Adaptation and Risk Analysis

The first blog looked into the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy’s (CSTEP’s) engagement with Climate Asia (CA) on their Climate Action for Civil Society Organisation Development Programme for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). In this concluding blog, we explore the design and development of the climate modules and share insights and learnings from the engagement.

In this two-part blog series, we revisit our experience in capacity building for civil society organisations (CSOs) working across India’s diverse rural landscape, where there is an urgent need to enhance climate adaptation knowledge to address the multi-dimensional challenges of climate change.

India is grappling with a surge in extreme climate events causing significant losses, with a shortfall in global climate action, according to the 2023 Synthesis Report of the first Global Stocktake by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). With an aim to promote sustainability and reduce carbon emissions, the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) and the Green Credit Programme (GCP) were launched under the Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) initiative this year. 

Climate change is a universally urgent issue that impacts all nations, with interlinked consequences for economies, societies, and ecosystems. At the seat of this problem lies the unchecked, irreversible land-use change affecting about 32 per cent of the Earth’s terrestrial area. COP28 provides an opportune moment to shed some light on prioritising nature and biodiversity conservation, alongside carbon-centric strategies.

Any development programme can foster climate adaptation and mitigation benefits; it must also, however, feature self-reflection and system assessments. The renowned ecologist C.S. Holling, who brought resilient thinking to the forefront of socio-ecological studies, asserted that systems must evolve while they build resilience. If the baseline system itself is fundamentally unjust and unsustainable, then evolving to a new system is preferable to belatedly attempting to add resilience.

The world is witnessing the increasing impacts of climate change at an alarming rate. Wildfires, floods, cyclones, and heatwaves have become uncomfortably common today. Current research in climate sciences tells us that even if we were to completely stop producing greenhouse gases today, we would still face the detrimental impacts of climate change due to historical emissions. Additionally, the impacts of climate change are not felt in isolation.

Cyclone Mocha — the first storm of 2023 in the North Indian Ocean — killed people, destroyed buildings, and caused economic losses in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Eastern India, and Sri Lanka. Barely a month later, Biparjoy — a rare June cyclone — formed over the Arabian Sea and struck Gujarat and other western states in India.

The first two articles of our ‘Under the Weather, On the Move’ blog series talked about the various considerations in conceptualising climate migration, and why migration is usually not the first adaptation strategy when facing a combination of climatic and non-climatic risks.

Human mobility in the context of environmental impacts has been gaining increasing attention. Our blog series ‘Under the Weather, On the Move’ seeks to demystify climate migration by exploring some of its key aspects, intersectional variations, and policy angles.

In this first article, we discuss how climate migration can be broadly defined.