Adaptation Aid Research Articles

Germany's allocation of bilateral adaptation aid: Understanding the role of institutional context in shaping allocation decisions

Allocation of adaptation aid to the countries most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change is a topic that has received increasing attention in global climate governance in recent years. Studies have attempted to explain the role of vulnerability as a determinant of adaptation aid using largely quantitative methods and focusing on recipient characteristics with varying results. I argue that we cannot assess the role of vulnerability in allocation decisions without paying attention to the decision-making process itself. This article examines how the allocation of bilateral adaptation aid to developing countries is shaped by donors’ institutional context, consisting of the institutional identity, institutional beliefs and allocation stages. Through a case study of the allocation process of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, I show that these three elements of the institutional context govern how vulnerability is understood and considered in the allocation of adaptation aid.

How is climate change adaptation aid allocated? A study of climate justice in Ecuador


 
 
 This paper analyses the allocation of climate adaptation aid in subnational and local jurisdictions in Ecuador. It examines the influence of physical and socioeconomic vulnerability and local capacity as independent variables of aid allocation. The study introduces projections of physical vulnerability to determine whether inter-generational aspects of climate justice are taken into account and uses geographically weighted regression models to study the spatial distribution of aid allocation. The findings show that physical and socioeconomic vulnerabilities influence adaptation aid allocation. However, projected changes in patterns of precipitation and temperatures are not associated with this variable. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of current climate aid is uneven, leaving clusters of vulnerable jurisdictions unattended. Finally, the study finds no association between local capacity and adaptation aid allocation. Findings suggest that the allocation of adaptation aid may not contribute to achieving adaptation scenarios where justice for current and future generations is central to decision-making.
 
 

Allocation of Adaptation Aid: A Normative Theory

Abstract The paper derives an efficient allocation rule of adaptation aid from a donor to the recipient nations, which is different from the traditional development aid literature. The design of the allocation rule takes care of the optimum reaction of the nations on receipt of the aid. It suggests that the allocation rule must take care of (i) distributional weight of the recipients on the donor’s welfare, (ii) their vulnerability to climate change, (iii) their efficiency in using the aid and (iv) their mitigation response to the aid. It discusses the way these factors can be incorporated in an implementable rule by use of the available data. The score of a nation derived from the first three factors requires an upward/downward adjustment if the adaptation aid leads to an increase/decrease of the mitigation effort of the country. A nation receiving a higher score is rewarded with higher allocation of aid. The paper suggests as a rule of thumb that the aid in the form of technical assistance requires a downward adjustment and the aid in monetary form requires an upward adjustment in the score.

The impact of climate aid on carbon emissions reduction and the role of renewable energy: evidence from the Belt and Road countries.

Full mobilization and effective use of climate aid is of great importance for the low carbon transition of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)countries. This study utilizes the two-step system generalized method of moments model to evaluate the effects of climate aid on carbon emissions reduction and the impact mechanism through energy structure optimization. The panel data of 93 Belt and Road countries from 2000 to 2018 were used for empirical analysis. Results show that climate aid has a significant reduction effect on the carbon emissions intensity of BRI countries, and the dominant component of climate aid, i.e., mitigation aid, corresponds to better carbon emissions reduction benefits than adaptation aid. The impact mechanism demonstrates that the climate aid has dual carbon emissions reduction effects in BRI countries which have an intermediate energy structure. It indicates that climate aid not only directly reduces carbon emissions by increasing carbon reduction resources, but also indirectly reduces carbon emissions by promoting renewable energy and optimizing the energy structure. The results evidence the theory of environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and channels of climate aid effects. Practical implications from the current study include that more climate finance support should be provided to BRI countries by developed countries, the effectiveness of climate aid should be improved by investing in projects with significant carbon reductionlike renewable energy, data monitoring and performance evaluation of climate aid should be strengthened, and China should take its role and make more contributions to the low carbon transition especially energy transition of BRI countries.

Public support for climate adaptation aid and migrants: a conjoint experiment in Japan

We examine public support in Japan for overseas climate adaptation assistance via foreign aid and accepting immigrants. Using a survey-embedded conjoint experiment (N = 2815), we focus on seven attributes of an adaptation policy package: (a) the continent in which the country is located; (b) the types of extreme weather event this country faces; (c) the volume of climate aid; (d) the number of climate migrants (e) Japanese exports; (f) Japanese imports, (g) the country’s record of voting with Japan in the United Nations. We find that while respondents are indifferent to aid volume, their support diminishes as the number of migrants increases. Moreover, support is higher for Asian countries, that provide export markets, vote with Japan, and where the effects of climate change are gradual. Importantly, we find that public support is not influenced by benchmarking of Japan’s or peer G7 countries’ past aid or immigration levels.

