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

CHAPTER 2ADAPTATION AT THE BANK GROUPadaptation concerns into agriculture or water sector projects. Of actions most clearlyfocused on adaptation, most are financed by the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience(PPCR), GFDRR, or GEF.Box 2-2. SFDCC Commitments to Climate Adaptation• “Screen climate-sensitive investments with long life spans, starting with hydropowerprojects and selected water and agriculture projects.”• “Help some of the most vulnerable countries integrate climate risk management indevelopment processes, on demand and with new financing.”• Support “increasing resilience in agriculture and its linkages with food security, waterresources management including support to country-driven, trans-boundary programs,and to coastal areas.”• Sponsor “ongoing analytic work to improve understanding of the nature and costs ofadaptation processes” in order to “aid developing countries, the internationalcommunity, and the [World Bank Group] to better determine the incremental costs ofadaptation measures and use this knowledge for raising additional finance.”• Mobilize “additional resources for adaptation.”• “Customize a series of new insurance and reinsurance products for catastrophic andclimate-related risks.”• “Support strengthening technical and policy expertise on development-climate linkagesand decision-making capacity at the country level.”Source: (World Bank 2008a)2.27 While strategies have focused on climate resilience, this attention has beenalmost entirely devoted to addressing adaptation deficits (ACV) to current climatevariability rather than addressing new risks from future climate change (ACC). Onlyfour strategies supported specific actions that are likely to be related to long-termclimate change; the Cameroon strategy planned to support analytic work that wouldlook at the future impact of climate change on hydropower; the Morocco strategysupported analytic work on climate-induced migration; the Yemen strategy supportedan investment project in long-term agrobiodiversity; and the Guyana strategysupported protection against coastal flooding and sea-level rise. Even countries such asBhutan and Kiribati with high vulnerability to long-term climate change focused theirstrategies on current variability. 132.28 While not every CAS made climate resilience a top priority, it would not beappropriate to seek such an objective. Some countries will be affected much lessseverely by climate change than others, some have urgent development needs that maytake precedence over adaptation, and in some, adaptation needs are being supported byother development partners. Among the countries whose FY09-11 CAS did not supportclimate resilience, half of the most climate-vulnerable were fragile states. 1421