work of an agency. In SDC's programs, special emphasis is given to two important areas—adaptation and mitigation—as well as to the linkages between policy levels and concrete development work.
SDC's position is based on the recognition that climate change is one of the greatest global environmental threats. It can dramatically affect the economy, infrastructure, natural resources and local livelihoods in developing countries. Depending on their specific site characteristics, developing countries are confronted with steadily changing conditions as well as increasingly extreme climatic events such as droughts, hurricanes, and heavy rainfall that will increase the risk of so-called natural disasters.
These circumstances will affect inter alia food production, infrastructure, water supply, biodiversity, natural ecosystems, and human health. Developing countries will suffer disproportionately from the negative impacts of climate change. In addition, processes of development will be retarded, and new sources of social conflict will arise as a consequence of increasingly adverse climatic conditions. Therefore it is necessary to define actions aimed at reducing the vulnerability of poorer social groups and allowing them to participate equitably in the new opportunities offered by global climate change policy. It is in this area that development cooperation finds a specific niche where it can address a global concern through activities at the local level.
The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) recognizes climate change as a threat to sustainable development in developing countries. Additionally, its Global Environmental Program (GEP) is aimed at supporting developing countries in their efforts to implement the UN Conventions concerned with the global environment. Along these general lines, SDC's approach to climate change proposes that programs and projects supported by SDC in the fields of food security, natural resource management, and local livelihoods should integrate, to the extent possible and in a complementary manner, measures that address one or more of the following objectives:
Adaptation: Understand and reduce the impacts of climate change on livelihoods among the poor, with special consideration given to extreme events, natural disasters, resource availability, biodiversity loss, and reduction of carrying capacity for food production;
Mitigation: Promote equitable participation of the rural poor including small-scale farmers, with a focus on gender issues, to allow them to take advantage of opportunities emerging from the implementation of the mitigation strategy, with special regard to their need to increase capacity to participate in the flexible mechanisms;
Sustainable Development: Ensure that the implementation of mitigation and adaptation projects promotes sustainable development in poor rural areas.
Reducing vulnerability to climate change, especially to extreme events, is closely related to humanitarian aid, and more concretely to managing and reducing the impacts of so-called natural disasters. This link is clearly defined in the objectives of the SDC's Advocacy Guidelines, as well as in Article 7 of the Swiss Federal Law concerning International Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid of 1976.
Due to the evolving policy context at the international level, this work is seen as a permanent learning process, starting with an understanding of the relationship between climate change impacts, sustainable development, and risk management. Such a process-oriented approach includes development of methodological approaches, technologies available for local communities, and the support of pilot experiences. Implementation of the proposed approach to climate change will take account of the specific characteristics of partner countries in different regions, including Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.
SDC's actions in the field of climate change with regard to natural resource management, livelihoods, and food security take place at two levels:
Coordination level: information exchange and clearing desk, through the Natural Resource and Environment Section; and
Operational level: mainstreaming climate change issues in operational work through SDC's Geographical Divisions.
Specific actions in the area of mitigation:
Support capacity building in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects;
Promote technology transfer and technology development, especially in the fields of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and ensure that they contribute to sustainable development, food security, and poverty alleviation;
Support and document emission reduction efforts in the land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector and make sure that they contribute to sustainable development and poverty alleviation.
Specific actions in the area of adaptation:
Support efforts to understand vulnerability to climate change at the local level;
Promote the design and use of tools for vulnerability assessment at the local level;
Support adaptation programs in countries where expected impacts of climate change and vulnerability are high;
Support capacity building in the areas of vulnerability assessment and planning for adaptation.