Donor interactions in the allocation of adaptation aid: A network analysis

This article examines how adaptation aid is allocated across countries, and specifically focus on the role of donor—donor interactions in allocation decisions. We test two contrasting hypotheses: the presence of other adaptation donors in a recipient country may increase or reduce the likelihood of donor i to provide adaptation aid to that recipient. In the former case, donors support adaptation in the same recipient countries; in the latter, they provide their adaptation aid to different recipient countries. We model adaptation aid allocations as a network, and apply an innovative method, bipartite temporal exponential random graph models, to bilateral adaptation aid flows between 2010 and 2016. Our empirical analysis finds strong evidence for donor interactions. The results suggest a positive effect of other donors: donors tend to support adaptation in similar sets of recipient countries. These results provide further evidence that adaptation aid largely follow the structures and processes of traditional development aid, which poses questions for the additionality of finance for adaptation to climate change.

Development and Climate Aid to Africa: Comparing Aid Allocation Models for Different Aid Flows

This article examines the role different aid allocation models play not only for conventional development aid but also for two new financial flows, adaptation and mitigation aid. We first test the three models proposed in the literature – recipient need, recipient merit, and donor interests – using the latest available aid data and compare our results with findings of older studies on Africa, and with studies on aid allocation on a global scale. We find that the recipient merit model in more recent years no longer plays a role for development aid allocation in Africa, in line with findings reported globally. In contrast to such global studies, the logic of the donor interest model does not seem to dominate over the recipient need model in the African context, as both are of equal importance for aid allocation decisions. Finally, additionality seems to play a lesser role in Africa than globally.

Adaptation and Health: Are Countries with More Climate-sensitive Health Sectors More Likely to Receive Adaptation Aid?

Climate change poses a severe challenge for many developing countries, and the need to adapt has been widely recognized. Public health is one of the sectors where adaptation is necessary, as a warming climate likely affects general health conditions, the spread of various diseases, etc. Some countries are more affected by such climatic challenges, as their climate sensitivity—both to health-related issues and to climate change in general—is higher. This study examines whether more climate-sensitive countries are more likely to receive support from donors through the relatively new channel of adaptation aid, with a particular focus on the health sector. To investigate this relationship, this study proposes and operationalizes a new indicator to capture climate sensitivity of countries’ health sectors. The results, however, indicate that climate sensitivity does not matter for adaptation aid allocation. Instead, adaptation aid to a large degree follows development aid. In light of the promises repeatedly made by donors in the climate negotiations that adaptation aid should go to the most vulnerable, developing countries should push for a different allocation mechanism of adaptation aid in future negotiation rounds.

Vulnerability, good governance, or donor interests? The allocation of aid for climate change adaptation

Developed countries provide increasing amounts of aid to assist developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. How do they distribute this aid? While donors agreed to prioritise “particularly vulnerable” countries, we know from the general aid allocation literature that donors (also) use aid as a foreign policy tool to promote their own economic and political goals. In this paper, we analyse data on bilateral adaptation aid from 2010 through 2015 to assess to what extent adaptation aid is provided in response to recipient need (that is, vulnerability to climate change impacts) as opposed to recipient merit (that is, good governance) and donors’ interests. In contrast to previous research, we find that donors partly take into account vulnerability to climate change. Countries that are physically more exposed to climate change tend to be more likely to receive some adaptation aid and also receive more adaptation aid per capita, as do poorer countries, small island developing states and—to a lesser extent—least developed countries. Countries with lower adaptive capacity, however, do not receive more adaptation aid; instead, donors reward well-governed countries with adaptation aid as well as use adaptation aid to promote their own economic interests. Furthermore, adaptation aid flows very closely follow general development aid flows. The extent to which adaptation aid is new and additional thus remains unclear.

Assessing the credibility of how climate adaptation aid projects are categorised

ABSTRACTThis article presents the findings of a re-evaluation of all 5,200 aid projects that OECD donors reported for 2012 as “climate change adaptation”-related, based on the “Rio marker” classification system. The findings confirm those from the academic and grey literature that the absence of independent quality control makes the adaptation Rio marker data almost entirely unreliable. This lack of credibility impedes meaningful assessments of progress toward the mainstreaming of adaptation in development cooperation activities. It also erodes trust in international climate negotiations, given that these data are frequently used in the financial reporting of developed countries to the UNFCCC.

