Adapting to Climate Change: Assessing the World Bank Group ...

CHAPTER 2ADAPTATION AT THE BANK GROUPfor the Ethiopia Productive Safety Net project are a working example. Suitable dataare also being gathered with the assistance of the Bank’s Development ResearchGroup in seven African countries, using innovative computer-assisted interviewingtechniques to boost speed and accuracy. (The costs of household surveys willdecrease as mobile phone–based survey techniques are improved and deployed.)These data need to be complemented by climate information, such as precipitationand soil moisture that is available from remote sensing. Existing early warningsystems, such as FEWS NET (Famine Early Warning Systems Network), alreadyuse such data and relate it to vulnerability.Measures of institutional capacity. A well-functioning hydromet system is essentialfor both ACV and ACC. The number and proportion of reporting stations is a basic,readily available indicator of institutional capacity, although there are additionaldimensions of performance, such as service provision. Likewise, agriculturalresearch and extension is essential not just for addressing today’s climate variabilitybut also in rapidly responding to future challenges, foreseen and unforeseen. Ashift toward the use of information and communications technology (ICT) inextension points the way to effective monitoring. For instance, digitalgreen.org, anextension system in India, provides real-time measures of effectiveness. Disasterrisk management systems are another pillar of robust ACV whose institutionalcapabilities should be tracked. So, too, should be the existence and capabilities ofriver basin authorities.Measures of water use and depletion. Water issues are central both to ACV and ACC.Of particular concern is unsustainable consumptive water use. In California,northern India, Mexico, and Yemen, drawdown of aquifers means that theconsequences of future droughts will be severe. However, it is becomingincreasingly feasible to track water use and depletion using a combination ofremote sensing and ground measurements (Rodell, Velicogna and others 2009).World Bank–sponsored projects in China have pioneered in the measurement ofagricultural water consumption at a fine scale. Satellite-based measures of gravitycan be used to track changes in water storage at the water basin level and are nowbeing applied in ongoing World Bank hydrological studies of Central Asia.Measures of exposure to or resilience to long-term climate change. Measures here couldfocus on more anticipatable aspects of long-term change. These could include theproportion of population exposed to a one-meter rise in sea level, and theproportion of protected areas with a specified degree of altitudinal or latitudinalconnectivity.17