NAPA lesson 9

The level of knowledge varies among countries, especially among the LDCs, but at the global and regional level, through collective efforts, it is very good.

Many Parties have affirmed that it is not necessary to await a complete scientific understanding of the impacts of climate change before acting, and that in adapting to climate change, there are many actions that can be undertaken to enhance adaptive capacity and reduce the impacts and costs of addressing climate change at a later date.

In fact, the necessity to address immediate and urgent adaptation needs that can already be identified with current knowledge underpins the design of the NAPA. In that respect, the NAPA is a concept that has a great deal of value in ensuring that LDCs can address immediate known impacts of climate change while at the same time strengthening their capacity to address and meet future adaptation needs by building their resilience and enhancing their coping ability.

The remaining elements of the LDC work programme are also very important in that they were designed to supplement the NAPAs to bridge the capacity gap in addressing climate change in the LDCs.

Best practice: In many countries, the conduct of consultations as part of the NAPA preparation phase was an opportunity to collect relevant existing information on vulnerability to climate change from a wide range of stakeholders, including local governments, grass-roots communities, registered religious groups, associations, NGOs and the private sector. During the stakeholder consultations, some of the NAPA teams were even provided with sound examples of traditional and contemporary community-based adaptation that had already been implemented at the community level. This information was a good starting point for identifying relevant activities to address urgent and immediate adaptation needs.

Lesson learned: Some differences can appear between the information provided by the communities and the information collected at the government level. Often, the differences are due to the fact that communities tend to be primarily demand-driven while governments are predominantly politically driven. Therefore, adaptation needs and expectations both of communities and of governments need to be managed carefully, including through the identification of relevant adaptation activities by using, for example, a multicriteria analysis.

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