Pourquoi aider les pays en développement ? Conceptions de la justice dans l’aide à l’adaptation au changement climatique

Cet article examine les justifications morales conduisant les pays développés à fournir aux pays en développement des moyens financiers visant leur adaptation au changement climatique. Nous examinons en particulier les conceptions correctives et distributives de la justice dans la Convention-cadre des Nations unies sur les changements climatiques (CCNUCC), dans les mandats de fonds multilatéraux dédiés au financement de l’adaptation et dans les hypothèses retenues par les études du coût de l’adaptation pour les pays en développement. Nous montrons que les acteurs semblent avoir recours de façon relativement flexible à différentes justifications morales, en fonction de leurs intérêts matériels.

Allocation of aid for adaptation to climate change: Do vulnerable countries receive more support?

Wealthy countries spend increasing amounts of aid to support adaptation to climate change in developing countries and have committed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to prioritize adaptation aid to those “particularly vulnerable” to climate change. While research has started to track this aid, it has not yet examined its allocation across all donor and recipient countries. We thus do not know to what extent vulnerable countries indeed receive more support for adaptation. We address this research gap and ask: how does this commitment to prioritizing particularly vulnerable countries translate into actual adaptation aid allocation? To what extent do vulnerable countries receive more adaptation aid? We address these questions though a quantitative analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on bilateral adaptation aid from 2011 through 2014. In contrast to other studies, we find that vulnerability—or more precisely, vulnerability indicators—matter for adaptation aid allocation. Countries that are more exposed to climate change risks, such as extreme weather events or sea level rise, receive more adaptation aid, both on a per capita basis and as a percentage of all adaptation aid. These results indicate that collectively (even if not at the level of each individual donor) donors align their bilateral adaptation aid allocation with global promises.

Aid and Adaptation to Climate Change in Pacific Island Countries

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are already experiencing the adverse impact of climate change yet often lack (human and financial) resources to meet the challenges of changing climatic conditions. This paper examines adaptation aid committed to recipient countries in the Pacific between 2010 and 2014 using data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Specifically, the analysis tracks how much adaptation aid flowed to the PICs, which countries and sectors received how much, and which bilateral and multilateral donors provided this aid. Although the analysis is only a first step towards a more detailed understanding of adaptation aid flows in the Pacific, some conclusions can be drawn. First, adaptation aid to PICs is only a small share of global adaptation aid as well as of total development aid to the region. Second, adaptation aid comes from only a small number of mostly bilateral donors, and is, third, distributed unevenly among PICs, in total adaptation aid, on a per capita basis as well as in percent of overall development aid. Finally, adaptation aid to the Pacific has steadily declined from a high in 2011, largely driven by Australia’s considerable reduction in adaptation aid in the region. Donors should not only provide scaled-up and more predictable support for adaptation in the Pacific; they should also ensure that the support reaches those most in need. Finally, donors should also improve reporting so that adaptation aid can be tracked and monitored more easily.

Measuring and tracking the flow of climate change adaptation aid to the developing world

The developed world has pledged to mobilize at least US $100 billion per year of ‘new’ and ‘additional’ funds by 2020 to help the developing world respond to climate change. Tracking this finance is particularly problematic for climate change adaptation, as there is no clear definition of what separates adaptation aid from standard development aid. Here we use a historical database of overseas development assistance projects to test the effect of different accounting assumptions on the delivery of adaptation finance to the developing countries of Oceania, using machine algorithms developed from a manual pilot study. The results show that explicit adaptation finance grew to 3%–4% of all development aid to Oceania by the 2008–2012 period, but that total adaptation finance could be as high as 37% of all aid, depending on potentially politically motivated assumptions about what counts as adaptation. There was also an uneven distribution of adaptation aid between countries facing similar challenges like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The analysis indicates that data allowing individual projects to be weighted by their climate change relevance is needed. A robust and mandatory metadata system for all aid projects would allow multilateral aid agencies and independent third parties to perform their own analyses using different assumptions and definitions, and serve as a key check on international climate aid promises.

