Climate change and development: consultation on key researchable issues

IIED together with the Regional and International Networking Group members in India, Kenya and Senegal carried out a consultation exercise to identify the priority research and policy issues for the most vulnerable countries and communities in South Asia, and East and West Africa. A wide range of reports are produced segregated into separate sectoral and geographical analyses.

The study sets out to:

1. establish what developing country stakeholders regard as the most urgent research needs in relation to climate change, and its implications for poverty reduction and sustainable development
2. identify what research other funders have supported, or are supporting, and where there are gaps
3. provide a clear definition of the researchable problems.
   

Key findings:

• Climate change impacts and adaptation require ‘mainstreaming’ into development planning and practice from the global to national and local levels
  
• National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPAs) and other national strategies  provide potential policy ‘hooks’ on which to link research on climate change impacts and adaptation
• there is a case for enhancing capacities to use climate models at regional scale within the key regions in the developing world
• understanding vulnerability and exploring ways to enhance poor people’s adaptive capacities are considered to be the highest priority for cross-sectoral research
• Priorities for sectoral research vary across regions
  
• multicountry regional institutions have a mandate to work on regional issues, often including environmental issues, but most of them lack the resources to generate the information needed to guide policy-making at the regional level
• national level policy-makers are largely unaware of the potential climate change impacts
• local communities, while being the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, are also the most difficult to reach in terms of appropriate messages
• research organisation and management needs to address how best to:
  

1. promote South-South Collaborative Research especially between Asia and Africa
2. link research to policy-making giving emphasis on getting research messages to appropriate target groups
3. link research to practice
4. link research to existing local knowledge of climate related hazards
5. link research to appropriate target institutions to ensure research uptake