When the Green Climate Fund was envisioned in 2010, it was designed to allocate its funding of climate actions 50% to Mitigation projects and 50% to Adaptation projects, in a two-pronged approach to overcoming the “crisis of the XX Century”.
Mitigation projects were always easier to identify, formulate, finance
and implement: A new wind farm here, a PV solar mini-grid there, better public
transportation, proper sanitary land-fills, less consumption of meat from beef
cows and other burping animals…
And Mitigation projects were easier to scale up and centralize, as promoters
and investors implemented bigger and bigger capital-intensive “utility-sized” PV
solar farms, from the initial 11 MW in Serpa, Portugal in 2011, to the 500 MW Ouarzazate complex in Morroco in 2018 and more since.
By contrast, Adaptation projects are the poor relation of Climate Finance, being people-intensive, requiring local solutions and behavioral changes village-by-village, such as a new water source, new climate-resistant seeds, new irrigated agriculture, new climate-adapted school buildings and covered schoolyards, new water, and sanitation WASH practices. In complex countries like Peru, I saw how difficult it was just to take the first steps, to identify local needs and to structure local options.
Lo-and-behold, (eis senão quando), the new Covid-19 mass confinement arrives in March
2020 to temporarily facilitate Mitigation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But the Covid-19 health crisis permanently complicates Adaptation and
protection of the most exposed and vulnerable populations from increased risks, worsening living conditions and more difficult resilience.
How can we cope with so many intertwined crises, when we hardly understand all their ripple effects and consequences as “pebbles thrown in the pond” become boulders?
>Climate crisis >
>Covid-19 health crisis>
>Confinement
economic crisis>
>Unemployment and
poverty crisis>
>Social services
safety net crisis >
> Government budgets and debt crisis>
> Social conflict crisis>
> Political polarization
crises>
>International conflict
crises...
In 2020, the year of all crises, it seems we need to rethink (absolutely)
everything, from intercontinental air travel, to having grand-parents around
to help with child-care in 3-generation family homes.
To get through it all, we will need to Rethink Everything to make the 2020’s Adaptation Decade,
for example...Urbanization and fast-growing cities, trends are likely to change.
Urban growth is likely to slow down as 2020 Smart Cities may need to reduce, not increase, density and traffic. Double adaptation to Covid-19 and to Climate Change suggests less population density and less frequent travel, less daily commuting, with people staying more time in self-contained communities, with more open spaces and fewer huge shopping malls, working closer to home, delivering and receiving more services on-line, concentrating transportation mostly in essential goods, single-family road trips, etc.
Adaptation is not optional, never has been. #Clima, #Covid-19, #Adaptação
Mariana Abrantes de Sousa
Senior Project Finance Specialist