Sea-level rise in Indonesia: on adaptation priorities in the agricultural sector

Adaptation to climate-change impacts requires understanding of where impacts are to be expected and what their magnitude may be. Adaptation funds are only a limited resource for helping affected parties in coping with climate-change impacts. The application of suitable methods helps to determine the recipients of adaptation aid. A quantification of impacts based on different impact analyses can aid in taking on various perspectives on the same problem in order to identify the appropriate perspective for the given decision-making context or for identifying impact patterns. Once executed, this prioritizes adaptation needs and finding a suitable allocation rule, given the policy makers perception of the decision-making context. The study introduces a set of methods of spatially explicit, sub-national (province level), and country-wide impact analyses regarding inundation impacts on agricultural areas for four important food crops in Indonesia. These methods are applied to a 1 and 2 m sea-level rise scenario and include a novel approach for impact analyses, data envelopment analysis, which is not widely used in environmental studies as of yet. Based on the given case study, the paper demonstrates the applicability of these methods and identifies impact patterns.

A Theory of Adaptation to Climate Change as a Global Public Good

Policy discussions of climate change have been primarily concerned about mitigating greenhouse gases. However, when adaptation to climate change is a global public good, an efficient allocation cannot be achieved by the imposition of a carbon tax alone to abate greenhouse gases. This paper proposes an alternative policy framework in which a carbon tax is levied globally while adaptation is supported through the recycling of carbon tax revenue. The optimal level of adaptation aid is discussed. In contrast to a single carbon tax approach, it can address climate inequity issues directly by supporting adaptation programs of vulnerable poor regions. Moreover, this approach provides more incentives for developing countries to participate in global climate negotiations.

Designing a Climate Policy: A Carbon Tax Approach with Adaptation Funds

This paper suggests a climate policy that integrates adaptation funds into a harmonized carbon tax approach. In the proposed approach, the world will set a carbon tax assuming that vulnerable sectors will adapt to future changes at its full capacity. At the same time, the world will support climate adaptation programs at a regional level. A mitigation policy will be set at the global level while adaptation measures will be taken at a local or regional level. The carbon revenue generated from a mitigation program will be used to support adaptation aid programs in developing countries. This augmented carbon tax approach has the capacity to deal with climate inequities while it creates additional incentives for developing countries to participate in a global mitigation effort.

Red glasses and visual function in retinitis pigmentosa.

As a consequence of animal reduction of the light regimes have been tried on patients with retinitis pigmentosa. The trials have been very limited and have not given reason for hope that such reduced light therapy may be beneficial. However, RP patients trying red glasses have reported acute subjective improvement of their visual function. It was the purpose of this study to try to document the reports more objectively. Five visual functions were tested with and without red glasses with the following results: 1. Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity. For one volunteer a small reproducible improvement was found. 2. Color vision. In most cases deterioration was found of already deficient color vision. 3. Visual fields. For volunteers with relatively preserved vision no difference or slight deterioration was found. For the other volunteers slight improvements were found. 4. Intraocular light scatter. No differences were found. 5. Dark adaptation. Improvements were found when the glasses were used as adaptation aid according to the method of Trendelenburg (rod function). For cone function no difference was found upon continuous wearing of red glasses. use of red glasses does not seem to be of great benefit as a rule. On the other hand, apart from the reduction in color discrimination no serious disadvantages seem to be inherent in their wear by RP patients.

Infaunal survival: alternative functions of shell ornamentation in the Bivalvia (Mollusca)

Two kinds of adaptation aid infaunal bivalve mollusks in sustaining their life positions against potentially disruptive water movements: (1) ability to retard scour of surrounding sediment and (2) ability to reburrow rapidly if exhumed.The shell of the venerid Anomalocardia brasiliana is ornamented with concentric ridges that are asymmetrical in cross-section; experiments show that these ridges aid the animal in burrowing by gripping the sediment during backward rotation of the shell. The shell of the less deeply burrowing venerid Chione cancellata also bears concentric ridges, but these are symmetrical and experiments show that they hinder burrowing; other experiments demonstrate that these ridges reduce scour of sand from around a partly exposed animal. The single cardiid species Trachycardium egmontianum possesses adaptations comparable to those of the two venerid species, in the form of spines of two varieties; experiments show that the flared anterior spines facilitate burrowing and the cupped posterior spines reduce scour.Conspicuous ornamentation of the kinds considered here was rare throughout the Paleozoic. Its evolutionary deployment occurred primarily during the post-Paleozoic adaptive diversification of infaunal bivalves, which was triggered by the evolution of efficient burrowing mechanisms. The general premium on maintaining infaunal life positions was accentuated for bivalves after the Paleozoic by the origins of important modern predatory taxa.